Daniel Nagin

...Initiatives under way at HLS have returned it to a prominent role in advancing legal aid—and in developing new approaches that will change and enhance the delivery of these services in the future. Daniel Nagin, vice dean for experiential and clinical education and faculty director of both the school’s Legal Services Center and its Veterans Legal Clinic, is exploring improvements in legal services that could help bridge the divide between those who insist that lawyers are essential in providing legal services and those who believe they aren’t. Green professor of public law D. James Greiner, faculty director of the Access to Justice Lab, is HLS’s main proponent of the view that sometimes the solutions can be simpler and less expensive...[Martha] Minow emphasized HLS’s mission as a justice school, as much as a law school, by expanding opportunities for public-interest work and by bringing the curriculum and clinical offerings closer together—so theory informs practice and vice versa...Esme Caramello, a clinical professor who is the bureau’s faculty director, told me, “Within five years of graduating from the law school, a lot of students who did HLAB are in public-interest jobs, doing legal services and otherwise. They feel compelled to do this work.”

Reginald Herbert Smith’s Justice and the Poor is in the library of Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center, in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, about five miles from Harvard Square, along with many other books from the personal collection of the late Gary Bellow, LL.B. ’60, who co-founded the center in 1979...As community legal needs have changed, the center’s services have, as well...Daniel Nagin, faculty director of the center, says, “I tell students that, if they really want to make a difference, they should explore all of the things Congress has tried over the years to restrict grantees of the Legal Services Corporation from doing: class actions; lobbying the government; efforts to change and improve the law on behalf of groups.”

The state is helping hundreds of veterans by awarding $350,000 in grants to four Massachusetts organizations. The grant funding will go to Community Legal Aid, Inc., in Worcester; Montachusett Veterans Outreach Center in Gardner; The Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School in Boston; and Veterans Legal Services in Boston, Attorney General Maura Healey's office announced Wednesday...The Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School plans to hire an attorney to provide legal representation for discharge status upgrades and veterans benefits claims using the funding. That attorney will conduct outreach to veterans and present legal training on veteran and military law to services providers. The grant funding will provide nearly 50 veterans with legal representation. "Low-income and disabled veterans in Massachusetts have vast unmet legal needs," said Daniel Nagin, director of the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School. "We are honored to receive grant funding from the Attorney General's Office to expand our ability to advocate for the men and women who have the worn the uniform and now face barriers to care, financial stability, and other critical supports."

...The student lawyers became involved in Ausmer’s case in 2013, while interning at the HLS Veterans Law and Disability Benefits Clinic, within the school’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center (LSC). Each year since 2012, when the clinic was established in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, dozens of students have assisted veterans with legal cases, winning verdicts of local and national importance... “As we train students, we want to give them the opportunity to understand and appreciate the needs and sacrifices of disabled veterans,” says Daniel Nagin, clinical professor of law, faculty director of the Legal Services Center, and founder of the veterans clinic. “The work is complicated and demanding—it’s an uphill battle, and there are too few resources for people who need help….We are asking students to consider, ‘What is the role of lawyers in responding to this problem?’”

Standing in near-frozen water while guarding a bridge during the notorious Battle of the Bulge in 1945, the infantryman sustained such severe frostbite he almost lost a foot. Evacuated to a hospital in England, he avoided amputation but had serious problems with his feet the rest of his life. When he died in 2008 from a variety of health problems, his widow — who had very little income — applied for a type of benefit for survivors of veterans whose death had resulted, at least in part, from a service-related disability...It took nearly six years and a trip to federal court, but with the help of the Harvard Law School (HLS) Veterans Legal Clinic the widow finally prevailed, winning a monthly payment from the VA that completely changes her financial health....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, with [Dan] Nagin as its faculty director — and represented more than 100 clients in areas of federal and state veterans’ benefits, discharge upgrades, and estate-planning matters.