Toby’s blog

Anyone considering HLS for whom the allure of law school is sweetened by the promise of never having to endure Science again might be advised to consider the number of fields in which scientific research is altering the way law is administered. Take child advocacy work, for instance. A recent panel of experts including Charles Nelson, the Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric Developmental Research at Harvard Medical School, and Cindy Lederman, a judge of the Miami/Dade County Juvenile Court joined HLS Professors Charles Ogletree, Martha Minow, and CAP Director Elizabeth Bartholet in exploring the short and long-term effects of toxic stress related to child abuse and neglect, parental substance abuse, maternal depression, and exposure to violence.

To frame the issue, Dr. Nelson provided the clinical background for examining maltreatment and neglect. “Early experiences have a particularly strong influence,” said Nelson, “Timing of abuse, the nature of it, and one’s genetic predisposition can be long-lasting due to fundamental changes in mental circuitry.” To illustrate his point, Nelson explained the findings of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized trial of foster care as intervention for social deprivation associated with the institutionalization of nearly 200 children in Romania. “Due to negative experiences as infants, many of the children had stunted growth, anxiety disorders, and reductions in brain activity.” Nelson stressed that we must improve our understanding of the neurobiology of early adversity to improve the court’s understanding of neural plasticity… we must translate science to policy.”

Judge Lederman agreed with Nelson and admitted that the cases she sees involve, by and large, parents unengaged with and apathetic to their babies. “Mothers that come before me are there as a last resort; they don’t understand why their children have been taken away from them,” she explained. “We’re forced to make clinical and mental health decisions all the time. Dealing with the deterioration is not something they teach you in law school.” Judge Lederman insisted that to properly attend to the needs of children jurists must become students of the science of early childhood development.

Presented with the clinical side of child maltreatment, Professors Bartholet and Minow weighed in. “I see two very important policy implications arising from these social science findings,” said Bartholet. “It involves enabling as many parents as possible to be able to nurture and support their kids… and it further involves intervening early and coercively to place abused children under foster care.”

“We know that when the phrase ‘in the best interest of the child’ is uttered with a lawyer in the room that it’s already too late for these kids,” explained Minow. “We’re looking now for the least worst thing that can happen…time matters when you’re talking about kids, and new brain research can help us facilitate their well being.”

An admitted student recently asked me how supportive Harvard is of student initiatives that maybe don’t match up with existing opportunities here. I asked Lisa Dealy, who heads up our office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs, to respond. She forwarded me her response so I would know what’s happening around here too and said I could post it here if I liked:

“We actually spend a lot of our time with students helping them design and implement clinical and pro bono projects (and sometimes even non clinical/pro bono things) and I like to think we are very supportive of student initiatives. Here are some examples:

“Students wanted to start a Spanish for Public Interest Lawyers course & came to us…we were able to do it quickly (by the next semester) and fairly cheaply by hiring LLM students who are native Spanish speakers; we run it out of the clinical office even though it is a non credit (and non clinical) course. It’s been very successful and now we offer two different levels of the course.

“A few years ago, students approached us about sponsoring trips during fly-out week. We now have established programs during fly out week and spring break and winter intersession—this year about 40 students did pro bono work over spring break and we arranged the placements through various HLS alumni and Lee Branson went as far as arranging housing and group activities for the students. We invited clinical instructors to go and provide extra on-site supervision. So, not only did we respond to the initial student idea, but we’ve continued to refine the idea and make it better each year.

“We also recently assisted a student who was trying to set up a program for local kids coming out of foster care—she was not seeking credit for this, but she wanted replicate a model she had learned about during her independent clinical work last winter. We gave her contacts with people both within HLS and outside of HLS and gave her advice on how to proceed and what she could do within HLS to ensure this program kept going after she had graduated. I met with her several times and last week she was in to report that a Cambridge non-profit had picked up the program and she has 1L students interested in keeping the program going.

“We work really hard to make sure students aren’t duplicating efforts (either within HLS or trying to start an organization that already exists in the community)…but even when we find students trying to reinvent the wheel we don’t turn them away, we talk to them to see if they can do something that hasn’t been done yet!”

Alexa Shabecoff heads up the Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising. I thought a little Q&A with her would help highlight our philosophy and practices in the area of public interest and public service advising and programming. I’ll do one Q and one A each day for the next 3…

Q: What is the advantage to students at Harvard Law School of having an entire office devoted to public interest advising (as opposed to having just one person or being part of a general career services office, as is the case at other schools)?

A: One advantage of an entire office with a number of advisers is that in peak seasons we still have plenty of staff to go around. Since we (and all law schools) aren’t allowed to provide 1Ls with individual career counseling until November 1^st, the floodgates open then and I would imagine that even at a small school one person would be swamped. We also are able to offer a wide range of backgrounds, personalities and expertise.

For example, we have a staffer with a ton of experience in criminal work. We have a staffer who does nothing but federal government advising and runs our Heyman Fellowships program. We have someone who only does Fellowships advising–her expertise is a main driver of our success at winning competitive outside fellowships (which is why we haven’t had to resort to having many of our own fellowships).

Our large staff means that we can build up expertise on a wide range of issues; for example, one person is developing a lot of expertise in human rights placements (on top of the expertise that the many attorneys in our Human Rights Program already have). Finally, it means we have people with different personality types that fit the wide array of personalities at HLS–extroverts, introverts, people who will hold your hand a lot and people who will help but let you do your own thing if you don’t need too much guidance–so that students can find the right adviser for them.

We are very fortunate in having a full office with its own budget as that allows us to focus on public service, continue to refine our expertise and create programs—not just advising but also community-building programs—that we think can best serve the students and alumni at Harvard Law School while working closely with other offices at the law school.

During her Winter Term, 2L Lauren Birchfield traveled to Delhi, India to work with the Human Rights Law Network on the Right to Food Campaign. Upon her return, she shared her story and photos with us.

“I spent January 2008 interning at the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) in Delhi, India, working on the Right to Food. The Human Rights Law Network provides pro bono legal services, conducts public interest litigation, participates in advocacy, and collaborates with social movements and human rights organizations. Maintaining both litigation and publishing departments, HRLN works on issues such as Right to Food, Women’s Justice, Dalit Rights, Disability Rights, and rights for persons living with HIV/AIDS.

“Along with my colleague Jessica Corsi, I investigated and documented the history of the Right to Food Campaign, its accompanying case, PUCL v. India & Others, and the post-litigation implementation of India’s constitutional right to food. Our time in India was spent largely traveling around Delhi and other parts of the country conducting interviews with activists involved with the Right to Food Campaign. The fact-finding, research, and interviews conducted are currently being incorporated into a final document, which will be completed by June 2008. In our forthcoming paper, we intend to address not only the campaign and litigation, but also larger questions about the right to food, as well. These larger issues include food sovereignty, the effects of neoliberal economic policy and trade liberalization on the rural poor, and the relationship between food security, agricultural production, and employment rights.

“While in India, we had several opportunities to travel. These photographs document the time we spent in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, as well as some of our excursions around Delhi. Our first week in Delhi, we observed and assisted on a fact-finding mission in the villages of rural Uttar Pradesh. The objective of this mission was to collect data on the status of food security in U.P.’s Banda district, and to assess how Supreme Court mandated food and employment orders were being implemented. These images depict some of the villages and the stone quarry we visited while in Uttar Pradesh.

Directly upon our return from Uttar Pradesh, we departed for Rajasthan, where we spent several days interviewing some of the key social activists involved with the Right to Food Campaign. Our first days in Rajasthan were spent in Beawar at a National Right to Information Youth Convention, where we had the opportunity to participate in a candlelight vigil commemorating the first Youth Convention that had taken place in Beawar several years earlier.

“Once we arrived back in Delhi, we spent our last ten days in India tracking down and interviewing human rights activists, economists, Supreme Court Commissioners, professors, and lawyers who had either worked directly on or were invested in food security in India. During our last few days, we also managed to squeeze in a few sight-seeing excursions. We toured the Taj Mahal, as well as some sights around Delhi, such as the Jama Masjid Mosque (Delhi’s principal mosque, which can hold up to 25,000 worshippers).

“Overall, words cannot really express how much I enjoyed both working at HRLN and my winter term experience. At HRLN I met incredibly passionate and qualified people, and was accepted into an office that recognized each of its staff members as important components in its vision for change. There was never a dull moment at HRLN - we were constantly on our feet, putting in calls to human rights activists, scheduling meetings, and traveling all over the country to interview those activists whenever and wherever they could meet with us. I greatly appreciated how much HRLN invested in us and in our project, and how much freedom is gave us regarding the project’s construction and implementation. I found HRLN a fantastic organization to work for, and I was pleased to walk away from the internship having recognized that this – this kind of work, this kind of project – is what I want to pursue as a career.”

Starting with the incoming Class of 2011 (starting this fall), HLS students can get their 3rd year of law school tuition paid by us in return for a 5-year commitment to public service. The official announcement is here on the home page.

Here are the details on the Student Financial Services website.

It is also being covered in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal Law Blog.

We’re very excited to be the first law school in the country to do this!

As as organization dedicated to addressing such pressing children’s issues as child welfare and juvenile justice, Child and Youth Advocates seeks to heighten awareness and encourage student involvement with child advocacy groups around Boston. Admissions staffer Julia Foresman sat down to chat with CYA leader Erika Bekeny.

Podcast: Erika Bekeny (5:26)

Okay, I promise I won’t post too many more stories about summer experiences, but so many students sent me so many interesting stories…

I’m in high gear reading and calling these days. I’ve enjoyed hearing about what must already be hundreds of applicants’ personal experiences. I must admit to an extra dose of personal interest in learning about the subjects of your research, senior essays, theses, etc. I’m just a curious guy (and a fan of trivia night at the local pub)!

So here goes another great one: Erin Archerd ’08 has spent her summer working on educational equality issues with the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania. She writes of her experiences:

“Today, I’m on the 6:40 a.m. train to Harrisburg to attend a preliminary injunction hearing for Derrick, a 9-year-old boy who is legally deaf-blind. Federal law says that Derrick’s local school district must place him in the least restrictive environment, but his school district shipped him off to a private school in Massachusetts, hundreds of miles from his family. His parents pulled him out of that school and demanded that the school district place Derrick in his local school. The school district said they would send him to Maryland. That’s when the hearings started. For nearly two years administrative officers and the Pennsylvania Department of Education have told the school district that Derrick must be educated in his local school and have a specially trained helper who can communicate the material to him.

“The school district stalled.

“Finally, when it looked liked progress might be made, the helper the school district hired wasn’t properly trained and the school district didn’t appear to have plans to train its staff appropriately. The result: deprived of sensory contact at school, Derrick began self-abusing, bruising himself and causing open wounds. His parents pulled him out of school and this morning they are seeking an injunction to force the district to hire a qualified helper for Derrick and/or train its staff.

“Students with disabilities; English language learners; children unfairly kicked out of school for ‘discipline problems’ and placed in alternative schools; and the families of all of these kids are ELC’s clients. The most rewarding part of my internship – besides the satisfaction of helping children – is that my work doesn’t go off into the ether. Attorneys give me substantive research to do, not fact checking or summarizing. I haven’t felt this engaged since I taught kids in the classroom.

“That’s not to say that ELC is all sunshine and dewdrops. We lose. Our successes in court and in the legislature are usually compromises rather than complete victories. The laws, even those that support children’s rights, never go as far as we would like. As hard as losses are on the ELC staff, I try to remember how much tougher they are for the parents and the children we serve. At the end of the day, regardless of whether the court affirms once again that Derrick should have a trained helper at school, Derrick’s parents will take their son to school each day wondering if he’ll come home bruised.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the generosity of the HLS Alumni Association of Philadelphia. Each summer, they give fellowships to Harvard students doing public interest work in the Philadelphia area. I’m also grateful to Alexa Shabecoff, Director of OPIA, who tipped me off to ELC and the Alumni Fellowship, and to HLS graduate Deborah Gordon, who convinced me that ELC was where I should spend my summer.”

At Harvard, we are enthusiastic supporters of public service and public interest work, particularly among our prospective students. We love to bring into the law school community people who have served in organizations like the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps. We actively recruit students who have earned Truman Scholarships. We look favorably on those applicants who have served their government as legislative aides or as interns in their mayor’s office.

One organization which has consistently stood out for us as being emblematic of the best of the public service opportunities for recent college graduates is Teach For America. This past year, for example, we admitted 10 Teach For America alumni, recognizing their talent and their dedication to the public service mission of the Law School.

Because of our continued interest in and respect for Teach For America corps members and alumni, we have created a new award for Teach For America alumni, to be granted to two members of the entering class each year on the basis of their commitment to public service and a willingness to engage in public service work and recruiting projects at Harvard Law School. These two students will be designated Teach For America Scholars, and will be asked to serve as Public Service Admissions Ambassadors (a position which comes with a small stipend).

If you have questions about the program, feel free to contact the admissions office. If you’re applying this year and are a Teach For America corps member, you may want to indicate your interest in this honor with a short (1-2 paragraph) essay.

Another summer story from 3L Beth Tossell:

“I chose my internship for this summer, representing children incarcerated in juvenile detention centers, largely because of the experience I had during my 1L summer working with capital defendants in Louisiana. I wanted to explore ways to intervene earlier in people’s lives, when they could still have a chance of living successfully in what the men at Angola, the Louisiana state prison, call ‘the free world.’

“I went with the D.C. Public Defender Service’s Juvenile Services Program (JSP) because of PDS’s stellar reputation and because JSP seemed like the perfect way to combine the two areas I wanted to explore.

“I actually spend most of my time working out of the two offices we have within the institutions where the kids are held, one in Northeast D.C. that houses kids pre-trial, and another in suburban Maryland that houses mostly committed kids. The Maryland office is on several acres of park land, and on the way in I usually see lots of deer, groundhogs, and geese, as well as many abandoned buildings. Each of the facilities houses approximately 100 kids.

“Along with two other clerks, I’m responsible for representing the kids in disciplinary hearings if they get into trouble within the facility. The hearings are much less formal than a trial, and the most serious sanctions the kids can get is three days of isolation (which is definitely a serious sanction—I would go crazy if I were locked in one of their cells for one day, much less three). Occasionally, a kid will be accused of doing something that could lead to outside charges, like assaulting a staff member or having drugs, and in those cases we make sure the kid makes no statement that could be used against him.

“We deal with issues ranging from human rights violations (like bathroom restrictions) to trying to reach busy attorneys and social workers. We spend a ton of time just talking to the kids, giving them a safe space in our office to be kids. Sometimes it seems like we’re the first people in a long time to pay attention to them. When one kid tried to read his lawyer’s phone number off a piece of paper and had to hold it right up next to his head, we got his vision checked and got him glasses. He had never had glasses before. Our kids are the ones who’ve fallen through the cracks.

“I’ve learned a tremendous amount from this work. I had spent some time teaching before, but I was still surprised by how much I loved working with the teenagers. I’m now applying for fellowships to help teenagers in group homes get the special education services they need, which will help prevent truancy, one of the main risk factors for delinquency. Last summer, driving to prisons all over Louisiana, I wasn’t sure where my path was leading me, but now that I have a clear idea of how I want to begin my legal career, I couldn’t be more appreciative of the opportunities Harvard’s summer funding has given me to explore and to learn.”

Hannah Fried tells of her experience at the Indian Law Office of Wisconsin, Judicare, in Wausau, Wisconsin.

“The ILO engages in two general kinds of work—the first is more standard legal aid (help with housing issues, family issues, employment issues, etc.—which it provides to Indian individuals from Wisconsin who meet Judicare’s income eligibility guidelines.

“The second type of work is the legal assistance it provides to the eleven Indian nations in the state of Wisconsin—Menominee, Ho-Chunk, and Oneida, among others. The ILO helps the tribes develop their judicial systems, including by assisting with drafting criminal and civil codes and training lay advocates. The ILO also provides legal assistance in dealing with questions regarding religious freedom, tribal jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and tribal sovereignty generally.

“The work I got to do was great—really tailored to my interests. I did a fair amount of research (including on tribal v. state jurisdiction; on tribal methods of dispute resolution; and on how “Indian” is defined for the purposes of understanding federal law) and helped prepare a training program for the Ho-Chunk court for guardians ad litem.

“A great summer job—highly recommended!”