Clinical Practice

On April 5, Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center celebrated its 40th Anniversary of training more than 4,000 attorneys and law students and providing pro bono civil legal services to thousands of Greater Boston’s most vulnerable residents.

Harvard Law student Solange Etessami ’20 recounts her experience using her advocacy skills to help refugees seeking asylum at Moria, an overcrowded refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos, widely known for its dire living conditions.

Officials from 23 offices of state attorneys general recently met at HLS as part of the Berkman Klein Center’s AGTech Forum series, to discuss tech-driven challenges to privacy and data security that vex state regulators and threaten consumers, and to strategize on how the law can keep up.

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau has received a major win in a case that may change the standard for determining attorney's fees in wage lawsuits in Massachusetts.

The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future have released "Advocacy & Lobbying 101 for Food Policy Councils," a resource for food policy councils and others working to change the food system in the U.S.

Andrew Patterson '20 shares a reflection on his time spent working as an advocate for Legal Permanent Residents throughout the naturalization process with the local organization Project Citizenship.

During Winter Term, 12 Harvard Law School students traveled to 12 countries as Cravath International Fellows to pursue clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus. Four of them share their experiences.

Celebrating a legal services experiment run by Harvard Law School more than 50 years ago—at a time when clinical education did not exist at the school and change was in the air.

I joined the Prison Legal Assistance Project (PLAP) the fall of my 1L year at a time when I knew very little about the criminal justice system. I knew, however, that PLAP provided important services to prisoners in Massachusetts, including representing them in disciplinary hearings and in their bids for parole.

Harvard Law School’s newest building opened this fall at 1607 Massachusetts Avenue. Inside, the LEED Gold certified structure continues the school’s commitment to experiential learning, with space suited for clinics and collaborative learning as well as research programs.

The notice came in a white envelope, hand-delivered by a staffer at the project-based Section 8 development that my elderly grandparents lived in. From the outside, it looked like it could be a notice that they received on a weekly basis. However, this was a “Notice to Cease.” From what my immigrant Chinese family could tell, it meant eviction.

On Nov. 15, Harvard Law School's Harvard Defenders hosted the 7th annual Litman Symposium. This year's event, titled "Defining Justice: Building a more equitable criminal legal system," featured a Q&A with keynote speakers Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Sarah Boyette ’10 and Simmi Kaur ’17, an attorney with the Bronx Defenders.

Students and faculty from the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program spent a week in Texas volunteering at the Karnes Detention Center, where they met with fathers and sons who had been forcibly separated from each other under President Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. They offer their thoughts on this powerful and eye-opening experience.

At an award ceremony on Oct. 18, Clinical Professor Esme Caramello ’99, faculty director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, was honored as one of the 2018 Top Women of Law by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

As part of national Pro Bono Week, from Oct. 22 to Oct. 27, Harvard Law School's Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs is highlighting the work of outstanding attorneys engaged in critical pro bono legal work in the areas of immigration, civil rights, economic justice and climate change.

Clinical education at HLS: Four experiences

Rachel A. Viscomi ’01 has been appointed assistant clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School and named director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. She was formerly a lecturer on law at HLS and the acting director of HNMCP.

In April, Harvard Law School’s bicentennial programming came to a close with HLS in the Community, a day of hackathons and workshops. The spirit of the clinics infused the event.

After Hurricane Maria roared over Puerto Rico in September 2017, crippling the island where Natalie Trigo Reyes ’19 grew up and where much of her family still lives, she felt “completely overwhelmed.” Within days, however, she put together an event that raised about $40,000 for relief efforts, collected enough emergency goods to fill three large trucks, and joined Harvard Law Assistant Professor Andrew Manuel Crespo ’08 and Lee Branson Mestre of the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs to plan the school’s response to the disaster.

More than 100 years after students started the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, there are now 40 clinics and Student Practice Organizations at HLS, focused on everything from cyberlaw to veterans’ rights.

Cameron Clark ’18 is the winner of this year’s Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 to honor the late Harvard Law professor Gary Bellow, his commitment to public service, and his innovative approach to the analysis and practice of law.

As dozens of HLS students plan to pursue public service work abroad this summer, Jonathan Kaufman ’06 and Lillian Langford JD/MPP ’13 recall that seeds planted during their own 1L summers grew, strongly and directly, into the work they are doing today

Three Harvard Law School students, Edith Sangueza ’18, Tabitha Cohen ’18 and Annie Manhardt ’18, received the 2018 Andrew L. Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award for exemplifying a pro bono public spirit and demonstrating an extraordinary commitment to improving and delivering high quality volunteer legal services in low-income communities.

Margaret Kettles ’18 is the winner of the Outstanding Clinical Student Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association. An exemplary clinical student and advocate for public interest, Kettles served as the executive director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau

In his time at Harvard Law School, Ha Ryong (Michael) Jung ’18 has completed extensive coursework and clinical training in children’s rights, human rights and child protection, criminal justice, international and foreign law, and human rights advocacy and negotiation to shape a future career in child advocacy.

The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program joined the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Human Rights First and Kids in Need of Defense in filing a brief of amicus curiae in the case Matter of A-B-, a case that originated in immigration court but that is now before review of the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

“What counts as ‘income’ for taxes?” “Will paying taxes affect the public assistance I receive?” “Will I lose my veterans disability benefits if I make too much money?” These are some of the questions street vendors of Spare Change News grapple with—questions students of Harvard Law’s Community Enterprise Project aim to answer.

Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III ’09, who got his start in civil legal aid as a student attorney at HLAB representing tenants in evictions, reflects on how his time as HLAB influenced his advocacy in the legislature, and why it is of utmost importance to safeguard access to counsel for those who cannot afford it.

On April 20, Harvard Law School will host the third and final major event in its year-long program celebrating 200 years of HLS. HLS in the Community will convene alumni, faculty, students, and staff to explore the extraordinary reach and impact of Harvard lawyers.

From Feb. 9 to April 14, the Harvard Law School student-run organization Harvard TaxHelp is leading the University’s branch of the IRS's Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program at the Cambridge library.

After Hurricane Maria roared over Puerto Rico in 2017, Puerto Rican native Natalie Trigo Reyes ’19 felt “completely overwhelmed.” Within days, however, she raised $40,000 for relief efforts, collected truckloads of emergency goods, and helped plan the school’s response to the disaster.

A group of 29 Harvard Law School students (led by Natalie Trigo Reyes ’19) traveled to Puerto Rico over spring break to lend a hand to local residents who are still struggling to obtain disaster relief aid.

Each year, teams of Harvard Law School students are given the opportunity to spend their Spring Break experiencing legal services work with clinics and legal organizations in the Boston area, or working on projects around the country and abroad.

In a landmark decision today, a federal jury found the former president of Bolivia and his minister of defense responsible for extrajudicial killings carried out by the Bolivian military. The landmark litigation began with a collaboration between Bolivian partners and the Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic

Earlier this month, about two dozen international experts gathered for “Humanitarian Disarmament: The Way Ahead,” the inaugural conference of the Armed Conflict and Civilian Protection Initiative (ACCPI) at Harvard Law School.

In 2018, ten Harvard Law School students were selected as Cravath International Fellows. During Winter Term, they traveled to nine countries to pursue clinical placements or independent research with an international, transnational, or comparative law focus. Here, four of them describe their experiences.

At a workshop on immigrants’ rights held Monday morning at the Memorial Church, attorneys Jason Corral and Cindy Zapata of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program shared legal advice on how to deal with the more aggressive enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration.

Three Harvard professors and a Ph.D. student in African and African American studies have launched the DACA Seminar, a series of events on campus aimed at sparking conversations about the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and immigration policy and reform, while working to understand options available to Harvard's undocumented students.

Frank E.A. Sander ’52, a longtime Harvard Law School professor and a pioneer in the field of Alternative Dispute Resolution, has died. He was 90.

The Harvard Law School trial team of Rahul Garabadu ’19 and Marilyn Robb ’18 won first place at the Northeast Regional Qualifiers of the National Trial Competition, sponsored annually by the American College of Trial Lawyers and the Texas Young Lawyers Association.

On Jan. 5, New England Patriots Defensive Captain Devin McCourty, teammates Johnson Bademosi, Matthew Slater and Duron Harmon, and team president Jonathan Kraft participated in a 'Listen and Learn' event at HLS, organized by the Fair Punishment Project and the Office of Public Interest Advising, featuring panel discussions on inequities in the criminal justice system.

On Jan. 23, the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School and the Center for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL) at the University of Copenhagen launched a new collaboration, the Project on Precision Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, and the Law (PMAIL).

On Jan. 22, the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society released a multi-part Guide to Protest Art, a series aimed at educating people across the political spectrum who are using art to engage in civic dialogue.

On Saturday, November 20, family, friends, students, and colleagues of the late Harvard Law School Clinical Professor David Grossman gathered at HLS to celebrate his life, honor his community activism, and support his fight for social justice at the second annual David A Grossman (DAG) Fund fundraiser.

The Berkman Klein Center's Cyberlaw Clinic, which provides pro-bono legal services to clients on issues relating to the internet, technology and intellectual property, has written in support of a number of technology cases in recent weeks.

In December, Amy Feinberg ’18 became the second Federal Tax Clinic student to argue an appeal in a federal circuit court since the Clinic opened at Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School in 2015.

With Evisort, a powerful new search engine that harnesses cloud storage and artificial intelligence, four HLS students hope to revolutionize the costly and labor-intensive way that lawyers currently handle contracts and other transactional work, liberating them for more creative and interesting tasks.

Managing Director of the Cyberlaw Clinic Professor Chris Bavitz discusses some of the concerns and opportunities of risk assessment tools for criminal justice reform efforts, and the Berkman Klein Center's work on Ethics and Governance of AI initiative in partnership with the MIT Media Lab.

Mentorships between Harvard Law School professors and the students who followed them into academia have taken many forms over the course of two centuries.