Eric Zhao ’25 is the recipient of the 2025 David A. Grossman Exemplary Clinical Student Award. The award honors David Grossman ’88, the late clinical professor and faculty director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau who devoted his life to the pursuit of justice. Zhao is celebrated for his outstanding contributions across four multidisciplinary clinics: the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, the Food Law and Policy Clinic, the Housing Law Clinic, and the International Human Rights Clinic. In his pursuit to become an environmental justice advocate, Zhao leveraged the clinical curriculum to assemble a comprehensive toolkit preparing him for the work ahead.
“I’m deeply honored to receive this recognition for my clinical work,” said Zhao. “When I began law school, I aimed to enroll in as many clinical opportunities as possible to immerse myself in a public interest legal education. No one in my family is a lawyer, so I wanted to spend my time in clinics learning from the world’s best public interest lawyers and educators. This award is special to me because I firmly believe that clinical education is the soul of the law school experience.”
At the start of his second year of law school, Zhao dove into clinical work in the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. He independently crafted an innovative litigation strategy aiming to challenge the “greenwashing” — misleadingly making something appear environmentally friendly when it is, in fact, the opposite — of large-scale, densely packed livestock facilities in North Carolina that cause harmful biogas pollution to their surrounding communities.
Zhao skillfully navigated intricate statutory frameworks while developing actionable recommendations for communities harmed by industrial agricultural pollution. Throughout the semester, he gave several presentations to his client, carefully balancing the multiple plaintiffs’ competing objectives while remaining conscientious about the overall aim of the project — remediation of harm to the community’s health and environment.
“Since I came to law school to focus on the intersection of racial and environmental justice, the project was a perfect match for my interests,” Zhao said. “The clinic prompted us to think carefully about both when to litigate and how to do it responsibly, centering the goals of impacted people.” His meticulous research and strategic approach established a powerful framework for future environmental justice litigation.
During the spring of his second year at the law school, Zhao joined the Food Law and Policy Clinic, with the goal of learning about policy advocacy and social change outside the courtroom. His projects included supporting a labor rights coalition in advocating for laws to ensure safer conditions for migrant farmworkers and helping a food cooperative understand the regulatory landscape affecting their work.
In the Housing Law Clinic the following year, Zhao gained experience doing direct client representation, a new mode of lawyering for him that hit close to home. “I had just moved to a new apartment in Boston when I started with the clinic, and it was especially rewarding to realize I was helping people in my own neighborhood stay in their homes,” he reflected. “I also loved the community-centered ethos guiding the clinic, exemplified by our location at the Legal Services Center in Jamaica Plain and our participation in local tenant organizing meetings every week.”
One client Zhao represented in the Housing Law Clinic had a story that particularly stuck with him. After suffering an injury and losing work, the elderly client was faced with eviction as the long Boston winter drew near. Faced with this terrifying reality, Zhao worked diligently to find any way to keep his client safe at home. The solution came when a procedural mistake from the landlord presented grounds for dismissal, which Zhao quickly achieved. This meant that the landlord had to file a new eviction procedure, and in the meantime Zhao’s client was able to stay in the home for several critical months.
“The last time I met with my client, helping him prepare for the future eviction case, he told me how excited he was that I would become a lawyer soon. Earning someone’s trust that you will listen to their story and fight for them in court is a feeling that I’ll never forget,” Zhao said.
Zhao switched gears one final time to join the International Human Rights Clinic during his final semester: “I wanted to better understand lawyering from a global perspective and uplifting communities even when based on the other side of the world.” With the clinic, he worked to use human rights laws to hold multinational companies accountable for abusive labor and environmental practices on fishing vessels.
“Without a doubt, I’m a more thoughtful and conscientious advocate because of each clinical opportunity I was fortunate enough to receive,” Zhao said.
Next year, Zhao will head to Ecojustice in Canada, where he will “work to ensure that all people — including Indigenous, racialized, and low-income Canadians — are empowered to shape decisions affecting the health of their communities and environment.”
“I hope to use every skill that I developed in my clinical work, from strategic litigation to policy advocacy to client-centered lawyering, in the fight for environmental justice.”
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