Student Spotlights

Harvard Law student Solange Etessami ’20 recounts her experience using her advocacy skills to help refugees seeking asylum at Moria, an overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos, widely known for its dire living conditions.

Roberta "Robbie" Kaplan will be the speaker for the Class Day ceremonies at Harvard Law School on Wednesday, May 29, 2019. Kaplan was chosen by representatives of this year’s graduating class.

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau has received a major win in a case that may change the standard for determining attorney's fees in wage lawsuits in Massachusetts.

The seventh annual Salzburg Cutler Fellows Program brought together 53 students in Washington, D.C. last month, including five from Harvard Law School.

Though Lawfare’s masthead is stocked with seasoned legal firepower from across the country, two of the national security blog’s most widely discussed stories in the past few months were co-authored by Sarah Grant, a highly accomplished yet stunningly modest third-year at HLS.

Andrew Patterson '20 shares a reflection on his time spent working as an advocate for Legal Permanent Residents throughout the naturalization process with the local organization Project Citizenship.

Through the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, one of 30 clinics providing legal assistance at Harvard Law School, dozens of HLS students are taking on high-stakes cases for vulnerable clients.

The 2019 Harvard Negotiation Law Review symposium, “Redressing Harm Through Restorative Justice,” focused on the challenges of addressing power imbalances and trauma through implementation of restorative practices within communities.

The Harvard Asian Pacific American Law Students Association performed “Fred Korematsu and His Fight for Justice,” a reenactment of the trial and events surrounding Korematsu's challenge of Executive Order 9066, which ordered the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Andrew Leon Hanna ’19 has been selected as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar. The international graduate-level program provides full funding for students as they pursue studies at Stanford university.

During Winter Term, 12 Harvard Law School students traveled to 12 countries as Cravath International Fellows to pursue clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus. Four of them share their experiences.

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.

The Harvard Law School LL.M. Class of 2019 welcomed faculty, students and staff to the annual International Party to share food, music and dance performances from around the world.

Last spring, Thomas Wolfe '19 shared his experience working on issues of water contamination in the Mississsippi Delta with the Mississippi Delta Project, an HLS Student Practice Organization that provides policy and legal services to clients in one of the poorest regions in the poorest state in the U.S.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Lauren Beck ’20 as its 133rd president. Beck succeeds Michael Thomas ’19.

Frantic phone calls from family and friends facing life-altering legal challenges were Felipe Hernandez' primary motivation for leaving a career in the non-profit world to attend Harvard Law School, and they continue to fuel his involvement in clinics and student practice organizations at HLS, as he hones the skills he needs to keep answering them.

I joined the Prison Legal Assistance Project (PLAP) the fall of my 1L year at a time when I knew very little about the criminal justice system. I knew, however, that PLAP provided important services to prisoners in Massachusetts, including representing them in disciplinary hearings and in their bids for parole.

For Jameyanne Fuller ’19, outer space represents infinite possibilities. “I’ve always been an astronomy nerd,” she says. “I went to space camp in third grade, and I took all of the space-focused classes I could in college, but the technology wasn’t really there for me to be a science major.”

The notice came in a white envelope, hand-delivered by a staffer at the project-based Section 8 development that my elderly grandparents lived in. From the outside, it looked like it could be a notice that they received on a weekly basis. However, this was a “Notice to Cease.” From what my immigrant Chinese family could tell, it meant eviction.

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 plan designed by a team of Harvard University students to create a reliable source of renewable, affordable electricity for a Puerto Rican community hammered in 2017 by Hurricane Maria has moved a step closer to reality. The students are enrolled in Professor Wendy Jacobs' Harvard’s “Climate Solutions Living Lab” course.