Clinical Practice

With national attention focused on the obesity epidemic and the diabetes crisis—along with rapidly growing concerns about social justice and environmental problems related to the current food-production system—there may be no hotter topic in law schools right now than food law and policy. The wildly popular new Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, the first law school clinic of its kind in the world, is right at the center, with students working on a wide range of projects to make healthy food more accessible, help farmers’ markets overcome regulatory barriers so they can sell more of their products, guide states and local communities in creating food policy councils, and more.

Isabel Lima, office manager at the HLS WilmerHale Legal Services Center in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, received the Suzanne L. Richardson Staff Appreciation Award during Class Day exercises on May 29. She was selected by the Class of 2013 for going above and beyond in assisting the many students who pass through the WilmerHale center, helping the organization to run effectively, as well as acting as a liaison to the many Spanish-speaking clients and neighbors in the community.

In March, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick ’82 nominated Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute clinical instructor Gloria Tan to a seat on the Massachusetts Juvenile Court. Tan came to CJI, which supervises third-year law students representing indigent criminal defendants in local district and juvenile courts, after serving as a public defender for the Committee for Public Counsel Services in Boston. When a spot opened up on CPCS's Youth Advocacy Project, Tan switched to working on juvenile cases and has spent her career doing so ever since. Tan was sworn in on May 3rd.

The Board of Veterans’ Appeals denies a soldier’s claim for disability benefits for an injury to his lower extremities. But the decision is handed down while the soldier is serving in Afghanistan, and he doesn’t realize he has the right to appeal until after he returns from his deployment—after the appeal deadline has passed. For students in Harvard Law School’s new Veterans Legal Clinic, the chance to argue that the appeal deadline should have been tolled and the case allowed to proceed on the merits is proving invaluable educationally and personally.

“Client Science: Advice for Lawyers on Counseling Clients through Bad News and Other Legal Realities,” by Marjorie Corman Aaron ’81 (Oxford). No one likes to deliver bad news—attorneys included. But oftentimes providing honest and difficult advice is a crucial part of the job, and Aaron offers her own advice on how best to do it.

In 2007, Joseph “Jody” LaNasa ’94 launched Serengeti Asset Management, an opportunistic hedge fund that focuses on value investments in the debt and equity of public and private companies.

Robert McDuff ’80 remembers clearly what first got him thinking about civil rights and the profession of law. In 1968, when he was 12, he read a newspaper account of a murder trial in his hometown of Hattiesburg, Miss. The victim was an African-American shopkeeper and civil rights leader killed by the Klan after he let other other African-Americans use his store as a place to pay their poll taxes.

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.

In a replica of a high-level White House negotiation session, teams of students in a new advanced negotiation workshop at Harvard Law School offered advice on how to handle Guantanamo detainees. Although the negotiation wasn’t real, for the students the stakes were still high: One team was later selected by fellow students to travel to Washington, D.C., to make a presentation on Guantanamo to U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich.

For the last several years, former Harvard Law School Dean Robert C. Clark ’72 has broken with tradition in teaching his mergers and acquisitions course. It isn’t enough to read leading cases, he realized; students still may leave the classroom without any real understanding of how to structure a deal, identify and avoid pitfalls, and recognize why personalities matter—in short, how M&As work in the real world.

The HLS Executive Education Program offers intensive courses, including Leadership in Law Firms, aimed at law firm managing partners and senior firm leaders, and Leadership in Corporate Counsel, aimed at general counsels and chief legal officers.

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.

Law students interested in a law firm career can attend firm-sponsored meet-and-greets to speak with associates. Students interested in public interest careers can meet one-on-one with visiting alumni advisors. But HLS students interested in military careers have fewer chances to mingle with those who have pursued that path. To provide that opportunity, OPIA welcomed to HLS five alumni who have served in the armed forces, to provide guidance and answer student questions.

The moving truck, empty and waiting, is parked around the corner from the house, because between the protestors and the police cars, there is no longer any room for it in front of 197 Normandy Street.

In a lecture sponsored by the Human Rights Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, Andrew Cayley, co-prosecutor of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal, discussed his role as counsel on both sides of the aisle in international law.

What must lawyers know about litigation and public affairs communications in the global marketplace? Richard S. Levick, lawyer, president and CEO of Levick Strategic Communications, addressed this question in an event organized by the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School on Oct. 13.

According to attorney and author Grover E. Cleveland, young lawyers should be reassured by assignments that require all-nighters. “If a senior lawyer left work on your desk and went to sleep, that means that you’ve successfully earned her trust,” he said. Cleveland offered this and other nuggets of wisdom at “Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks: Thriving in the First Two Years of Law Practice,” an event jointly sponsored by the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession and Office of Career Services on October 4.

Bernard Wolfman, a renowned scholar of tax law and the Fessenden Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, died on August 20, 2011. One of the preeminent tax professors in the United States, Wolfman clarified the world of tax law for generations of lawyers through his teaching and scholarship. He was also a leading expert in the ethics and rules of professional responsibility for lawyers.

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.