HLS in Focus

The cool, sunny peacefulness of this Friday afternoon is misleading: it marks the end of a week so busy I’m having real difficulty choosing any one thing to write about! Instead, I hope a few highlights from my week will reflect the terrific amount there is to do here at Harvard.

To start off, my name is Lea Downey, and I’m a 2L who came straight to HLS after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin. How my background at such a large, Southern, public school continues to color my impression of Harvard is something I hope to share frequently in this blog. For now, I think my week may speak for itself!

For instance, Monday was our first day back from “fly-out week,” the break designed for upper-level students to attend callback interviews for summer jobs at law firms. It was difficult getting up for my first morning class after so long, but Catharine Mackinnon, my professor for Sex Equality, soon had us all wide awake with a rousing discussion of affirmative action.

Afterward, I headed to the Tenant Advocacy Project (TAP) offices to make some phone calls for an eviction case I’m handling. I also finished up a short paper for a seminar I’m taking called The Art of Social Change, which was easy with an inspiring recent guest lecture by Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative as my topic.

The highlight of Tuesday was my first session of a small, hands-on class called Community Action for Social and Economic Rights. The professor, Lucie White, has set up a stunning range of options for the year-long projects on which we’ll focus. Some of my classmates will be filming documentaries or doing United Nations case studies in Ghana and India, but I’m leaning toward the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights’ program for at-risk Boston teens.

Wednesday was a little quieter, with plenty of television (yes, you still get TV in law school!) But Thursday was my busiest day yet, with Evidence in the morning and an informational phone interview in the afternoon. Alexa Shabecoff at OPIA set this up with a recent HLS graduate working in Austin, where I’m hoping to return after graduation, so I could get a sense of the job market there.

He was so encouraging I could have spoken with him for hours, but eventually I had to leave for this week’s Art of Social Change, where the guests were two lawyers fighting abuse in juvenile detention facilities. Their heartbreaking and inspiring stories were still with me today, Friday, as I moved from another Evidence class to lunch with friends and a study group for Community Action.

You can probably tell I’m very public-interest-oriented, and I’m glad to represent that segment of Harvard students because I’m definitely not alone. I can’t wait to use this blog to share my satisfaction with OPIA, Summer Public Interest Funding, the student practice groups and the real-world preparation emphasized in many of my classes. These are all subjects for another day, but I hope this sampling of “a week in the life” gives a sense of what’s possible with Harvard as your springboard.

- Lea