Daniel Nagin

Harvard Law School’s Christopher T. Bavitz, the WilmerHale Clinical Professor of Law, has been appointed as vice dean for experiential and clinical education.

For the Clinical Program at Harvard Law School, the past weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic have been a time to mobilize. As the clinics have moved to working remotely, their work has continued with new urgency.

Harvard Law School has announced the launch of the new LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic, to be led by HLS Lecturer and Clinical Instructor Alex Chen '15, a tireless advocate in recent years in efforts to protect and expand LGBTQ+ civil rights.

Follow a student in the Federal Tax Clinic as he prepares to argue an appeal on behalf of a military veteran forced to pay back taxes on $500K he didn't know his wife had embezzled.

A recent Massachusetts court case spearheaded by clinical students and teachers at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC) has created important new protections for survivors of domestic violence.

On April 5, Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center celebrated its 40th Anniversary of training more than 4,000 attorneys and law students and providing pro bono civil legal services to thousands of Greater Boston’s most vulnerable residents.

Earlier this month, Casey Connolly ’19 and Laurel Fresquez ’19, both students in Harvard Law School's Veterans Legal Clinic, presented oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims on behalf of a proposed class of veterans with multiple disabilities.

In a ruling issued on December 21, 2018, the Massachusetts Superior Court found in favor of three Massachusetts veterans represented by the Veterans Legal Clinic in their challenge to the state government’s denying them the Welcome Home Bonus, which these veterans earned by serving overseas in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

A team of volunteers from Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center recently partnered with Veterans Legal Services to provide legal advice to homeless or at risk veterans at Veterans Stand Down 2018, a one-day event that brings service providers and veterans together allowing veterans to access services ranging from employment assistance to legal support to medical care.

Clinical education at HLS: Four experiences

The founder and director of Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic Deborah Anker LL.M. ’84 received the Federal Bar Association’s NGO Lawyer of the Year Joint Award on May 18. She was honored alongside Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at Hastings College of the Law.

In April, Harvard Law School’s bicentennial programming came to a close with HLS in the Community, a day of hackathons and workshops. The spirit of the clinics infused the event.

On April 20, HLS in the Community wrapped up a year-long celebration of Harvard Law School's bicentennial by highlighting the contributions made by HLS clinics and students practice organizations (SPOs).

As part of the “HLS in the Community” bicentennial event, HLS brought the hackathon concept to the legal space. Instead of writing code, alumni and other professionals worked together on April 20 to hack out legal solutions to social and political issues.

Kristin Turner ’17 was selected as the recipient of Harvard Law School's Public Welfare Foundation A2J Tech Fellowship. She will spend year working with Upsolve, a nonprofit that has developed a platform designed to guide both debtors and attorneys through the Chapter 7 bankruptcy process.

A look into America’s unfulfilled promise of “equal justice under law.”

Mentorships between Harvard Law School professors and the students who followed them into academia have taken many forms over the course of two centuries.

Tenacious legal research and petition-filing by Harvard Law School students working in the Tax Clinic of the Legal Services Center at HLS helps low-income clients fight for their legal rights – rights that are meaningless if clients lack access to a lawyer to stand up for them.

It takes a lot of preparation to rev up a new case. That’s true in all law offices, including Harvard’s legal clinics. As a clinical law student who was cross-enrolled in an undergraduate computer science course, Jeffrey Roderick ’17 wondered whether he could streamline the process through technology.

In June, the Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic filed a class action lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of Army combat veteran Jeffrey Machado and an estimated 4,000 veterans from Massachusetts who have served abroad since 9/11, but deemed ineligible to receive the state’s $1000 Welcome Home Bonus for honorably discharged servicemembers.

On November 9, 2016, the Honorable Robert Russell, founder of the nation’s first Veterans Treatment Court delivered the 2016 DAV Distinguished Speaker Lecture at Harvard Law School.

Military sexual trauma—rape or sexual harassment during military service—is a fast-emerging issue in the nation’s care for veterans and one focus of an HLS clinic.

More than 125,000 veterans who have served since 9/11 are denied access to basic services like health care by the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a report by the Veterans Legal Clinic at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School.

Lecturer on Law Alan Jenkins ’89 shared ideas for reframing conversations on race and social justice at a talk at Harvard Law School on Jan. 12. The talk was moderated by Clinical Professor Dan Nagin, vice dean for experiential and clinical education at HLS.

Christopher Melendez ’15 received the Outstanding Clinical Student Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association. The award is presented annually to one student from each law school in recognition of outstanding clinical coursework and contributions to the clinical community.

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow has appointed Clinical Professor Daniel Nagin as Vice Dean for Experiential and Clinical Education. In that role, Nagin will help to further expand the Law School’s extensive offerings in the area of experience-based learning, and he will work to develop new initiatives drawing upon the school’s wide array of clinics, student practice organizations, and other opportunities for learning through hands-on experience.

In just two years, more than 30 HLS students have enrolled in the Veterans’ Legal Clinic—housed at the WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC) in Jamaica Plain, of which HLS Clinical Professor Daniel Nagin is faculty director—and represented more than 100 clients in the areas of federal and state veterans’ benefits, discharge upgrades, and estate-planning matters.

In August, the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) Charitable Service Trust significantly increased an existing grant to expand its support of the Veterans Legal Clinic and other veterans’ advocacy program at Harvard Law School’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center.

Harvard Law School’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center—one of the leading providers of legal aid in Greater Boston and surrounding communities—has announced that Daniel Nagin, Clinical Professor of Law, will be its Faculty Director.

“HLS Thinks Big,” an event inspired by the global TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talks and modeled after the university's “Harvard Thinks Big” event, was held at Harvard Law School on May 28. Four professors—Daniel Nagin, Glenn Cohen '03, Jeannie Suk '02, and James Greiner—presented on some of their recent work and research.

The Board of Veterans’ Appeals of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs denies a soldier’s claim for disability benefits for an injury that occurred while he was on active duty. But the decision is handed down while the soldier is redeployed to Afghanistan, and he doesn’t realize he has the right to appeal until after he returns stateside—after the appeal deadline has passed. For students in HLS’s new Veterans Legal Clinic, the chance to work on this case and others like it is eye-opening.

The Board of Veterans’ Appeals denies a soldier’s claim for disability benefits for an injury to his lower extremities. But the decision is handed down while the soldier is serving in Afghanistan, and he doesn’t realize he has the right to appeal until after he returns from his deployment—after the appeal deadline has passed. For students in Harvard Law School’s new Veterans Legal Clinic, the chance to argue that the appeal deadline should have been tolled and the case allowed to proceed on the merits is proving invaluable educationally and personally.

Daniel Nagin, a tireless advocate for low-income communities, will join the Harvard Law School faculty as a Clinical Professor of Law this summer. He will direct community-based lawyering at HLS’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center.