Student Spotlights

Hundreds of Harvard Law students have now joined the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program’s Immigration Response Initiative. Some of them had never considered practicing immigration law. Others have been familiar with the realities of immigration since childhood. Here are some of their stories.

For five years in the Army, including one in Afghanistan, David E. White Jr. was zealous about leadership and public service. At Harvard Law School, he added to his passionate pursuits. “At the end of the day, it’s about justice,” said White, J.D. ’17. “In everything I pursue, my goal is to do justice.”

Erika Johnson is this year’s winner of the David A. Grossman Exemplary Clinical Student Award, which is named in honor of the late Clinical Professor David Grossman ’88 and recognizes students who have demonstrated excellence in representing individual clients and undertaking advocacy or policy reform projects.

You would never know it from her unhesitating, responsive arguments in the Ames Courtroom, but when Amanda Mundell ’17 was growing up in California she dreaded giving presentations in class. “I was a very nervous speaker,” she remembers, “so I decided that I was never going to do anything like this.

For Trenton Van Oss ’17, coming to Harvard Law School meant adapting to a different culture and experience as a student who had been educated at Christian schools, and whose strong allegiance to the GOP put him in a distinct minority at a secular school with a predominantly liberal student body and faculty.

As he prepares to graduate, Mario Nguyên ’17 can stand as an example as someone who has overcome hardship and doubt, who has achieved more than he ever thought possible and plans to achieve much more. He will soon begin a job at a firm in his native Texas, with a goal of using his legal skills to bring about systemic change to benefit disadvantaged and marginalized people.

HLS student Bradley Pough ’18 and Qian Wan, a mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate at Harvard's Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, have co-written “Digital Analytics and the Fight Against Blight: A Guide for Local Leaders,” a paper that provides data-driven recommendations city officials can use to battle urban housing blight.

The Harvard Law School mock trial team of Kaitlyn Beck ’19, Haydn Forrest ’19, Rahul Garabadu ’19, and Marilyn Robb ’18 took Fifth Place at the National Student Trial Advocacy Competition March 30–April 2 in Cleveland.

The Harvard Law School World Trade Organization (WTO) moot court team won the North America regional competition at the European Law Students Association (ELSA) Moot Court Competition (EMC2) on WTO Law in March.

Ellora Thadaney Israni ’19 was among 30 recipients selected to receive the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the premier graduate school fellowship for immigrants and children of immigrants.

When David Webb ’17 was approached with the opportunity to become a part-owner of Hiatus—an app that can scan users’ accounts to uncover auto-renewing charges that they may be unaware of—lessons from classes such as Consumer Contracts and Law, Economics, and Psychology, taught by Harvard Law Professor Oren Bar-Gill, immediately sprang to mind.

More than 350 students raced through the halls of Harvard Law School solving clues, answering trivia questions, and taking selfies with professors as part of the school's first ever Public Interest Scavenger Hunt, which had students competing for prizes as the community came together to show support for students working in public interest law.

Harvard Law School student Lauren Kuhlik ’17 has won the 2017 Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)-Northeast Law Student Ethics Award, an award created to recognize students who have demonstrated exemplary commitment to ethics.

Harvard Law Today recently spoke with three of the 11 Harvard Law School students who were selected as Cravath International Fellows this year, who traveled during winter term to Bogotá, Colombia, Paris, France and Singapore to pursue clinical placements and independent research.

In February, the Harvard Law School Drama Society presented the 2017 HLS Parody: "Harry Palsgraf in Fantastic Briefs and Where to File Them,” year featuring Harry and his section mates on their quest to find the most powerful outline at Harvard while outwitting the Hark Lord and the professors who serve him.

On March 21, Harvard Law students Jin Kim '18 and Malene Alleyne LL.M. ’17 traveled to Washington, D.C. on behalf of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC) to participate in an emergency hearing on the effects of the Trump administration’s executive orders on immigration at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

As part of the Asian Pacific American Law Students Association’s (APALSA) annual conference, “Soft Power Hard Knockout: The Asian American Punch,” on Feb. 4, Harvard Law School presented a reenactment of the Vincent Chin trial, written by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Influenced by the six years he spent herding goats as a child in the Rio Grande Valley, Harvard Law 1L Sam Garcia has written “How a Goat Was Elected Mayor and the Political Spring That Followed,” a book that explores untold or rarely-heard stories behind upset elections.

On Feb. 11., the Harvard Law School (HLS) LL.M. class of 2017 welcomed faculty, students and staff to the annual International Party in Wasserstein Hall.

On the morning of Jan. 9, Dayne Lee ’17, a student practitioner with the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, slipped into a suit after three sleepless nights leading up to his major argument before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in a case pitting federally controlled mortgage giant Fannie Mae against homeowner Elvitria Marroquin – a Lynn, Mass. homeowner who has been fighting foreclosure since 2008.

Two Harvard Law School teams competed at the 13th annual Williams Institute Moot Court Competition at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law earlier this month. The event, which featured 30 teams from law schools nationwide, is the only national competition dedicated exclusively to the areas of sexual orientation and gender identity law.