Clinical Practice

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.

Led by Professor Wendy Jacobs, director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, the Climate Solutions Living Lab course launched last spring to help push forward the transition to a carbon-free future that supports planetary and human health.

Panelists at an HLS in the World seminar called “No Justice for Most: Brainstorming New and Old Ideas for Government, Professional, and Technological Solutions,” discussed the disparity in legal services available in urban and rural areas and other barriers to access to justice.

Each year, as we honor military veterans nationwide for their service, Harvard Law Today profiles students in the incoming class who have held positions in the Armed Forces. The Class of 2020 includes the largest number of former or current service members in Harvard Law's recent history.

Steven Kerns ’20 was a high school dropout, a self-described ‘rebel without a cause’ from Long Beach, Calif., when he joined the U.S. Army as a teenager looking for adventure, with vague notions of changing the world.

Tenacious legal research and petition-filing by Harvard Law School students working in the Tax Clinic of the Legal Services Center at HLS helps low-income clients fight for their legal rights – rights that are meaningless if clients lack access to a lawyer to stand up for them.

In June, the Harvard Law School’s Veterans Legal Clinic filed a class action lawsuit in Massachusetts Superior Court on behalf of Army combat veteran Jeffrey Machado and an estimated 4,000 veterans from Massachusetts who have served abroad since 9/11, but deemed ineligible to receive the state’s $1000 Welcome Home Bonus for honorably discharged servicemembers.

Over the course of her career, as Bonnie Docherty ’01 has emerged as an international expert on civilian protection in armed conflict, she has also mentored scores of clinical students, from field researchers in conflict zones to advocates inside the halls of the U.N. in Geneva.

Harvard Law School has announced that the family of the late Samuel Pisar LL.M. ’55 S.J.D. ’59, has endowed a professorship and a fund to support the International Human Rights Clinic.

In May 2017, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court extended the American with Disabilities Act to mentally and physically disabled prisoners seeking parole, ruling that the state must help them get support systems in place in the community—thanks to years of work by students with Harvard's Prison Legal Assistance Project.

Each May since 2011, Harvard Law School has presented "HLS Thinks Big," a TED Talks-style event that invites faculty members to present a "big idea" in front of an audience of faculty, students and staff.

Keith Fogg, an expert in tax law and procedure and director of Harvard Law School’s Federal Tax Clinic at the Legal Services Center, has been named Clinical Professor of Law at HLS.

Sabrineh Ardalan ’02, assistant director of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program and a lecturer in the fields of immigration and refugee law and advocacy and trauma, refugees, and the law has been appointed assistant clinical professor at Harvard Law School.

A number of Harvard Law students from the Class of 2017 received special awards during Class Day. They were recognized for their outstanding leadership, citizenship, compassion and dedication to their studies and the profession.

Mana Azarmi ’17 is the winner of the Outstanding Clinical Student Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), presented annually to one student from each law school for his/her outstanding clinical coursework and contributions to the clinical community.

Erika Johnson is this year’s winner of the David A. Grossman Exemplary Clinical Student Award, which is named in honor of the late Clinical Professor David Grossman ’88 and recognizes students who have demonstrated excellence in representing individual clients and undertaking advocacy or policy reform projects.

More than 350 students raced through the halls of Harvard Law School solving clues, answering trivia questions, and taking selfies with professors as part of the school's first ever Public Interest Scavenger Hunt, which had students competing for prizes as the community came together to show support for students working in public interest law.

On March 21, Harvard Law students Jin Kim '18 and Malene Alleyne LL.M. ’17 traveled to Washington, D.C. on behalf of the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic (HIRC) to participate in an emergency hearing on the effects of the Trump administration’s executive orders on immigration at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

On March 9, the Food Law and Policy Clinic of Harvard Law School and the Natural Resources Defense Council, released “Don’t Waste, Donate: Enhancing Food Donations through Federal Policy,” presenting actions the federal government should take to better align federal laws and policies with the goal of increasing the donation of safe surplus food.