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!

The Program on Negotiation is one of the most valuable and dynamic resources here at HLS. Dedicated to developing the manifold theories and practices of negotiation and dispute resolution, PON encourages an open dialogue for alternative theories. We recently caught up with one of the program’s featured guest speakers, Nancy Shippen, executive director of an organization called Our Prison Neighbors, a local organization committed to recruiting, supporting and expanding the role of volunteers in Massachusetts’ prisons.

What is ‘Our Prison Neighbors’ and how did you come to get involved?

Our Prison Neighbors is an organization dedicated to bringing enriching programming into the prisons and to being a voice for prison reform and the humanity of prisoners. When I moved to the suburbs, I couldn’t find a way to be of service in the affluent culture. One day, driving past MCI-Concord Prison, I was struck that there was surely something in my years of special education teaching and community work that could be useful.

We recruit, train and provide ongoing support for volunteers providing the internationally recognized programs Alternatives to Violence Project, Emotional Literacy and Toastmasters as well as book discussion groups, literacy tutors, writer’s groups, father’s groups and many other programs. When possible we make public presentations on the importance of this work and the need for change in our criminal justice system to encourage the growth and development of all.

How has the organization evolved over time?

Our central programs have grown in availability, we have gained appreciation by our incarcerated participants and respect from the Department of Corrections, and we have come to know much more about the needs of incarcerated people. We have designed new curricula, and identified a number of areas where we would hope to make Massachusetts prisons more proactive. Examples are working to make the Correctional Health program aware of the many prison hospice programs and the positive effects they have had on the prisons that have them.

Other programs we have been working on include bringing programs like the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, Facing History and Ourselves and Thomas Lickona’s character education framework to the education departments, and providing books for the prison libraries from donations and free books available at town library sales. Recently we have been working to encourage the DOC to develop a green jobs vocational program so that incarcerated people can learn valuable job skills and state prisons could gain solar and/or wind energy systems.

You’re currently working to get students involved. How do you envision them working in the prison setting?

Graduate and mature undergraduate students would be welcome as outside participants in all of our programs and in time they could become facilitators and/or help design new programs and curricula. A program on negotiation skills would be deeply appreciated by many imprisoned people.

What of value about the experience might an HLS student interested in alternative dispute resolution take away?

Work with people in prison is a powerful way to experience some of the impact of our current criminal justice system, education system, welfare system and social services system. Students volunteering in our programs would have the opportunity to be trained in several internationally recognized programs. The Alternatives to Violence Project provides an experiential introduction to the power of a community based on respect and caring. While building community, participants learn skills in listening, communication, cooperation and conflict resolution. AVP is active in over 25 countries so we hope that international students and those intending on doing international work might train with us and be able to take this excellent material to ever-wider applications. The Emotional Literacy program develops the ability to identify, manage, and express one’s emotions in a mature and conscientious manner. Also anyone who intends to work with the criminal justice system in any way can benefit enormously from some first hand experience through programs with a record of providing opportunities for real growth and development.

How do you see this collaboration with HLS and the Program on Negotiation moving forward?

Our Prison Neighbors would like to work with HLS and PON to develop opportunities for students to participate in programming for prisoners in Massachusetts and to become leaders of programs related to their studies. This could be done through internships, service learning programs, or independent volunteering. We provide mentoring for our volunteers and could provide evaluations, recommendations and powerful experiences for ongoing professional development.

If you thought counting sheep was insomniac’s play, think again. Berkman Center cofounder and cyberlaw whiz Professor Jonathan Zittrain is expanding upon his research with the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) by exploring internet censorship with Herdict Web (herd + verdict), a tool that uses crowdsourcing to learn about and present a real time view of the experiences of users around the globe with regard to web accessibility.

As Zittrain explained, “we’re trying to get ourselves out of a mode where the internet just happens to us and we become, rather, participants in it.” One of the issues with the net is that users by and large don’t know what’s going on. “We’re eager to help create an emergent sense of what’s going on in this network especially at a time when network blockages and filtering are on the rise,” he said. “When you can’t get somewhere the number of problems between you and the destination are legion and there’s an easy way to figure out what’s wrong… our aim is to help answer those questions in a prosaic way by trying to enlist people at large to answer them.”

So what’s with the sheep (Herdict’s icon), you ask? As the website explains, “sheep tend not to follow the herd when no natural predator is present. While considering web inaccessibility and censorship a predator might be far-fetched, when faced with it, it makes sense to join the herd.” While OpenNet Initiative seeks to identify filtering on the web and to probe public consciousness about the practice through academic means, Herdict Web shifts the power to the masses. Herdict is a toolbar that changes color based on a particular URL’s accessibility. If you find yourself unable to access a site, you can click on the ‘sheep’ and report your problem. “The act of asking this question is what helps seed the round of data in order to answer [why a site is blocked],” said Zittrain. As more people respond with errors, the Herdict team is able to interpolate the data and point to a cause. For those interested, the website includes the sort-able ‘herdometer’ that displays reports as they come in. “Once someone makes a report,” explained Zittrain, “it’s helpful to know if others are experiencing the same issue. You very quickly figure out who is also experiencing what and why.”

Stay tuned for more information on Herdict Web!

HLS has commemorated a number of historical milestones in recent months including the 40^th anniversary of Terry v. Ohio, a case which held that ‘stop and frisks’ were not a violation of Fourth Amendment rights where an officer has a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. Some believed this case to have been wrongly decided, including the man who argued the case before the Court, Louis Stokes. Later in 1968 Stokes was elected to the United States Congress and served 15 consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stokes was honored at a recent event by the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.

The case itself involved two men who were stopped, searched, and found to possess guns in broad day on the streets of Cleveland in 1963 by a police officer who claimed the two to be exhibiting suspicious behavior. “I had no idea that Terry would become a landmark case,” said Stokes. “The more I talked to [the suspects, John Terry and Richard Chilton], the more it seemed to me that we might have a possibility of excluding the guns based on the testimony that this event had happened on the streets.” In the wake of such landmark cases as Miranda and Escobedo that succeeded in expanding the rights of the accused, Stokes filed a motion to suppress the evidence. “The officer had no probable cause accosting them,” he said, “They weren’t brandishing guns, running, or doing anything related to a crime.

In spite of the violence and turmoil of American cities in the sixties, Stokes was confident his case would prevail before the Court. “As a black man I understood how black males were stopped in urban settings and if they didn’t have contraband as a result of stopping subjecting them to the indignity of being stopped…they were just told to move on down the street. That’s why I took this case.” Yet in the final analysis the Supreme Court based their decision upon the safety of the police officer and failed to extend Fourth Amendment protections.

“What I say to you as law students is that it pays to think outside of the box as a lawyer,” advised Stokes. “It would have been easy for me to plead them guilty and work out some light sentence. It took more to go against the custom and utilize the Constitution to try to uphold what it means in light of what people are subjected to on the streets in our country.”

Stokes presence moved the audience to emotion. As one student asked, “Did you or your brother Carl, the first black mayor of a major U.S. city ever envision this day [the election of President-Elect Obama]? You must have because surely you paved the way.” Stokes remarked that Obama’s whole campaign reminded him of 1967 when his brother became the mayor of Cleveland. “Carl built coalition in Cleveland of blacks and white. That’s how he won. For many reasons related to what Carl did and my victory as the first black congressman in Ohio the following year, Barack Obama’s meant so much. It reminded me how far we’ve come.”

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)

With the spring semester getting underway, the opportunity to explore new pro bono options and summer internships has begun anew. Anna Schleelein, the Veterans Program Director and a staff attorney for Shelter Legal Services, a non-profit organization offering free legal advice and representation to homeless and low-income individuals in the Boston area, recently stopped by to chat about the organization. Shelter Legal Services (SLS) offers many different opportunities for law students, including 1Ls, to gain legal experience working directly with low income clients. By providing a vast array of civil legal services on site, Shelter Legal Services reaches underserved individuals who otherwise would not receive legal assistance.

“SLS is unique,” said Schleelein, “we don’t see clients in our office, but in order to serve the maximum number of people and provide services to those who might not otherwise have access we offer a variety of legal clinics at homeless shelters and service centers in the greater Boston area.” These centers, at which students perform intake surveys with clients alongside a staff attorney, include: Rosie’s Place; Cambridge Multi-Service Center for the Homeless; New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans; Chelsea Soldiers’ Home; and Veterans Advocacy Network.

The Veterans’ Advocacy Network (VAN) is a new collaborative with the Massachusetts Bar Association to assist veterans with benefits issues. Law student volunteers will be supervised by Shelter Legal Services while taking calls from veterans, providing referrals, and completing intakes. Veterans are then referred to attorneys for in-depth legal assistance with their veterans benefits claims.

“Once we’ve decided to take on a case for full representation, there’s a wide variety of ways in which students can be involved,” said Schleelein. “In addition to the intake process, we also follow up with a client confirming our agreement to represent them and specifically about which issue; clients often have multiple issues and we may only be able to help with one.” Schleelein stressed that she wants students to get as involved as possible. “One of the most rewarding parts of students volunteering with us is that they can to see a case through start to finish.”

That having been said, if you’re a 1L and the idea of going to court makes you nervous, SLS is looking for help in a variety of areas, including discrete research projects. “We’re all about practical experience… we want you to work with 2Ls and 3Ls who have done it before. Not going to be thrown to the wolves.”

When asked what sorts of cases they can take on, Schleelein responded, “Not everything that comes through our door is something we can take… we’re funded through various grants the terms of which limit is from taking criminal cases and fee generating cases.”

Bogged down with classes and constrained by time? Fear not. The time commitment is what you want to make it. As you get more familiar you can take on more. “What’s key is maintaining open communication with people who have agreed to take on major projects,” said Schleelein. “The more in depth you work on a case and get to know an individual client, the more rewarding it will be; we really do work on cases that make huge differences in people’s lives.”

For interested students, Shelter Legal Services is currently accepting resumes and cover letters for their summer internship program: info@shelterlegalservices.org. The deadline for submissions is February 27.

If ever there were an appropriate time in history for a business ethics discussion, this is it, don’t you think? Fortunately, The Program on the Legal Profession recently invited Dr. Christine Elizabeth Parker of the University of Melbourne Law School to report on her research on the regulation of law firm ethical infrastructure. In collaboration with the Office of the Legal Services Commission (OLSC), which works as part of a co-regulatory system, together with the Law Society of New South Wales and the NSW Bar Association to resolve disputes and investigate complaints about professional conduct, Dr. Parker has written a paper the examines the ethical infrastructure in commercialized law firms.

“A major weakness of traditional approaches of regulation and discipline of legal profession,” she said, “is that the focus tends to be on individual lawyers when most attorneys work in firms, the culture of which can have a great impact on ethics…firm level policies and procedures are necessary to ensure compliance.” In light of this, scholars have suggested rethinking ways in which lawyers are regulated to encourage firms to implement ethical structures and management policies to encourage ethical behavior. Some have moved to establish law firms as collectives of a larger ethical paradigm while others have proposed that there could be a requirement on firms to implement structures and appoint a practitioner responsible for ensuring ethical behavior.

“In light of the recent deregulation of firms in Australia,” she said, “we introduced legislation that firms appoint at least one practitioner to the board of directors who is obligated to prevent and report misconduct in the practice and all legal practices must have appropriate legal management systems in place to enable the provision of legal services in accordance with professional obligations.” Central to Parker’s paper was the self-assessment of firms who were told to rate ten objective metrics (including courteous communication and timely delivery, review and follow up of legal services) of quality on a scale that ran from ‘not compliant to fully compliant plus’.

“There are a number of reasons why we wouldn’t expect management-based regulation to be a very effective strategy,” admitted Parker. “For instance, some have said that management-based regulation is a type of managerialism that isn’t appropriate to legal professionals who ought to be autonomous, sovereign decision-makers… yet this misunderstands role of management-based regulation strategies to prescribe behavior.” Another concern is that management-based regulation might be too flexible and thus becomes a simple box-ticking exercise; still, Parker maintained that the practice is still influential because it works as an educational tool when firms are going through a structural change.

So what about the results? Of the more than 600 firms that participated in the self-assessment process, Parker and her team calculated a score of complaints per year per practitioner taking in account the size of firm and number of years one had been practicing. Before self assessment, there were 0.3 complaints and after the process, the number was down to 1/3 of what it was. “Clearly,” said Parker, “self-assessment makes a difference within some firms… and in principle, there are good reasons to suggest that the management-based approach similar to that proposed by Chambliss and Wilkins is appropriate for legal profession and there is compelling empirical evidence that it had an effect in New South Wales.” “Of course,” she continued, “this raises questions about the generalized ability of this approach to work elsewhere for firms elsewhere around the world. The self assessment process forces firms to think about certain compliance issues for first time… and creates an external accountability that’s so pressing right now.”

Anyone interested in employment law, worker justice issues, or public policy work would have been intrigued by a recent discussion sponsored by the Harvard Trade Union Program and the Labor and Worklife Program. The founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice, Kim Bobo, came to speak about her newest book that addresses rampant wage theft among employers in the U.S.

“What is wage theft?” she posed to the audience. “Wage theft is not paying workers the minimum wage.” Bobo alluded to an array of recent cases involving men and women in the service industry who have been swindled out of wages (the Department of Labor estimated $50 billion in a 2007 survey) in a variety of ways including but not limited to: being fined for fallacious infractions on the job; being misclassified; being paid as independent contractors without overtime; being paid on a per unit basis, and not hourly; employers shaving off hours at leisure; employers tip stealing; and employers withholding of last paychecks.

Statistics like these, she said, bespeak the benefits of unionization. Just last year, Interfaith Worker Justice took on the case of employees for Republic Windows and Doors, whose owners decided to close factory doors and move machinery to a new factory in Iowa without giving their employees the requisite 60-day pay stipulated under the Warren Act. “Because they had a union,” she said, “they refused to leave.”

To be clear, Bobo pointed out that while wage theft is a national crisis and while the worst offenses are perpetrated against immigrants, this is not an immigrant problem; this is a greed problem. Immigrants are the most vulnerable, but native born workers are hurt probably in even larger dollar amounts. “Greed isn’t new, but what is new is that we don’t have adequate pushback forces,” she said. “Unions are the most effective wage theft deterrent, which is why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.”

Another growing pushback force are the 200+ nationwide workers centers that focus primarily on immigrant workers but not exclusively. Shoestring operations, their primary function is to coach victims of wage theft by educating them of their recourse options which include typically joining a union, filing a lawsuit, filing complaints with government agencies, or enlisting the help of community religious leaders. Other pushbacks include forging an ethical business community appealing to trial attorneys. Yet, Bobo insisted, there is no substitute for the Department of Labor which has abdicated their responsibilities over the last several years.

Praising the appointment of Hilda Solis, Bobo urged our need for “a leader who actually knows something about labor!” Moreover, she called for more community partnerships among unions and workers centers, accountability and transparency on a public scale, more police officers devoted to this problem on the job, targeted investigations, and meaningful penalties for employers. “No one is afraid of the Department of Labor and they need to be…we need reinforcement for enforcement!”

Anyone interested in clerking after law school knows how tough clerkships are to clench.  Famous for its attention to top grades, stellar references, and flawless essays (sound familiar?), the clerkship application process can be fiercely competitive.  We figured some words of wisdom from a recent alumnus, Dan Sullivan, might be in order…

What was your background before coming to HLS? I graduated from Williams College in 2001 and worked for three years before attending HLS. Before law school, I worked as an investment banking analyst at a Wall Street firm, a research assistant at a public policy organization, and a legislative aide to a U.S. Congressman on Capitol Hill.

Why law school? I became interested in law school when I was a student at Regis High School, a Catholic high-school for boys in New York City that emphasizes a lot of lawyerly skills, such as reading, writing, and debate. But I put the idea on hold until I began working in Washington, DC after college. In Washington, my interest in law school was re-ignited by working with a number of smart, dedicated lawyers. My experience working with them showed me that a legal education would be great training for a variety of careers, from law and public policy to business and finance.

How did you get your clerkship? What was the process like? I clerked for Chief Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, who is an excellent judge and a wonderful person. I formally applied for federal clerkships in August before my 3L year, but I started the application process (e.g., researching judges, asking professors for recommendations) half-way through my 2L year. The application process can be long and cumbersome. But the HLS Office of Career Services (OCS) provides students with terrific, step-by-step information about the clerkship process and critical support throughout the process. Beyond reading OCS’s excellent materials and following its advice, I recommend doing independent research on judges by talking with current and former law clerks, seeking advice from professors, reading articles about and by judges, and looking up federal judges’ bios on the Federal Judicial Center website (www.fjc.gov).

What classes or activities exist at HLS for those students interested in clerking after HLS? Law clerks do a lot of research, writing, editing, and critical reading. Students interested in clerking should do activities that will help them improve those skills, such as working as an editor on the Harvard Law Review or another law journal; working as a research assistant for a professor during the school year or the summer; doing relevant pro bono or clinical work; or writing a significant research paper for course credit. While I was at HLS, I worked on the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and as a research assistant for Professor Mary Ann Glendon, who currently serves as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Both experiences were great preparation for clerking, particularly working for Professor Glendon since she is an outstanding teacher and mentor. In terms of courses, students interested in clerking should definitely take Federal Courts, Constitutional Law, and Evidence. Other good, basic courses that provide a solid foundation for clerking are Statutory Interpretation/Legislation, Administrative Law, Corporations, and Advanced Legal Research.

Alumni advice for the incoming class? Make the most of your time at HLS. Dean Kagan likes to say (and she’s right) that HLS is like New York City because it has so many things to offer. Take advantage of the many opportunities to learn available at HLS both inside and outside the classroom. I recommend becoming actively involved in at least one student organization, such as a law journal or a club. Through your involvement in an organization you will have a chance to befriend and learn from other HLS students, one of the greatest assets HLS has to offer. During my time at HLS, I was actively involved in the Harvard chapter of the Federalist Society, a national organization of conservative and libertarian law students and lawyers that promotes intellectual diversity in the legal profession. My work with the Harvard Federalist Society was one of the highlights of my law school experience because it introduced me to so many students with such diverse interests, experiences, and backgrounds.