Toby’s blog

Daniel Gorlin runs the Harvard Committee on Sports & Entertainment Law.
This student organization brings to campus top executives and lawyers in the sports and entertainment industries and makes them accessible to students.

Through the organization, a wide range of speakers participate in discussion panels during events that are open to all students. The speakers have included major league baseball executives, members of the National Basketball Association, sports lawyers, entertainment agents, entertainers and celebrities, and commentators from ESPN. “A recent panel explored the impact baseball player agents have had on the evolution of the sport over the last ten to twenty years, from competitive balance to steroids,” says Gorlin. The theme of another panel: Is it the responsibility of celebrities to be good role models?

At another event, speakers addressed the control exerted over player’s personal autonomy, including what they wear and how they act off the field. Gorlin adds, “We recently featured a panel that was focused on the legal issues around using real people in the movies and on television,” such as the movie Borat and various reality television series.

The alumni are “tremendous,” he says. “It’s a very tough industry to break into, but having some of those friendly people in those positions is always very helpful.”

Meanwhile, Gorlin is busy supporting the brand-new Israel Baseball League. “It’s an unbelievable start-up,” he says. For working with the league, he’s received two winter credits and four clinical credits. “I’ve been exposed to the legal and business issues of this league as it writes its charter and by-laws,” he says, adding that he’s learning about revenue-sharing and organizational structuring in a clinical setting. “It’s been an unbelievable experience.”
The first pitch is in June!

Podcast: David Gorlin (8:20)

I heard from some students that there was some misinformation out on the message boards on the subject of the Low-Income Protection Plan and our financial aid packages—most specifically on post-graduation options. So I posed some questions to Ken Lafler, HLS’s director of Student Financial Services.

Q: Does the LIPP program allow you to practice in the private sector, say in a small law firm?

A: Sure. LIPP is based on income and debt level—so private practice or small law firm practice works just as well as public service if your income level is low enough. We also have several graduates working as in-house counsel at for-profit companies.

Q: Can you get a political job, like on a campaign or in a congressional office, and still qualify for LIPP?

A: Absolutely. Though Summer Public Interest Funding (SPIF) doesn’t cover campaign work, the LIPP program definitely covers political work of all kinds. We’ve had a number of graduates in think tanks, working on campaigns, congressional staff, etc.

Q: Some people think that an HLS graduate’s only choices are a law firm paying $160,000 a year or a very low-paying public interest job. Are those the only feasible options?

A: There is a huge range of employment between those two extremes. Many people are surprised to find that there are public sector positions with starting salaries of $50,000 and above. Jobs in the middle range of salaries present different kinds financial challenges and require good personal budgeting skills, but LIPP will help based on actual income level and debt load, so each individual has his or her own unique situation. Some scenarios are available at this link.

Q: When I do the math, it seems like my loans would be as much as $200,000. That’s got to be something like $5000/month to repay! Is that doable?

A: First of all, not a single HLS graduate has left with that much law school debt any time in the last five years! And 80% of the HLS Class of 2006 who had law school debt graduated with a debt load under $135,000, with a median debt load of under $100,000 (which would mean monthly payments of no more than $1500 and $1200 respectively). Graduates in private sector jobs can manage that kind of debt load (with take-home pay of as much as $7000/month), and those earning low incomes can get help from LIPP for as long as they need it. Plus, with summer jobs paying upwards of $30,000 or $35,000, students who would otherwise borrow the full cost of attendance can cut down on their debt load quite a bit. Many students also supplement their budget with work as a research assistant, undergraduate house tutor, or teaching fellow.

Ken also told me to encourage everyone to check out the financial aid website for the facts about LIPP, SPIF, and financial aid generally.

A classmate of mine, Anant Raut ‘01, is featured in this article in the Washington Post. I’ll let you read the details for yourself.

I noticed in the news today that Professor Lawrence Tribe is arguing today in front of his former student, Chief Justice John Roberts. It reminded me of a student write-up that came in from 2L Sarah Isgur recently:

“As I was scanning the legal blogs this morning — I know, I’m a huge nerd who reads legal blogs in the morning — the big news was that the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education today.

“(Some quick background, for those who are interested: This case, heard in tandem with Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, challenges voluntary school desegregation policies implemented by local school boards in Louisville and Seattle. The policies examined in these cases - similar to those implemented in school districts across the country - are designed to mitigate the problem of de facto racial segregation in private schools caused by residential patterns.)

“The news coverage caught my eye because only two weeks ago I was sitting in the Ames Courtroom listening to Mr. Frank Mellen, HLS ‘73, the counsel of record for the respondent in the Louisville case. In what has become a new favorite HLS tradition, the Harvard chapters of the Federalist Society and American Constitution Society co-sponsor at least two Supreme Court Advocacy Project Moot Courts a year. We invite the counsel from a case on the Supreme Court’s docket to rehearse his or her oral argument before a distinguished panel of faculty, judges and practitioners.

“And the timing couldn’t have been better. Since I have been taking a lot of constitutional law courses this semester, I have been researching and writing on some of the more intractable problems associated with education-related civil rights and the outcome of this case could have profound effects. This semester’s moot came just in time for some of my closest friends.

“All of the 2Ls participating in the first round of the Ames Competition oral arguments had to do their own moots on a hypothetical school speech case just last week. You could easily spot them out of the 250 students in the audience: they were the ones furiously taking notes – not on what Mellen was saying, but on his hand gestures and facial expressions. Plus, Justice Scalia and his wife made a 45-minute cameo at our Federalist Society Holiday Party last week in Pound Hall. It would have given me some interesting things to ask about, but it turned out I was too busy talking to Mrs. Scalia about how they met. (It was a blind date!)

“After all of that, I’m looking forward to seeing the transcript from the real thing later this afternoon. If for no other reason, I like reading Scalia’s jokes.”

“I actually do go to class,” insists Sandy Pullman, founder of HLS chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. But the point is, she does so much more than just go to class. She also goes to downtown Boston to do clinical work in employment civil rights. She works with legal groups representing sexual harassment cases. She’s involved with a literature and arts initiative on campus. “I was a creative writing major in college,” she says. “It’s hard to give that up and just be expected to write legal briefs.”

So how did this 2L add “founder and leader of the campus ACLU chapter” to her list of pursuits? It’s a long story. “I wanted to spend a year hanging out with my friends in New York for a year before starting school, ” she explains, “but in addition to the side jobs that helped me pay the rent, I wanted a legal internship.” As an admit, she turned to the HLS Office of Public Interest Advising for guidance, and they connected her with the Women’s Rights Project at ACLU in New York, where she interned for a year. The following summer, Carol Rose, head of the ACLU in Massachusetts, asked her to set up a chapter on the Harvard campus.

“So we got some beer,” explains Pullman, and gathered some people, and started an ACLU chapter on the HLS campus centered around three chief goals:

1. To perform legal research for ACLU Massachusetts.
2. To teach a civil liberties education program in local high schools.
3. To have educational events on campus.

The group brings a notable range of speakers to campus. Brenda Fagan, co-founder of the The Women’s Rights Project with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was one speaker on campus. And, pornographer Larry Flynt was another. “That was controversial,” laughs Pullman. But Flynt arrived, and orated about his precedent-setting Supreme Court case.

“He had a gold-plated wheelchair,” she says. “The event went smoothly, but was followed up with a lot of talk about free speech and the first admendment.”

Pullman has managed to figure out how she learns best, and it’s definitely not at the library. “I study on my couch in front of the Patriots games.” How did she figure out a good way to adapt to law school?

“The first semester of law school took a little settling in,” she says. “Just learning how, most efficiently, to do reading, and to prepare for a class, for an exam. But after really just a month or two, that anxiety about ‘I’m not doing it right’ fades away, and you do it however you want to and however suits you. I’ve been lucky enough to do everything that I want to here.”

This summer, she’s splitting her work between two firms. One is “purely public interest” with a small firm focused on the public sector, and the other is a medium-size firm with a mixture of work. “The most important thing to me is that they don’t have a corporate branch, so they can choose their clients,” she says. “If there’s a lawsuit at Citibank, they won’t worry that they one day might want to represent a billion-dollar merger at Citibank and so shouldn’t take class action against them.”

“I’ve always thought I would work in the private sector. I never saw myself…wearing Birkenstocks and being in a nonprofit all the time. I did see myself as a cutthroat lawyer. And yet I want to practice the type of law that I want, and want to represent the type of people that I want, and corporate law is about the furthest thing from my mind.”

Podcast: Sandy Pullman (12:53)

CORRECTION: An ACLU chapter had previously existed at HLS, but had lapsed.

Since we’re having almost summer-esque weather in Boston today, I thought I’d post another great description of a summer on public interest funding. 2L Andrea Saenz is another HLS student helping new immigrants navigate the difficult path to citizenship:

“I came to law school from Teach For America, in which I taught ESL for 2 years to a fantastic bunch of immigrant high schoolers. That experience gave me a passion for immigration, and for my post-1L job I wanted something that would give me an exact taste of what a job in that field might be like.

“I ended up here at the International Institute for Boston, a refugee resettlement organization that’s a one-stop shop for immigrants in the Boston area: they’ve got social services, job training, English and computer classes, and more. I spend my time helping to run their legal services clinic and working on cases for their low-income legal assistance project. (Everyone here has lots of praise for HLS clinical professor Debbie Anker, who once worked at IIB.)

“It’s everything I was looking for. Some days I do intellectual work, like writing a research memo about the right to counsel of choice for a certain immigrant class. Some days I do impossible work, like trying to find out how an immigrant can get rid of a mistaken security flag in the Department of Homeland Security system. (Still working on that one.) But most days I do work that’s very simple – client intake and forms appointments where I help people do their applications for permanent residency and citizenship.

“I have to ask screening questions like ‘Have you ever been a prostitute?’ and ‘Are you a Communist?’ (silly, I know), but then I help them do all their paperwork and walk them through the whole bureaucracy of Citizenship and Immigration Services. It’s not always glamorous to photocopy the front and back of green cards or explain how to send something certified mail, but that’s the work the attorneys themselves do – no secretarial pool here. And hearing people’s stories as you get them a step closer to citizenship is more rewarding than I ever could have imagined.

“A few weeks ago I got to see the fruits of my labors when I attended my first naturalization ceremony at the Hynes Convention Center. There were hundreds of people there, in wheelchairs, turbans, saris, and a couple military uniforms, and they all raised their hands together to take the oath of allegiance and become citizens. I’m not ashamed to admit I got pretty teary that day. And right after the ceremony I helped register the new citizens to vote. Now that was a great feeling.

“Many of my classmates are having amazing opportunities abroad, and I love hearing about them. But at IIB, those experiences are coming right to me as I sit in an office in Boston, overlooking the Freedom Trail. I’ve helped an elderly asylee from Lebanon, an eight-year old refugee from Sierra Leone, and dozens in between, including a Liberian woman who had lost a son in her country’s civil war but was giddy as she told me she couldn’t wait to be an American citizen and vote. Every day people pump my hand and thank me profusely – what could be better than that?

“I should also mention that the IIB interns from other law schools aren’t getting nearly the financial support that I am this summer. SPIF is a blessing, and I’m really grateful: you better believe I’ll be back for more next year, as I find another niche of the immigration field to try out.”

Lindsay Rodman is a rare breed around these parts: a 4L. But it’s not taking her four years to get a JD because she’s slacking off. Quite the opposite: Rodman is simultaneously pursuing a Master of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government. And in her spare time, she’s running a club she founded at HLS, the National Security and the Law Society, educating students across campus about national security law. She hopes to one day join the Marine Corps as a JAG, or Judge Advocate General.

Rodman’s commitment to national security actually began before enrolling at either school. The summer before beginning her studies at HLS, she worked on short-term military intelligence in the Pentagon. “If there’s a crisis developing or anything that the military might have to respond to quickly, that’s what I had my eye on.” Rodman explains that her Chilean ethnicity gave her an insider’s view into events and culture in South America. “I was in the Americas branch, keeping an eye on any potential coups or riots or anything like that in South or Central America.”

“The reason I went to the Kennedy School was because I thought it would be a great complement to my law school education…[but I also] realized there were a lot of like-minded people at the law school.” She took an HLS class, The Laws of War and Terrorism, with professors Jack Goldsmith and Ryan Goodman–”they are great friends and politically opposite, so that they are great foils to one another,” she laughs—and it inspired her to start her own club, drawing from the members of the class to form a small group of students eager to learn more about national security.

That small group has expanded rapidly over the past year, offering lectures, career events and dinners. The club recently screened a film about private military companies, then hosted a wide-ranging panel discussion with the filmmaker and a few students from the Mid-Career Program at the Kennedy School, including military personnel and journalists. “We do a lot of events. We’re really focused on bringing people together as a group.”

Podcast: Lindsay Rodman (10:00)

Don’t worry, Ryan, I didn’t make a mistake:

“I arrived in Boston after driving for 10 hours from Ottawa, Canada. After getting lost in Cambridge and fighting my way through the notorious Boston traffic, I saw it: Harvard Law School. It was at that point that panic gripped me. ‘WHAT IF I DON’T BELONG HERE?’ After fifteen weeks of ups and downs, I have my answer, I do belong here! And it’s my section, Section 4, that has helped me adjust to life as a Harvard Law School student.

“On my first full day of classes, in Professor Mann’s Property class, we were attacked with the Socratic method of question after question after question. At first, some of us thought this was unfair, but within weeks we were getting quicker on our feet, looking deeper into the problems, and most importantly, seeing Prof. Mann’s incredible sense of humour.

“We began showing our sense of humour as one of my classmates dressed up as Professor Mann (glasses, hairstyle, and matching tie and suspender combination) for Halloween. We started to learn about our classmates’ personalities too, such as the one who makes bad puns every time he is called on, or the one who always has a story relating to New Jersey, no matter the class, no matter the topic.

“Harvard Law School is knocked for being too big. Harvard is the fourth university I have attended, and by far is it the best in terms of its people and its atmosphere. My section fielded two teams for the law school flag football tournament (although my team never won a game), while I have gotten to know students in my section who have worked all over the world but are still down-to-Earth enough to play Christmas music over the microphones in the Austin Hall Classrooms.

“Recently, we helped a family of four (a mother and three kids) get gifts for Christmas, while another group went caroling at the Mt. Auburn hospital. My section is an inspiration and a great support group, keeping me grounded in the midst of what is an academically challenging year. Practicing law is a team sport, and from section parties and movies to community service, one thing Harvard has shown me how to do is to get along with people and to have a good time!”