What is the public interest auction?
The public interest auction is a fundraiser run entirely by the 1L class that raises money to support students who do public interest work over the summer. We solicit donations from faculty, staff, alumni, parents, students, firms, and local businesses. Some donate money and some donate things to auction off. We receive all sorts of donations – things like Red Sox tickets, gift certificates to restaurants and salons, lunches and fishing trips with professors, cookies and brownies made by the librarians, and a tour of the Northwest Corner Construction project. The auction is one of the biggest social events of the year. Every year the auction has a theme, and we decorate Austin Hall accordingly. This year the theme was “Bright Lights: Bid City” and so the different rooms were decorated as different big cities – London, Paris, and New York.

What has gone into preparing for this event and what have you gotten out of the experience as a co-chair?
Almost all of the 1L class helps out with the auction. We divide the students up by committees and committees mostly help out either by asking for donations, calling alumni and asking them to donate, emailing firms, going door to door in Cambridge, or by helping process the donations and get them ready to sell, or by helping out on the night of the auction. As one of the auction co-chairs, I had the opportunity to work with a group of amazing people to try to plan and coordinate this huge event – it was definitely a  challenging experience for all of us. From coordinating hundreds of student volunteers to keeping track of hundreds of donations, to making sure everything comes together on the night of the auction, being a co-chair was a lot of work, but it was extremely rewarding. It was also a good opportunity to meet new students.

The event is always a lot of fun for students, faculty and staff. What was your favorite part of the evening? Did anything surprise you?
The event was a huge success. My favorite part of the evening was the live auction. Our auctioneers – this year Professors Elizabeth Warren and Jonathan Zittrain – were auctioning off the “right to be – or not be – in the 2010 parody.” The first bidder was the Dean of Students because they gave her a hard time this year in the parody, but then Professor Mann, who bought this item last year, got in a bidding war with Professor Warren and everyone was laughing so hard!

Why should admitted and prospective students seeking a strong public interest community choose Harvard? Why did you?
I think that students looking for a strong public interest community should choose Harvard because they can go anywhere and do anything with a degree from Harvard Law. We are a bigger law school, but as a result, we have so many more options to pick from than other law schools. Good public interest law jobs are really competitive – and since I want one, I’m glad I chose Harvard. I know that the connections and friends that I will make here, with professors and fellow students, will be of benefit for the rest of my life.

The question of whether to apply as a transfer student is the right move is up to you, but we think that a little research will show you the vast benefits of transferring to HLS. With 102 full-time professors and more than 300 courses, HLS is home to the most intellectually stimulating legal community in the world. Outside the classroom, there are 14 journals, over100 student organizations, clinical placements in approximately 30 areas of the law, and more than enough opportunities for you to experience the incredible diversity of the HLS community during your second- and third- year. For example, the Harvard Law Review encourages transfer applicants to apply for membership and several past transfer students have been successful in that endeavor.

Bottom line? Whether you are interested in constitutional law or environmental law or human rights advocacy or any number of other areas, the breadth and depth of our offerings is incredible. Whether you want to clerk at the circuit court level, follow the path to academia, or pursue a career in public service, the opportunities presented to our graduates are unsurpassed.

For more details on the transfer application process including eligibility guidelines, deadlines, and application requirements, please visit: http://www.law.harvard.edu/prospective/j…

Also, stay tuned in the coming days and weeks for blog entries of a few students talking about their experience transferring into Harvard Law School!

Lam is currently on a Skadden Fellowship starting a community legal clinic for low income youths and their families in Chicago. Admissions staffer Julia Foresman recently caught up with Lam in the wake of a victory he scored with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago. Lam had been trying to get Chicago Public Schools to follow through with the Individualized Educational Plan that CPS and his client Mary Greenlee had put in place for her 6 year old grandson, Rayvaughn.  “It’s been extremely rewarding to educate and empower my clients,” he said.  “… this is what gets me up in the morning.”

Podcast: Lam Ho (13:09)

Please visit the link to HLS Speaks off the JD Admissions home page if you’re interested in these subjects.

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.”

During a recent informational meeting, former Defender Phil Lee ‘00 recounted his summer experience. “I was defending a woman who had stolen diapers and a ham… I explained to the magistrate that the crime was not done out of greed, but out of true need,” said Lee. “You get to be a real advocate.”

While students handle all the case intake and the work is a team effort, the casework is supervised by attorney John Salsberg, who has served as Harvard Defenders Clinical Instructor for almost 30 years. The Defenders meet with Salsburg regularly for guidance and support in developing case strategy. “Overall,” said 2L Darnell Stanislaus, “the experience gives you great exposure to criminal law and litigation…and there’s no better feeling than having a truly appreciative client.” 2L Alex Davies agreed and emphasized that the skills developed through the Defenders are transferrable. “Because no one magistrate responds the same way to the facts of your case, you’re able to practice reading an audience and publicly making case-law arguments,” she said.

The Harvard Defenders are now taking resumes for their summer internship on a rolling basis. Anyone interested should contact Program Administrator Maria Hermann at mhermann@law.harvard.edu.

“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.”

At the close of the final scene in which an Iraqi claimed to have “lost himself since the beginning of the War,” Mam insisted tearfully that more interest in the refugees has to be mobilized. “Everyone I talked to, all their stories had a common thread: their national identity has been lost… they never imagined that things, as bad as they were before the war, would be so dire now,” she said. “For Jordan and Syria, those countries harboring refugees, we desperately need more humanitarian and bilateral assistance.”

For Amnesty International, the problem is clinical. Reynolds, who also chairs the Iraqi Refugee Working Group, is working with that coalition and with Amnesty International on efforts to allow more refugees into the United States, to support refugees and asylum seekers already in the system, and most importantly, she said, to reopen Iraq’s borders.

With millions of Iraqis trapped inside the country and millions more living without adequate healthcare and education in Jordan, Syria, and several other countries, the plight is enormous. “Detention is on the rise,” said Reynolds, “and eviction is becoming more hostile as countries are fed up with the ‘protracted guest’ situation.” Furthermore, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon are not signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention, giving refugees very little legal protection, are banned from working, and subject to changing requirements for entry and stay.

Reynolds also debunked the return of refugees to Iraq as a harbinger of better security. “The government paid each refugee $800 to return…people ran out of options and money elsewhere.” According to Reynolds, the Iraqi government has preyed on their peoples’ desperation only to welcome them back to a country in which the borders of 11 out of 18 governorates are closed. “The protection space has narrowed, and humanitarian organizations are barred due to security concerns.” Reynolds insisted that the U.S. has an obligation to spearhead the international response and begin to offer thousands more Iraqis asylum. “It’s hard for Iraqis to have hope, but they really do try… we need to honor their trust.”

“If we are going to have an effective policy, the three branches [of government] need more effective dialogue,” explained Rebell. “It is also that we reexamine our goals.” The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was the latest in a series of legislation reforms targeting standards-based education. Among the goals of the NCLB are the right of children to fair and equal education and to ensure that all children reach minimum proficiency on challenging achievement by 2014. “NCLB continued the work of President Clinton’s education-reform subcommittee on President [George H.W.] Bush’s Goals 2000.” During the course of his lecture, Rebell questioned whether the government hasn’t lost sight of ensuring meaningful educational opportunities. “The Opportunity-to-Learn concept was part of Goals 2000… its standards are necessary to help close the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students and it must be reinstated.”

For Elena Medina, a 3L and former Teach for America Corps member, the class has reinvigorated her excitement about education law. “I would like to pursue a career in education law so I was very excited when I learned that Professor Rebell would be teaching a winter term course. It’s been an incredible experience for me. Professor Rebell is an accomplished litigator and scholar. Therefore, his course provides a dynamic combination of doctrine and theory along with actual litigation strategies. Due to his practical experience, he provides a unique legal perspective because he’s actually litigated cases about meaningful educational issues.”