Toby\’s blog

Another day, another summer adventure! Before coming to HLS, 2L Michael Zabelin was a member of Americorps*VISTA, taught English in Ecuador, and was an intern at the Center for American Progress. In the fall he will begin working as a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.

“I found my summer internship with the Legal Assistance Foundation by taking advantage of the individual advising from the OPIA (Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising). In my meeting, Director Alexa Shabecoff suggested several options in the handful of geographic areas I was interested in spending the summer. Not only did Alexa provide names of organizations but also the names of HLS alumi and current students who had worked at these various places. After speaking with an alum who is currently working at LAF and a current student who had spent a summer there, I realized that LAF was going to be a great fit for me.’

“When preparing for my phone interview, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the LAF supervisory attorney in charge of hiring interns was an HLS grad. This connection allowed us to have an easy start to the interview. He was especially impressed with my involvement with the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review of which he was an active member in his law school days.’

“Before coming to law school, I had done both a semester long internship and a year of Americorps*VISTA in the field of low-income housing. This experience led me toward the Home Ownership Preservation Project at LAF. We are a very busy project this summer as the bulk of our work is in mitigating the effects of foreclosure. From advising people of their rights when they are first foreclosed upon to bringing suit against fraudulent parties who cheated clients while claiming to be rescuing them from foreclosure, I am part of a team that is doing real work to make a difference for people who are being effected by this very real headline-grabbing problem. I leave work feeling good most days knowing that I was able to have at least a small part in making the system a little more fair for the people who have been left behind or treated unfairly in the past.’

“Aside from the interesting substance of the work that I am doing, I am also learning a great deal about the day-to-day life of a public interest lawyer. Everything from filing documents at the Daley Center Courthouse to scouring depositions for something useful to our case has become part of my lawyerly repertoire because of this summer. I’ve even caught myself applying things from first year Legal Research and Writing and Civil Procedure that, at the time I learned them, I was certain I never would actually need to know.’

“I look forward to bringing the skills I have gained this summer back to Cambridge in the fall. I am sure they will be helpful as I begin my first year as a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.’

If someone were to ask you the difference between an equity basket derivative and an equity index swap, would you be able to? Have an answer? No? Well you might want to ask HALB president Ben Wu, a 2L who worked at a boutique investment bank and Goldman Sachs before coming to HLS. He joined Michael Sherman ’87, a Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, who is co-head of the Firm’s U.S. Equity-Linked and Hybrid Securities group for a lunchtime discussion on investment banking as an alternative career path for law students

“Lehman is a full service investment bank whose elements include mergers & acquisitions, equity financing, and sales and trading,” explained Sherman. “I spent four years at a law firm after HLS and saw an opportunity to act on my experience doing transactional securities work.”

Wu admitted that his success in making the leap from a boutique banking firm that specialized in technology M&A is atypical. “It’s usually easier to have a bulge bracket [large bank] name on your resume… in most instances, I think you get more exposure and better training with a greater number of products,” he said. “I could not have planned for my current trajectory.” Wu plans to work at Fortress Investment Group upon graduation.

But how does a law student attract the attention of an investment bank? Can’t the bank just recruit across the river at HBS? “It definitely helps to be quantitatively minded,” said Sherman, “but experience you can get through internships with tax law, securities, or M&A transactional work will be a bonus.”

“Bottom line,” said Wu, “is that many banks value the aptitude and analytical rigor of students from a variety of backgrounds.” Sherman agreed and pointed out that students should not be afraid to start out at an analyst level. “You figure that many analysts come right out of college and then work for 2-3 years before returning to law or business school to return as an associate… if you go to law school first, aren’t you just reversing the order a bit?”

Meet the Boston Coalition to Stop Bank Evictions!

The foreclosure and eviction crisis occurring across the country is hitting Boston hard, especially in neighborhoods with primarily low income and minority-occupied rental housing. In order to help prevent the decimation of neighborhoods and the personal destruction inflicted by eviction of low income former owners and renters, a coalition of students has formed.

At the helm of the student organization is 2L Tony Borich, who sat for an interview with staffer Julia Foresman to discuss the organization and how students can get involved.

Tony Borich: 11:36

I saw this posted to the HLS home page and thought you might be interested.

Student organizations have been quite active during recruiting season by hosting a series of career panels involving both students and alumni. The final event before break was a public interest panel organized by APALSA with 2Ls Ming Zhu, Ting Chen, and Nick Lin.

While all three panelists attested to loving their internships, the nature and intensity of their experiences differed greatly. “Working for the Center for Appellate Litigation in New York… I got lots of responsibility,” said Lin. “Under the supervision of litigators, I was given my own cases for which I wrote briefs… I got full creative control.” For Zhu, the internship experience at U.S. Attorney’s Office varied widely depending on which attorney she was assigned to. “For me in the Criminal Appellate division, I was the only intern among three attorneys… I really liked it because the written nature of the work was unlike what I’d been studying at law school.” Ting Chen spent the summer abroad at Khmer Institute for Democracy in Cambodia and talked about the level of initiative required in a small non-profit.

All three panelists emphasized the benefit gained from large amounts of research and writing. Chen added, “On an international level… it was exciting to see what I’d learned as a 1L in Civil Procedure and Criminal Law become more tangible in practice.”

With regard to obtaining the internships, Lin indicated that he had “shotgunned” letters out to different NGOs and think tanks. “The truth is, most places get back to you when they want, so be patient.” Unlike Lin, Zhu insisted that utilizing the resume drop with the Massachusetts Law School Consortium was just as effective for her. “It’s a good, easy, and early process.” For Chen, knowing she wanted to work with an NGO in Asia, the application process was focused and quick. “I just wish that I had not been so frantic in taking the first offer that came my way.” Lin nodded and said, “If you really want a certain job, stay calm… chances are even if they don’t get back to you until March, it’s worth waiting for.”

In an era where the financial world is rife with corporate scandal, the demand for attorneys who specialize in white-collar litigation is fast on the rise. Recently, the Harvard Association for Law and Business (HALB) hosted a panel of New York-based attorneys who are familiar with this new trend in corporate litigation through their work in investment banking, hedge funds, law firms, and the U.S. attorney’s office.

“The market for white-collar criminal defense is very new,” began Carey Dunne, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell and former prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. “Back when I started in the mid-1980s, very few firms had a white-collar criminal practice and there was no focus on the prosecution of corporations, mainly because the Justice Department didn’t see fit to do so.” This began to change in the mid-1990s in part because of the Uniform Sentencing Laws, which reshaped the view of corporations engaging in criminal behavior. “Thus, as these larger companies have run into such problems as compliance with SEC enforcement, the market for expertise in law firms has changed,” explained Dunne. All the panelists agreed that this new market is unlikely to change regardless of which transgressions are under scrutiny; the recent credit fallout is merely the latest crisis.

“Because of this new white collar focus, the regulating agencies have come into play in a huge way, and thus what it means to be in-house counsel has changed dramatically,” said Pierre Gentin, Managing Director and Head of Litigation at Credit Suisse Securities, LLC. Gentin cited four focal points that he felt banks should reexamine frequently: 1) evaluating the ability to manage the regulatory obligations of SEC agencies; 2) determining whether any litigations brought against the firm involve counterparties or new claims for civil litigation consequences; 3) approaching and dealing with the “ethical minefield” of non-compliant employees; and 4) analyzing the under-discussed impact of the media on company press. “As an in-house attorney, you must manage these risks simultaneously,” said Gentin.

Looks like lots of opportunities for HLS-trained attorneys…!

Newly appointed Assistant Professor of Law, Jim Greiner, sat down with me briefly to discuss how his research in Quantitative Legal Empirics and PhD in Statistics have guided the curriculum in his Civil Procedure class this semester. We also talked about election law.

Jim Greiner: 9:32