OPIA

State Attorneys General are on the cutting edge of the legal landscape. On a daily basis, they protect individual rights and liberties, defend democracy and the rule of law, hold the federal government to account, and rein in harmful corporate interests. State AG's offer unparalleled opportunities in virtually every practice area imaginable: constitutional law, Supreme Court and appellate practice, consumer protection, antitrust, environmental law, housing and land use, criminal law, employment and union protections...you name it. And, you get to hone and develop your legal skills working on cases and causes you actually believe in. Join Wasserstein Fellow and California Supervising Deputy Attorney General Todd Grabarsky to learn more about courageous, exciting, and unbeaten career paths in state government where you can truly fight for justice, fairness, and doing the right thing. Lunch provided. Please RSVP below! Open only to the HLS community.

Please join OPIA for a community discussion with Wasserstein Fellow James Yoon, Acting Assistant Deputy Chief of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, on building a career in public service at the intersection of law and technology. Speaking in his personal capacity, James will draw on his experience as a government lawyer to discuss the opportunities, challenges, and career paths available to lawyers interested in cyber law. James will share wisdom about entering the field of a rapidly evolving area of law and offer practical advice on building relevant skills and developing technical fluency without needing a computer science background. Lunch provided. Please RSVP below! Open only to the HLS community.

Excited about public interest work but concerned about how you will manage loan repayment or other financial considerations? Hear from a panel of public interest alumni as they candidly share their experiences participating in the Low -Income Protection Plan (LIPP) and discuss their lifestyles on public interest salaries (no, they don’t eat ramen noodles every day). Catherine Pattanayak, Assistant Dean for Public Service, and Kara Martin, Associate Director for the Low -Income Protection Plan and Public Interest Funding, will moderate and answer your questions. Lunch provided.

With support from OPIA, Harvard Law School’s Public Interest Law Collective (PILC) is a student-led community committed to advancing justice, equity, and the public good…

Can we truly become experts in international human rights law if we limit ourselves to studying and working in the Global North? Are international human rights truly international if, as practitioners, we never open ourselves up to perspectives from the Global South? Join Wasserstein Fellow Elisa Vari for a discussion on the importance of studying and working outside of the US, Europe, and other Global Minority countries to strengthen our understanding of international human rights law and the meaning of these norms in practice. Elisa will discuss her experience moving to the Levant to practice international refugee law and later to East Africa, and the impact this has had on her work and worldview. She will discuss the value of learning from Global Majority colleagues and ensuring those views are included and amplified in the practice of IHRL globally, as well as the importance of avoiding harmful stereotyping and white saviorism as US-trained lawyers. Lunch provided. Please RSVP below. Open to the HLS community.

Wasserstein Fellow CJ Sandley, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, will discuss the traditional direct service and impact litigation frameworks applied at many nonprofit legal organizations and why rejecting those frameworks can lead to more holistic, client- and movement-centered advocacy and more meaningful and sustainable systemic change. CJ will share case examples involving Alabama prisons, El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons’ supermax facility, and ICE detention centers. Lunch provided. RSVP below. Open to the HLS community.

Wondering if you can have a rewarding public interest career as an appellate lawyer? Think you might enjoy appellate practice, but are not actually sure what it entails? Join OPIA for a community discussion with Wasserstein Fellow Christine Monta, who has spent her career litigating civil rights and criminal justice issues in appellate courts from three different perspectives–as a D.C. public defender, a DOJ civil rights attorney, and a strategic impact litigator with the MacArthur Justice Center. Christine will discuss her path to appellate public interest practice and why she found it appealing (pun intended!); demystify the day-to-day life of an appellate lawyer; compare and contrast the roles she’s held across various metrics (office culture, connection to clients, scope of work and impact, autonomy vs. bureaucracy, etc.); and share insights she’s learned along the way. Lunch provided. Please RSVP below. Open only to the HLS community.

Hear first-hand how to chart a non-traditional path that leads you to make history. Join OPIA for a community discussion with Wasserstein Fellow Erin D. Drake AB ‘14, Senior Advisor and Legal Counsel at the Women’s National Basketball Players Association, the Union for WNBA Players. Erin will discuss her own career path, labor negotiations, and the skills she relied on most to make change for WNBA players and the labor movement more broadly. Whether you’re interested in women’s sports, the labor movement, building consensus among diverse groups of people, navigating the media, coalition building, or developing and executing strategic campaigns and actions, this talk should leave you ready to give your skillset to a movement. Lunch provided. Please RSVP. Open to the HLS community.

The world of public interest law presents boundless possibilities -- so many that it may feel hard to know where to start or how to plan a career path. Join Wasserstein Fellow Tory Nugent for a discussion that combines conceptual frameworks, practical advice, and personal experience. Through the lens of her 30+ year career working for public interest organizations and litigating complex consumer, environmental, and public health cases, Tory will talk about the skills, knowledge, and experiences that she accumulated and carried from one project to the next. In this lunchtime chat, you will hear about the different types of practice – policy, legislating, and litigation -- as well as the wide-range of subject matter that falls within the definition of public interest work. And perhaps most importantly, you will talk about ways to think about work and define meaning and satisfaction – personally and professionally -- as you start to envision daily work, a job, and a career arc. Lunch provided. Please RSVP below! Open to the HLS community.

Join Wasserstein Fellow Caroline Sacerdote ‘15, as she shares her experience bringing constitutional challenges to restrictions on reproductive rights in state and federal courts across the country over the past decade. Caroline will discuss what it’s like to litigate reproductive rights during this period of tremendous upheaval, and how her practice has shifted since she joined the Center for Reproductive Rights in 2016—shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down abortion restrictions in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt—to litigating in a wholly different post-Dobbs, post-Roe world. Lunch provided. Please RSVP. Open to the HLS community.

Have a quick question about the public interest job search? Join Elizabeth's Zoom meeting room during her virtual office hours. Please note that drop-in office hours are for quick questions only on a first-come, first-served basis.

This event is designed to help 1Ls navigate domestic summer employment options in the public sector. We will review essential topics to help you get started on your search. Lunch provided. Please RSVP.

International JD Students have unique concerns when seeking summer, and ultimately post-graduate, employment. Bring your lunch and your questions to an informal meeting with OCS’s…

Are you an LLM interested in public interest careers? Join OPIA for an informational session on the LLM post-graduate public interest job search. We will provide an overview of public interest employment opportunities (and challenges) for LLMs to help you better strategize your job search. Lunch provided. RSVP below.

Professional job search documents are the foundation for every successful LL.M. job search. Attend this session to learn the basics about how to draft a…

Many HLS alumni have launched their careers in federal government roles with the support of the Heyman Fellowship before transitioning to a diverse range of public sector roles. For graduates who remain committed to government, there is plenty of opportunity! If you are interested in government, attend this zoom event to hear from a panel of fantastic alumni Heyman Fellows who have made the transition from federal government to state and local government roles. Please register to attend.

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Are you a rising 3L or current clerk that plans to apply for entry-level roles at public defender offices beginning in fall 2026? Want to know what to expect and how to put your best foot forward? If so, please plan to attend a virtual roundtable on July 22nd at 8pm ET. On hand will be a group of alumni who successfully navigated the public defender application and interview process and can offer advice on everything from application strategy to weighing offer decisions. Catherine Pattanayak, Assistant Dean for Public Service, will moderate and there will be time for participants to ask questions, as well. To attend, please register.