Harvard Law School Association members are keeping connected

Bea Krain Drechsler ’87

Being a lawyer was in her DNA

When Bea Drechsler’s father passed away a few years ago, “What a life” was the theme of the eulogy she delivered. He was a Holocaust survivor from Poland who came to the United States with his wife, also a survivor, by boat with no money in his pocket. It didn’t matter. In New York, he made his own success driving a taxi, delivering groceries, working as a plumber, and opening a construction company and later his own real estate firm. He sent his son and daughter to college and, ultimately, his daughter to Harvard Law School.

“He did very well for himself and his family,” says Drechsler ’87, “just by working hard.”

When she got into Barnard College, Drechsler would commute into New York City with her father. With his example in mind, she immersed herself in her studies and extracurricular activities, even starting the school’s first pre-law society. According to her mother, being a lawyer was in her DNA. “I would argue and argue and argue until I won,” says Drechsler.

At Harvard Law School, Drechsler got deeply involved in the school community, joining the dormitory student affairs council and helping plan events. She met her husband, a year behind her, at the law school pub. And although she has long since graduated, the connections have never stopped. In 2012, Drechsler helped start the New York chapter of the HLSA Women’s Alliance. She later joined the board of the HLSA of New York City before taking on her role on the HLSA Executive Committee.

“It feels good to be able to give back; to be able to meet with other people around not only the country, but around the world, who are involved with Harvard Law School; and to help shape the message and engage alumni throughout the world,” says Drechsler, who has represented clients in the real estate industry for 30 years. Today, Drechsler, together with her husband, runs Drechsler & Drechsler LLP, a boutique law firm they started in 2007, and a real estate business they started shortly after graduating from HLS.

“We want to get the students to know that we’re here for them when they graduate and that they are now part of this incredible alumni group that will help foster their careers,” she says. “I feel very honored to be part of a group of these extraordinary individuals. It really expands my horizons.”

Andrés W. López ’95

‘An easy yes’

“I want to say the first time I ever stepped foot on a plane was to visit colleges. The second time, I was on a flight that put me in Harvard Square,” says Andrés W. López ’95, a native of Puerto Rico, who graduated from Harvard College in 1992 and Harvard Law School in 1995.

“It’s a fish-out-of-water story with all the comedy of errors that that entails, in terms of just facing a learning curve of figuring out how things work,” says López. “But I think my disposition, generally, to be very optimistic and positive about things helped.”

Ignorance, he says, helped too. “Not knowing what I was actually supposed to be doing or not doing turned out to be pretty advantageous.”

With no lawyers in his family, López, who now runs his own firm in Puerto Rico, found his way to the legal profession in part by watching the popular TV show “L.A. Law,” he says, and in part by listening to the advice of his teachers who told him he had good writing and communication skills. A network of undergrads he met at Harvard who were interested in the law became a source of support and have become lifelong friends.

“It was great, as we were embarking in this process of essentially learning a new language, to have the comfort of a group of long-standing friends, along with some new ones,” says López. “That nucleus of folks turned out to be just a cherished component of the law school experience.”

For years, he has been helping others chart their path through Harvard and keep alumni ties strong. President of the Harvard Club of Puerto Rico, he was recently named to the board of directors for the Harvard Alumni Association. When a fellow alum nominated him for the HLSA Executive Committee a couple of years ago, López didn’t hesitate.

“It was an easy yes,” he says. “Harvard was, to me, fantastic, and it’s one of the reasons I’m involved to this day. I had a wonderful seven years in Cambridge, and I love the idea of being able to transmit that to other folks who are there today and just have the opportunity to give back.”

Marcela Viviana Ruiz Martinez LL.M. ’15

Finding a family of friends from around the world

In 2014, Marcela Viviana Ruiz Martinez LL.M. ’15 was in her Mexico City law office yelling, “I got in” after realizing that what she thought was a rejection was an acceptance letter to Harvard Law School.

“It’s one of those moments in life that you will always remember,” says Ruiz, who graduated from the school’s Master of Laws program a year later and is now an associate at Mayer Brown LLP, where she specializes in intellectual property, trademark prosecution and brand management.

Born and raised in Mexico City, Ruiz comes from a long line of lawyers and took up the family profession after receiving her law degree from Mexico’s Universidad Iberoamericana and working in intellectual property and sports law before applying to Harvard. She called the move to Cambridge a defining one.

“I wasn’t that young, but I come from a very traditional Mexican family where you live with your parents until the day you get married. So, it was really the first time I was living outside of home. I didn’t know what to expect. I remember thinking, ‘What if people are not really open? What if people are not friendly?’ But it was amazing,” says Ruiz. “I literally found a second family with friends from all over the world.”

The only trouble with the Harvard program, says Ruiz, was the fact that it was only nine months long, meaning she couldn’t take advantage of an even wider range of events and activities that would have provided even more chances to network and make new friends. Today, she is making up for it. After graduation, Ruiz moved to Washington, D.C., where she joined the local HLSA club and started to help build its communications strategy, including its official Instagram account, and was recently elected its president. She also served as president of the HLSA Recent Graduates Network, connecting newly minted alums to the extended Harvard Law School community in Washington.

Now, as a member of the HLSA Executive Committee’s international group, Ruiz is helping coordinate the HLSA clubs in other countries and trying to create an annual event for those in the Americas.

“This work is really important for me,” says Ruiz. “I loved my time in the law school, and being a part of the HLSA is a way for me to stay connected with Harvard, to meet new people, to make more friends, and to help others do the same.”

John Mathews ’07

The power and the magic

In high school, John Mathews ’07 wrote a mock Time magazine article for a class assignment, describing himself as a future senator working on death penalty legislation who had attended UCLA and Harvard Law School. The senator prediction hasn’t come true just yet, but he is a UCLA and Harvard Law School alumnus and an attorney deeply committed to issues of social justice and giving back.

When considering where to attend law school, Mathews couldn’t forget his experience at Harvard’s Admitted Students Weekend. “The people that I connected with then were like-minded in terms of working hard, but also enjoying each other and making sure they were involved in student activities,” he says. “It just felt like a really dynamic group.”

Once on campus, Mathews jumped in, becoming president of the Harvard Black Law Students Association, editor for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and a student attorney in the Criminal Justice Institute. Today, he remembers the inspiring words of then-Dean Elena Kagan ’86, who assured incoming students they would find their future “best friends and colleagues” at Harvard. “That was indeed the case for me,” says Mathews.

Working in Washington D.C., he connected with the HLSA through an event hosted by its D.C. club and met Judge Virna L. Santos ’90, a current HLSA Executive Committee member and an important mentor. It was Santos who encouraged Mathews to consider working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico, which Mathews did for several years. 

“That is my first recollection of engaging with the broader HLSA community, and it was so powerful in terms of showing me the importance of mentorship and genuine connection,” he says.

For Mathews, who is now chief of staff in the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office, those connections continue to grow. He mentors Harvard Law students and recent graduates and, as an HLSA Executive Committee member, is helping other clubs and shared interest groups get up and running.

“That’s one of the biggest goals — supporting other groups that don’t have the infrastructure yet but can benefit from the expertise of people that have done it already … and figuring out how they can get connected,” he says. “Over the years, I’ve realized there’s power, and magic, in bringing people together.”

Barry B. White ’67

Lawyers are in the relationship business

Barry White’s father and grandfather were both attorneys, but early on, he was on a different path. At Harvard College, White had plans to become a mathematician, he says, “until I took my first math course.” Soon after, he switched his concentration to government and found his favorite class: Constitutional Law.

While an undergraduate, White ‘67 also worked on the business board of the Harvard Crimson, selling ads and subscriptions. It was on a trek to Radcliffe College hoping to get coeds to sign up for the paper that he met his future wife. She didn’t go for a subscription, but she went for the man selling them. The two were married several years later, and recently celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary.

When White graduated from Harvard Law School in 1967, the Vietnam War was raging. To avoid the draft, he says, he took a position as legal counsel in the Office of the Surgeon General, in Washington, D.C., as a commissioned officer working on health care legislation, and later moved to Boston, where he worked for 40 years with Foley Hoag LLP in the firm’s business, corporate, international, and government strategies practice areas, and served for 15 years as the managing partner of the firm.

In 2009, White was named the U.S. ambassador to Norway by Barack Obama ’91. His first official role, he recalled, was welcoming the then-U.S. president to the country to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. “That was so exciting.”

Reflecting on the Harvard Law School of the 1960s, White sees a very different place today. Describing his time in law school, he says: “You were there to get trained and to get a job, you were there to have good grades. You didn’t think about a lot of other activities or connecting closely with others.”

For years, White has been helping change that dynamic. President of the HLSA of Massachusetts since 2017, he’s been connecting alumni through a range of programming. Today, as an Executive Committee member, he is working to further boost engagement.

Lawyers, says White, “are in the relationship business. People forget that, and that’s really what almost everything in life is about, and that’s a lot of what the HLSA is about: getting people together and relating to each other. It’s building relationships with people who have similar experiences; sharing those experiences; talking about what you liked about law school, what you didn’t like about law school; talking about how we can improve things; and communicating with the school some of our ideas and thoughts.”

Jee Young You ’05

One of her best decisions

When considering her future, Jee Young You ’05 was of two minds. “I was really deciding between something a little more academic, like literary theory, or something a little more practical,” says You, assistant general counsel for the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. “My parents definitely guided me toward a more practical path.”

That practical path involved Harvard Law School, where she found her professional passion, her future husband, and her lifelong friends. After graduation, she also found the HLSA, a crucial way to stay connected to the Harvard community beyond Cambridge.

Born in South Korea, You came to the U.S. with her family as a child. Although she knew no English before she arrived, she soon fell in love with literature and earned a B.A. in English and East Asian studies in college. She remembers feeling like an outsider arriving on Harvard Law School’s campus as a humanities major with an immigrant background. But that feeling didn’t last long.

“That changed with the friends that I made at Harvard, who were very different from friends that I had in college, in high school, middle school, and elementary school. They came from all over the country and had very different backgrounds,” says You.

“These were the people who kept me afloat through law school,” she says. “And then when I graduated and moved to San Francisco with my then boyfriend, now husband, we became very close with other Harvard folks, even though we had not known them well when we were in school.”

When a law school classmate reached out about joining the reconstituted HLSA of Northern California, You immediately said yes.

“Fourteen years later, it’s still going strong and is one of the most active local clubs,” says You. “It was one of the best decisions I made.”

So too was her decision to join the HLSA Executive Committee, she added, where she has developed deep friendships and where she revels in the chance to connect with members of the Harvard community. “Planning events and reaching out to alumni that have done incredible things and organizing it through the volunteer committee of this wonderful institution that we’re all a part of is amazing.”