Student Spotlights

Law, too, is going offshore. Two Harvard Law students are getting a firsthand look.

On world refugee day in June, Kofi Annan and Angelina Jolie urged the world to keep hope alive for millions of refugees. In a camp in eastern Africa, Scott Paltrowitz ’08 found that hope is often all that refugees have.

A day-by-day account of the run-up to the Ames Moot Court Finals--and some thoughts afterward from the chief justice of the state of Ames (aka David Souter '66)

After Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, many HLS students felt helpless watching news accounts of the unfolding devastation while beginning fall classes. The law school had posted links for the university's matching donations program and announced plans to host 25 law students from Tulane and Loyola tuition-free. But HLS students sought their own ways to donate their time and talents.

Few students admitted to Harvard Law School question whether they should build roads instead. But when Rebecca Hamilton '07 spent the summer of 2004 in Sudan trying to help thousands of displaced people get home, she found herself longing for such concrete solutions for the war-torn country.

Brandon Moon was a 25-year-old college student at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1988 when he was convicted of rape and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Last December, after 16 years behind bars, he was released following conclusive DNA testing that proved his innocence.

After her people were slaughtered by neighbors, Geraldine Umugwaneza LL.M. '05 knows that forgiveness is elusive, but she is determined to help Rwanda move forward.

A sampling from this year's crop of 3L papers.

Expanded program helps Harvard lawyers advance human rights abroad.

Harvard law students have always felt the pressure to do well, but the Class of '05 is the first that has to do good.

Since 1914, when a group of Harvard Law students formed an organization to provide legal aid to the poor, the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau has served as a bridge to the legal profession for nearly 2,000 students. The first year, from rented office space in Central Square, students took on 191 cases and won $4,268.13 for their clients.

Charlotte Sanders '05 and José Rodriguez '06 did legal outreach this summer to help workers who pick America's produce. They reached out all the way to Mexico.

Sharon Kelly '04 smiles when she recalls meeting a teenage girl who'd asked her mother for a birthday present: to drive her hours and hours across the plains of Iowa to a town hall meeting of a presidential candidate.

When Brett Dakin '03 was living in Laos, he sneaked into a performance not meant for foreigners, commemorating the founding of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party.

Erika Harold should not be confused with Elle Woods. Even though she did show her brains in the end, Woods, played by Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde," was, let's face it, a bit lacking in the gravitas department.

Ask most Harvard Law School students, and they are likely to tell you that social causes and law firms don't mix.

A Harvard Law School student works a few weeks in a London firm over the summer and can’t get back to the United States in time for his fall semester.

Alexander "Sasha" Volokh '03 has started Harvard Law School's first target shooting club, for fun and trouble. In Harvard's "quite liberal" environment he thought he would see if he "could get some people steamed up."

In defense of inmates, students in HLS's Prison Legal Assistance Project test their legal skills and their beliefs.

Murad Kalam '02 sprinkles his conversation with name after name after name: Toni Morrison, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, W.H. Auden, Virginia Woolf.