Student Spotlights

During the third week in March, a number of Harvard Law students traveled around the world and to remote areas in the U.S. to offer their legal services. With funding from the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs, teams of students worked with farmers in the Mississippi Delta, immigrants in Alabama and patients living with HIV/AIDS in New Orleans.

As part of the Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP), Krystyna Wamboldt ’12 and Rachel Krol ’12 traveled to Jerusalem in January with HLS Clinical Professor Robert Bordone ’97 to teach negotiation and mediation skills to a group of Israeli and Palestinian teenagers.

This past January, three students from Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program traveled to Chile to investigate the Ministry of Justice’s neighborhood multi-door courthouse pilot program.

Since Matthew Schoenfeld ’12 became president of the Harvard Association of Law and Business last year, it has attracted an impressive array of alumni mentors for students interested in business-related careers. This year, he launched an initiative to raise funds to mentor another group—abused children. This January, Schoenfeld arranged for a partnership between the HALB and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts, to raise money for children in need of mentorship due to abusive situations and child welfare intervention.

The Harvard Law Review has elected Conor Tochilin ’13 as its 126th president. Tochilin succeeds Mitchell Reich ’12.

Six Harvard Law School students and recent graduates have been chosen to receive Skadden Fellowships to support their work in public service.

How can technology help people gain better and easier access to the judicial system? Are there new technologies—or more efficient ways of using existing ones—that can assist low-income, pro se and other litigants to navigate the legal system while easing the burden on underresourced courts?

HLS clinic helps teens who have been victimized by acts of violence.

The experience of earlier moot court contests and many hours of rigorous study can seem to melt into the ether when surviving third-year Harvard Law School students face not just any panel of esteemed judges but one led by a U.S. Supreme Court justice. On Thursday, November 17, 2011, the teams in the showdown round of the Ames Moot Court Competition tried to persuade a panel headed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to change the law of the land.

On November 8, Emily Savner ‘13 of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation testified at a regional listening session convened by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The session was convened to elicit comments from individuals and groups about the health services that should be included in the soon-to-be created Essential Health Benefits package mandated through health care reform. Once finalized and implemented by HHS, the Essential Health Benefits package will provide a federally mandated set of health services to millions of currently uninsured Americans through both Medicaid and newly-created subsidized private health insurance plans. 

Eight Harvard Law School students in the HLS Education Law Clinic of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative (TLPI) recently spent a full day at the Massachusetts State House, testifying before the Joint Committee on Education and lobbying legislators to garner support for legislation proposed by the Clinic to create safe and supportive school environments.

Among this year’s entering class at Harvard Law School are 10 U.S. Marines and Army soldiers, all of whom served in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan – or both. Of the 10 members of this year’s class, one is an LLM candidate; the others are in the J.D. program. Five are part of HLS’s Yellow Ribbon Program, through which the U.S. Veteran’s Administration matches the amount a law school offers to pay for a veteran’s tuition and expenses. Four of these veterans share their experiences in the military and at HLS.

The Harvard Food Law Society recently co-sponsored “TEDxHarvardLaw,” a full-day conference held on Oct. 21, focused on food policy and public health, and the legal and policy approaches to increasing the supply and demand of healthy foods. The campus-wide event was independently organized and co-sponsored by 18 different HLS organizations under the auspices of TEDx, a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Just two months after landing a major victory in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of homeowners fighting eviction, the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB) was back before the high court last week seeking more protections for people with homes in foreclosure. The court’s decision, expected to come down in several months, could lead to greater accountability for lenders trying to foreclose.

When an opportunity arose this summer to work in Afghanistan on issues of human rights, Nicolette Boehland jumped at the chance. Little did the second-year Harvard Law School student know that she would soon be crisscrossing the country in Black Hawk helicopters interviewing victims of torture.

Cautionary tales and words of wisdom from HLS student entrepreneurs

It was the first real case Nneka Ukpai ’11 had ever tried. But by the second day of trial, her skillful advocacy created such a buzz in the Suffolk County courthouse last spring that the courtroom was packed with fellow HLS students, prosecutors, defense lawyers, even judges.

Rebecca Hamilton ’07 has traveled extensively in Sudan, interviewing powerful generals in the north and refugees in Darfur who had survived murderous government raids. But that was easy, she says, compared to the delicate task of talking about the book that resulted. “Fighting for Darfur: Public Action and the Struggle to Stop Genocide” is a look at the advocacy movement that Hamilton was part of and which she has now come to critique.