Student Spotlights

This year, Summer Public Interest Funding enabled HLS students to explore public service in 27 states and 35 countries around the world. More than $1.8 million Summer Public Interest Funding was awarded to 373 students this summer. Here’s a look at what four students did with their summer funding.

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Those words, written by noted death penalty lawyer Bryan Stevenson ’85, were very much on the mind of Katie Wozencroft ’09 this summer, when she made the four-hour drive from Atlanta to an Alabama prison where condemned prisoners are executed.

On Saturday, October 18th, the Harvard Law School crew raced in the 44th Head of the Charles Regatta, competing against over 60 club eights from around the country.

In an op- ed “Fight for the Family Home” published in the October 10, 2008 edition of The New York Times, Eric Nguyen ’09 argues for reform of bankruptcy laws.

Financial aid is helping those who will help others.

Christina Greenberg’s client was labeled disruptive and was sent home from elementary school every single day last spring. The 8-year-old—who is mentally disabled, has hydrocephalus, seizures and is in a wheelchair—then lost summer services because his school district failed to submit the necessary paperwork. His mother—struggling to care for her son and his disabled twin on $1,000 a month—was desperate when she reached Greenberg, a summer intern with Massachusetts Advocates for Children.

Harvard Law School welcomed 629 new students to Cambridge this week. They hail from Alaska to Zimbabwe, and from Fenway Park to Wimbledon.

Iraq war veteran Erik Swabb ’09 recently returned to Iraq and was embedded with a U.S. combat unit, hoping to gain an informed assessment of…

Lam Ho ’08 was 6 years old when he and his family emigrated from Vietnam to the hardscrabble city of Brockton, Mass., where his parents worked on assembly lines and the family ate in soup kitchens and wore hand-me-downs from relatives.

Eric Nguyen '09 has just had a paper published in the American Bankruptcy Law Journal about how hard parents fight to keep their family homes in times of economic distress.

On May 16th, two HLS students, René A. Pfromm LL.M. '08 and Ines Wu '09, together with Stephan Sonnenberg '06, Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Program (HNMCP) clinical fellow and lecturer on law, delivered a one day workshop on negotiation in the context of genocide and mass atrocities.

Last week, five current Harvard Law School students who have served or are currently serving in the U.S. armed forces spoke to a packed audience about their experiences in Iraq. Panelists Robert Merrill '08, Geoff Orazem '09, Erik Swabb '09, Hagan Scotten '10, and Kurt White '10 each drew upon their varied military posts during the invasion, the Second Battle of Fallujah, and counterinsurgency operations, to explain what it is like to serve as a junior officer in Iraq.

While in Guatemala this winter, Therese Rohrbeck touched what remains of The Dream of Pope Gregory IX.

On May 7, Lena Konanova '08 capped off her law school experience by representing a client bringing a case of employment discrimination before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

On April 26, the Harvard Law School crew team took home a first place finish in the International Graduate School Regatta. The regatta featured graduate school crews from Boston College, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, MIT, Yale, and Harvard.

David Kessler '09 will have an article published in the January 2009 edition of the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Though students regularly publish "notes" in law reviews and journals, it is more unusual for them to have articles published.

Last January, Andrew Klaber ’09 was invited to Davos, Switzerland, to participate in the World Economic Forum with the world’s elite business, political and intellectual leaders.

An effort to block the eviction of a family from its rental home turned into a celebration Wednesday, when, after months of effort by HLS students, the bank instead agreed to discuss selling the Dorchester house to them so the family could stay in place.

Phil Telfeyan ’08 and Elizabeth Barchas ’08 recently won the ABA National Appellate Advocacy Competition, finishing in first place as national champions.

Last weekend, a team of students representing Harvard Law School took first place in The Negotiation Challenge in Leipzig, Germany. This year's Harvard Negotiators team was represented by Rene A. Pfromm LL.M. '08, Stefan Neata '08 and Jessica Price '08. Their win marks the second year in a row HLS has won the competition.