I’d like to introduce you to my good friend, Alexis Lien. Alexis is a 3L who grew up in Oregon. When you meet Alexis, the first thing you notice is her smile and her warmth. I decided to interview her because I think she encapsulates the qualities of so many HLS students: friendly, energetic, bright, and passionate. While I have known Alexis for two years, I was surprised to learn so much about her during this interview. She is quite modest about the amazing things she has done before and during her time at HLS!
Alexis graduated from Linfield College in 2005, “a school about the size of HLS,” she notes. She did not know what she wanted to do upon graduation, so she decided to take two years off before going back to school. “The time off helped me become sure that law school was what I wanted to do,” she reflects. In her first year after graduation, she traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Vienna, where she had studied abroad in college. During her study abroad, she was surprised by the instances of xenophobia she encountered in Vienna, particularly toward its Turkish population. In response, she used her Fulbright Scholarship to study Turkish women in Austrian society. While she originally contemplated pursuing a Ph.D., it was this experience that pushed her instead toward law school. She was moved by the second-class legal status of Turkish women in Austria. Turkish women are forced to jump through many hoops and wait years before they are eligible to receive Austrian work permits and can be deported if they divorce their husbands. Alexis provided assistance to these women through a nonprofit social work organization and also taught English there.
While she was sure she wanted to go to law school, she decided to take another year off to work at another international nonprofit organization. Through a family friend, she learned of an opportunity to work in an orphanage in Oaxaca, Mexico. She had a “really amazing experience” there—one that she wanted others to have as well. At the end of her year with the organization, she pitched an opportunity to a local business owner to fund a grant for one Linfield College student to work for the non-profit each year. And her pitch worked! Thanks to her, one Linfield College student works for the organization and travels cost-free to Oaxaca each year to provide much-needed support to this orphanage.
I asked Alexis how she thought her two years off affected her experience at law school. “It gave me an appreciation for what an amazing opportunity I had coming to HLS—an opportunity that wasn’t available to the people I worked with in Vienna or Oaxaca. It also gave me an appreciation for different cultures and cultural values,” she says.
When she arrived at HLS as a 1L, she experienced a bit of culture shock herself. She looked in the 1L directory for other students from Oregon, and she realized she was the only one in her class! Nevertheless, she was “pleasantly surprised by how welcoming everyone was.” She really loved the people in her section and enjoyed tackling the first year of the new curriculum with them. “The caliber of people here was really impressive,” she says.
After her first year at HLS, Alexis returned to Oregon to work at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Portland. At one point, she handled a case involving a violation of the Wild Horse and Buffalo Act. A man had violated the act by taming several wild horses and subsequently neglecting them. She got him to sign a plea and to agree not to tame any horses in the future. She also got to attend depositions and work with FBI agents in a sting involving credit card fraud. “It was really hands-on, law-and-order-type stuff,” she remembers. She loved the flexibility and diversity of her work and could see herself working there in the future.
As a 2L, Alexis took advantage of winter term and received sponsorship from Harvard to conduct research in Australia. Her project originated in her Trusts and Estates class the previous semester, where she learned that civil law and common law countries treat certain trusts and estates issues very differently. She spent hours in the Australian Supreme Court’s library, looking at cases that were not available in the United States. She produced a 45-page paper on her research with the help of her Trusts and Estates professor, Robert Sitkoff. “There are plenty of writing opportunities here for students who want them,” she said.
Alexis decided to work at a law firm in Washington, DC after her second year at HLS. As a summer associate with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, she did a little bit of everything. “They didn’t box you into one category,” she notes. She did some corporate work, some litigation work, and one project involving contract arbitration. In preparation for the arbitration, she met the clients, attended a deposition, and wrote portions of the brief. She was happy to see her work be directly incorporated into the final product.
Throughout her time on campus, Alexis has been very busy outside the classroom. She participated in both the Environmental Law Review (ELR) and the International Law Journal (ILJ). “There are so many journals here, and they all are unique.” She described ELR as having a smaller student membership and a more focused subject matter than ILJ, which was much larger in both membership and range of topics. Today, she is the Student Notes Editor for ILJ. She enjoys the opportunity to work with students and publish their writing.
She also has been a member of the Board of Student Advisors (BSA), a group of 2L and 3L students that help 1Ls in their legal writing classes and in their transition to law school. “I love the BSA. It’s one of the best things I’ve done at law school,” she says. Just as she enjoyed working with students in her classes in Vienna and with the ILJ, she also enjoys working with 1Ls on their moot court arguments and legal research and writing. Through the BSA, she also developed a network of 3Ls that she could turn to with questions about jobs and classes.
As if ELR, ILJ, and BSA weren’t enough to keep her busy, Alexis also decided to participate in the upper-level Ames moot court competition. In this competition, her team moved from the qualifying round to the semifinals. In the semi-final competition, she conducted the oral argument for her team in front of a federal Circuit Court judge, a federal district court judge, and a state supreme court justice. After the competition, she received feedback from the judges on her oral argument, and her team received comments from the judges on their brief.
Most recently, Alexis spent her 3L winter term in Uganda as part of a project with Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, whose Child Advocacy class she had taken in the fall. She visited fourteen orphanages to learn about international adoption and orphan care in Uganda. Uganda has millions of orphans due to its large refugee and HIV/AIDS populations. While Uganda had been more receptive to international adoption in the past, they are beginning to retract their openness. She was impressed by how eager Ugandans were to welcome a Harvard Law student interested in their country’s legal issues. She met with a judge on Uganda’s highest court for over an hour to discuss adoption issues. She hopes in the future that adoption is viewed as a human rights issue—where the human rights of orphans are protected by allowing them to be adopted.
What lies in Alexis’ future? “I have no idea,” she says. Well, that’s not entirely true. Next year, she will be undertaking a clerkship with a federal district judge in Phoenix, AZ. After the clerkship, she will return to her law firm to work as an associate. But in the long term, she sees herself leaving Washington, DC—either to return to Oregon, to visit another part of the country, or to work internationally on previous or new projects. She is thrilled to have so many opportunities available to her. “All the doors are open.”
– Emily
