HLS in Focus

1L and Co-Chair of the Public Interest Auction Sarah Jelsema recently sat down for a Q & A with us after this yearly highlight of the HLS calendar.

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.

Starting April 15, HLS will begin accepting transfer applications for the fall. Over the last couple of years, there have been increased opportunities for Harvard Law students to study off-campus through joint degree and foreign study programs which make it possible for us to admit more transfer students than ever before.

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!

Interested in working in India doing either public interest or private practice work? If so, a recent panel hosted by the South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA) would have been right up your alley.

2L Nitya Shekar, whose interests include public interest litigation and activism, got her internship last summer with the Alternative Law Forum (ALF) in Bangalore through the Human Rights Program here at HLS. “It was really a great experience in a great city,” she said. “Bangalore is on the rise with public interest movements.” While she was there, Shekar was involved with the city’s first GLBT pride parade and anti-road widening litigation.

3L Lauren Birchfield and SJD student Iain Frame were also involved in public interest with the Human Rights Law Network (HRLN) in New Delhi were. “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,” explained Birchfield who worked specifically with the Right to Food Campaign. “I greatly appreciated how much HRLN invested in us and in our project, and how much freedom was given to 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.”

On the private-sector side was 2L Erin Walczewski, who spent Winter Term with Nishith Desai Associates in Mumbai. “I was interested in alternative dispute resolution and arbitration and got to do lots of research on the differences among arbitration tribunals,” she said. “I met with clients, and the attorneys walked me through how litigation worked in India. The attorneys were especially interested in how business practices differed between the U.S. and India.”

When asked how to approach the application process for public interest firms, the panel advocated being direct and having a project in mind. Respect for interns at HLRN? “It of course depends on the supervisor you get,” said Frame. “Because HRLN was so large it helps to have an idea about what you want to do when you get there… your experience will be more dynamic if you take charge.”

Concerned about needing experience in Indian or international law? “I dealt almost entirely with Indian law which was totally new to me,” said Shekar. “But since ALF is so small, the work they do is very focused and my relationship with them was more intimate… there was no hierarchy and everyone was happy to answer questions for me.” “I found my international law class from 1L year to be very helpful,” said Walczewski, “particularly in terms of understanding how international agreements work.”

While at HLS, alumnus Lam Ho was a public interest dynamo. As president of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, a supervising member of Reaching Out About Depression (R.O.A.D.), and Founder & Coordinator of the Giving Tree, which raises holiday gifts for children of the HLS clinical and student practice organization clients, Lam never shied away from going above and beyond the call of duty… including 60-90 hours a week dedicated to his clinicals.

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)

If you weren’t fully aware of the scope of opportunities available to you here at HLS, 3L Michelle Galdos’ winter term project gives a glimpse. In a brief interview with staffer Julia Foresman recently, Michelle discussed her project writing on reproductive rights and emergency contraception in Chile.

Check it out: Michelle Galdos (6:07)

Her interest in reproductive rights began at a young age by watching her father, a Peruvian OB-GYN, participate in medical missions to South America. She joined HLS Advocates for Human Rights during her 1L year and interned at the South African Human Rights Commission at the end of the proceeding summer. Following coursework in Women’s Human Rights, she enrolled in the Harvard International Law Clinic during her 3L year to work on women’s health issues. Michelle will be traveling to Santiago, Chile during Harvard’s 2009 Winter Term to research the recent banning of emergency contraception distribution in Chilean public health centers.

We hope to track Michelle’s story, as well as that of other students abroad for winter term, through January… so check back!

For prospective students interested in gender-violence and women’s rights, I want to highlight a recent presentation by Maya Raghu of Legal Momentum. A Senior Staff Attorney and Director of the Employment and Housing Rights for Victims of Domestic Violence Program, Raghu provided some valuable insight into navigating the public interest world. Note: No path of law is irreversible; she spent 4 years at a firm before heading back over to public interest!

Having gone to law school interested in international human rights and women’s rights work, Raghu interned with a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas for her 2L summer. “It was a great experience because the clerks were great about explaining their work; I got to read complaints, construct answers, watch trials, look at briefs, conduct discovery… the experience also piqued interest in litigation,” she said.

However, the most defining aspect of Maya’s law school career was the clinic she did during which she represented an ethnic Chinese Uighur for asylum before an immigration judge. “It was the best and worst experience… most cases finish in a semester; ours went on for 4 years, and it gave me a very real picture of what litigation is like.”

Upon graduation, Maya clerked for two years and spent the next four at a firm where she further honed her litigation skills before refocusing on public interest work. “I had done lots of pro bono work at the firm, particularly on the side of domestic workers who were undocumented,” she said. “The best thing you can do if you want to move from firm to public interest is to focus on skills such as litigation, taking depositions, and discovery work you learned at firm and demonstrate long-standing interest in public interest work.”

It was in large part her litigation experience, Maya claims, that contributed to her getting the job at Legal Momentum. As one of the few multi-issue women’s organizations, Legal Momentum (formerly known as NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund) deals with instances of sex discrimination and harassment, and focuses on issues of national importance as they relate specifically to women. “We’ve been looking at welfare and the gendered effects of poverty,” Maya explained, “as well as maintaining a longstanding focus on the economic security of women in such nontraditional jobs as construction workers, firefighters, and mechanics.” The legislative advocacy of the organization also serves victims of domestic violence who stand to lose their jobs or homes because their employers or landlords fear personal harm to their business or property.

“When taking cases, we have to be very strategic; we think: will this advance our cause? We look for policy changes and we seek to alter the structure of the way the law approaches domestic violence issues.”

Check them out on the web!

We did a bunch more interviews of students and faculty members to add to the HLS Speaks page off the JD Admissions home page.  New categories of interview clips include: (1) Clinical & Pro Bono Programs; (2) Criminal Law & Justice; (3) Law, Business & Economics; (4) Negotiation & Conflict Resolution; (5) Constitutional Law & Policy; (6) Why Law School; (7) Law, Science & Technology; (8) Reading Groups & Small Seminars; (9) National Security & Terrorism; (10) Social & Gender Justice, Civil Rights; (11) Career Plans; and (12) Joint Degrees.

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

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.”

Someone just sent this clip my way. Professor Fried talks with Joshua Cohen of Stanford. Thought you might find it interesting. It’s an hour, but you can select clips on different subjects.

Assistant Professor of Law, Jeannie Suk, recently sat down with me to discuss her principal areas of research in interrelated topics of family law, criminal law, and criminal procedure.

In her Yale Law Journal article, Criminal Law Comes Home, Suk outlined the changing model for defining domestic violence through the lens of criminal law. As she wrote, “The growing criminal law use of protection orders to prohibit the cohabitation and contact of intimate partners is a form of state-imposed de facto divorce that subjects the practical and substantive continuation of intimate relationships to criminal sanction.”

Jeannie Suk: 11:35