HLS in Focus

I learned a new term last year: leaf peeping.  Like most people, I’ve been leaf peeping my whole life, I just didn’t realize that there was an official term for it—or, for that matter, that the official term would sound like a game to be played with babies.  It turns out that leaf peeping is the bona fide term for standing around looking at fall leaves.  Who knew?  I also didn’t realize how big of a big deal it is in New England.  I’ve lived in plenty of places with deciduous trees before, but none of my former stomping grounds include businesses in the region that hang banners that say things like “Welcome, peepers!” and “Get your peeping snacks here!”

To be fair, the hype is not baseless.  The leaves do seem to be brighter-prettier-longer here.  I don’t know why, and my extensive research on the subject (read: two minutes on Wikipedia and another two on Google) has not revealed any answers.  I once talked to a random guy at a retirement party for my former boss who claimed it has something to do with an enzyme found only in New England soil that causes all the leaves here to change at the same time.  Again, thirty seconds on Google didn’t provide any info one way or the other on this possibly fictitious enzyme, which clearly indicates that the answer cannot be known by humankind. 

I’ve had three autumns here now, and to celebrate peeping season we have gone apple picking, driving through western Mass, hiking in New Hampshire, and free food sample chasing in Vermont.  As I write this, I’m realizing that this whole leaf peeping thing might sound lame, but it’s really quite charming.  I guess you just have to see it to get why people like it so much.  Okay, I can’t resist—you just have to peep it.  Okay, I’m done.  I’m not going to say another thing.  Not another. . .peep. 

I can’t help it.  Peep.    

- Erin

This Friday I spent part of a very peaceful afternoon de-cluttering my e-mail inbox, which is always a funny process of reliving whole stretches of my life in just minutes. As I scrolled past birthdays and various technical edits for my journal, I realized it was around this time last year that the American Studies department where I majored in undergrad decided to feature me in their annual newsletter.

They asked for 600 words about my experiences since graduation, which I remember finding difficult because so much seemed to have changed for me in such a short time. But I managed to keep it brief, and it was interesting to re-read what I chose to say and remember how I felt just a few months into law school, so I thought I’d share. It went like this:

It’s amazing the places my American Studies education has taken me over the past year.

Just last March—which sometimes feels like yesterday, sometimes a lifetime ago—I found myself in New Orleans researching a senior thesis on that city’s public housing. Placing great trust in my professors’ advice and the power of scholarship money, I had chosen to focus my vague ideas about housing projects on a single city I’d never even visited—and suddenly, I was there. I spent my spring break not only elbow-deep in archives at Tulane University, but falling in love with New Orleans: its food, its architecture, its bittersweet mixture of community spirit and lingering racial and economic strife. By sheer benefit of majoring in American Studies, I was no stranger to these issues. It felt like having instant access to a secret history seldom revealed to outsiders like me.

It’s a long way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I’m now a student at Harvard Law. But American Studies has had its influence, in one form or another, at every point along the way. Throughout a difficult law school application process, few people were more supportive than my thesis advisor, Steven Hoelscher. And that classic skill of seeing documents in their historical context, stressed so heavily in American Studies, has been useful since my first day here. Not to mention the AMS course that convinced me to study law in the first place: Sarah Weddington’s “Gender Discrimination,” which I would recommend to anyone interested in testing the waters of a legal education.

Of course, nothing could fully prepare me for the reality of Harvard Law School. Life here moves at a breakneck pace, so I was very lucky to arrive in Cambridge after a relaxing summer, a full month before school began. Unlike some of my classmates, I had time to plant my roots and explore the Boston area before things got too hectic. Its marriage of big-city bustle and college-town eccentricity reminds me of Austin in many ways, and I feel more like a local every day.

However, Harvard itself has quickly become the real center of my world. It’s just as challenging and stimulating as you’d predict, full of brilliant professors and demanding coursework. But our 18 classroom hours each week also compete with an impossible number of student groups, volunteer opportunities, and prestigious speakers seeming to arrive daily. Unable to resist, I’ve wound up joining a small reading group that meets in one of my professors’ homes, working on a law journal, and serving as an exit pollster on Election Day. Most rewarding of all, I’ve also joined a student practice organization called the Tenant Advocacy Project, which provides legal help to public housing tenants. TAP is the most enriching part of my Harvard experience so far, and I might never have joined were it not for UT American Studies and the thesis I wrote there.

Luckily, exhausting as all this can be, it still isn’t the Harvard Law of The Paper Chase, One L, or even Legally Blonde. At today’s Harvard the professors are kinder, the classmates more social, the administration more approachable, and the free coffee more bountiful than the reputation suggests. As our fabulous Dean put it during orientation, “The competition is over. And you won.”

If that’s true, it is largely due to my experience in American Studies at UT. There I discovered the issues I’m passionate about, and here I’m learning how to make a career out of them. It’s been a match made in heaven so far, and I can hardly wait to see where it takes me next.

It’s pretty cheesy in retrospect, and of course it credits my undergraduate program with an awful lot. But looking back, I think it also really captures my enthusiasm as the first semester of law school drew to a close. Now that I’ve gotten comfortable and take Harvard for granted a bit more, it’s good to be reminded of what makes this experience so special.

- Lea

La Alianza is the Latino law student group on campus. As Co-Chair for this organization I get to participate in a lot of different activities and take an active role in planning and organizing our events and initiatives. As Co-Chair, I also get the opportunity to interact with other student group leaders at Harvard and in the Boston area. Because many other schools have organizations with similar missions La Alianza often gets emails from student groups at other schools asking for collaboration on different projects or inviting us to attend their conferences and social events. These events are great networking opportunities and also a nice way to get out of the law school bubble and explore the area a bit. Our events are always open to the entire student body and we often have a large number of non-members at our social events.

In addition to hosting social events, we also sponsor more substantive activities. Next week we will be hosting a talk with a Federal Judge from Texas who will talk about Latinos in the law, public interest careers and clerkships. This will give students the opportunity to talk with a Latino professional about any questions or concerns they might have entering a field where Latinos have been historically underrepresented. 

One of our major events is a conference that we co-sponsor with the Latino group at the Kennedy School. The theme of the conference always focuses on issues involving Latinos in law and public policy. Last year’s conference was a great success. The keynote speaker was José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States. The conference drew attendees from Harvard as a whole as well as alumni and people from the community. The plans for this year’s conference are still being settled but our membership is really enthusiastic about it and the conference is coming together nicely.

Last year La Alianza’s membership was down and we didn’t get to host as many events as in years past. This was a major part of the reason that I decided to run for Co-Chair. I wanted to see more actitivies and a greater sense of community among the Latinos on campus. We now have a new board full of enthusiastic people and we have started the year off very well. Helping to increase the group’s presence on campus and welcome the new 1Ls has been very fulfilling for me. Being a student group leader has been great experience so far and I would definitely recommend that other students try to take a leadership role in at least one organization.

- Elizabeth

Last week, one of my friends received a pretty random email from me. It had the subject “this place is insane” and consisted of the text “jedi mind tricks lawyer just gave a crash course on copyright law”. My friend probably didn’t realize it, but I was raving about the law school’s Recording Artist Project (RAP).

RAP is an organization that matches up musicians looking for legal advice with law students interested in entertainment law. The group also works with independent record labels and music websites. The work itself covers a broad range of legal issues including trademarks, copyrights, contracts, and transactions.

I had heard about RAP at a panel on student practice organizations that the law school held a couple weeks ago. I have always been fascinated by the way that the law regulates art and how that in turn affects both artists and content distributors. When I heard that not only did Harvard have an organization that catered to this interest but also that this organization took first year students, I jumped at the opportunity to join. 

Last weekend, RAP held their semesterly training session for new recruits. The group brought in a prominent entertainment lawyer (who has, among others, the hip-hop group Jedi Mind Tricks as a client). He talked with us about the copyright and trademark issues in music and then walked us through the basics of marking up a record contract. It was pretty exciting to have someone with practical knowledge in a field I am interested in talk candidly about what their job entailed.

Yesterday, I received my first assignment. I will be working with a team of three other law students to help a local electronica band review the record deal they were recently offered. It is my first semester of law school and I am already getting hands-on experience in a field of law that has always fascinated me. This is just another testament to the sheer number of opportunities that HLS provides its students.

- Anit

The weather is changing fast here in Cambridge, which reminds me of my first adjustments to the New England climate last year. Coming from Texas, I was completely unsure what to expect: part of me was panicked that I would hate the cold, the snow, and the need to pull on boots and gloves every time I wanted to step outside. But part of me, defiant in the face of relatives’ constant teasing about frostbite in September, was determined to like it.

The reality wound up being somewhere between the two. First off, my family was dead wrong about September. Although it’s cooling off a bit faster this year, I was still wearing skirts and light jackets outside last Halloween. Also, most things just weren’t the hassle I imagined. The snow held off until December, was shoveled expertly off most sidewalks every day, and was so gorgeous fresh that I never stopped being excited to see it fall. Winter wear gradually became part of my routine, and I found I was rarely cold indoors since New England, unlike Texas, really knows how to keep its buildings toasty.

The only annoyances were a handful of things I never could have predicted. Feeling unfeminine as I marched around in boots and bulky sweaters was a big one; so was slipping on ice all the time. Mostly, I found it depressing that the sun started to go down so early I would walk home from class at 4:30 in darkness. If I wasn’t careful, this made me sleep and eat constantly like a hibernating bear, which in turn wasn’t great for the femininity problem.

However, almost all of this proved possible to counteract somehow. A classmate from Canada told me that having multiple coats might keep my wardrobe feeling less monotonous in winter, so I didn’t fight the temptation to buy distinctive ones I saw. I wound up with three in different colors, and it really did help. I also started building extra time into my mornings so I could take it slow over the ice on my way to school.

Most importantly, I wound up seeing someone at University Health Services about a light box to make up for lost sunshine. I got one free with student insurance, and I didn’t have to undergo therapy or anything else intrusive or time-consuming first. It was actually spring before I thought to do this, and I wish every day that I had sooner, because the difference it made in my energy level was amazing.

If I could go back to my panicked pre-law school self, I would say Harvard makes it so easy to take care of yourself that there’s really nothing to fear about the cold—even coming from Texas. Sure, winter in New England is no walk in the park. Sometimes I think to myself, “The Puritans landed here first and they stayed?!?” But we Southerners can’t actually predict what we’ll like and dislike about Northern weather until we try it, and the school and our more experienced peers are always willing to help smooth the transition.

- Lea

Note: It’s beautiful and sunny out today, with a high in the 60’s. 

I realize, sadly, that this will surprise some people out there, but Harvard Law students like reality TV.  I don’t want to generalize, because at school the size of HLS there’s gotta be a few people who don’t, so I’ll just speak for myself—well, myself and the group of HLSers I have been watching reality TV with every Wednesday for the past two years. 

I don’t want to give the impression that we’re really crazy about this or that we have perfect attendance or that anyone is devoted enough to be Tweeting or blogging about our weekly get-togethers (yes, I realize this is a blog, but this one doesn’t count.  It’s a blog explaining that we don’t blog.).  We just have made it a point to hang out and watch trashy TV together at our friend John’s house ever since we started law school.  It began with a group of people from our 1L section, but we have attracted people from other sections and other class years, mostly based on the criteria Do-You-Like-America’s-Next-Top-Model, and Do-Your-Top-Chef-Watching-Habits-Allow-You-To-Be-Quiet-During-The-Show-But-Make-Funny-Snarky-Comments-About-The-Contestants-During-The-Commercials.

We always have tons of food, and we always have a great time dissecting what we see.  We do not talk about how these shows might relate to law or theory or legal practice; we talk about how stupid the word “smizing” is (the Tyra Banks term for smiling with your eyes), and whether it is tautological that no human can win a Top Chef challenge with gnocchi.  Occasionally, someone won’t be able to help themselves when a contestant who was hit in the back of the head threatens to sue for assault, and will mutter, “Under tort law that’s not assault, it’s battery—he never saw it coming,” but those relate-it-to-law-school type comments are loudly booed down by the group.

Full disclosure: our group also used to watch Project Runway, but this year they moved it to Thursday nights, causing a spin-off group to form to reconvene the next night for Runway and that tag-on show about its models that comes on afterward.  So yes, I didn’t think I was going to admit this, but I am actually a member of two HLS-based reality watching TV groups.  I’m not sure if that’s sad or awesome, or maybe a little bit of both. 

And as for the HLSers who don’t watch reality TV, I’d love to hear from you.  What do you do?  Study the law?  Somebody should make a reality show about that.

 - Erin

I really enjoy living just outside Boston, with easy subway access to all the culture, food, and entertainment of a city that size. Long weekends and the odd school holiday when I don’t head home to Texas make great opportunities to shop, eat out, attend festivals on Boston Common, or spend time on the beaches of the North Shore. In a city with so much history, there’s no shortage of things to do.  

Realistically, though, a rigorous schedule of HLS classes and extracurricular activities can make it hard for students to find time to visit Boston as often as we’d like. So we’re lucky that Cambridge offers plenty of things to do without so much time spent in transit.  

First off, there’s always the option to eat out. The variety of places here is great—I live next to a great Indian place and an acclaimed tapas bar, and just steps from the Law School are a tasty sandwich shop, a Starbucks and a Berryline, and a restaurant and bar called Cambridge Common that’s especially popular with students. In nearby Harvard Square are dozens of restaurants ranging from an Au Bon Pain and the local pizza chain Upper Crust to pub fare at Grendel’s Den and Grafton Street and upscale Asian at Om.  

Plus, there are three ice cream places in the Square alone (I think it really says something that my favorite, JP Licks, gives my hometown’s famed Amy’s Ice Creams a run for its money!) And in every direction there are small sandwich and coffee shops more appealing to the student schedule and budget than a big dinner out. Two of my personal favorites are The Biscuit and Darwin’s Ltd.  

As a big moviegoer coming from the city the best theater in America, I especially appreciate having multiple ways to catch a movie without heading into Boston. Harvard Square has a Loews theater showing five or six mainstream movies at a time, just blocks from school. There’s also the quirky Brattle Theatre, which charges a little less, serves local beer, and offers balcony seating at its screenings of older movies and art films. And just a short bus ride away, near MIT, is the art house Kendall Square Cinema where I saw most of last year’s Oscar nominees.  

The nightlife here is also decent, with a good number of bars and clubs within walking or bus distance of the Law School. Our social organizations have a lot of events at Redline and the Irish pub Tommy Doyle’s, but I prefer the chill atmosphere and cheap (Harvard-subsidized!) prices at the Cambridge Queen’s Head on campus.  

This is such a partial list of my own favorites that I really suggest checking out http://www.harvardsquare.com/ for even more things an HLS student can do with just a few free hours at a time. There’s shopping, theatre, live music, public events, and a lot more to eat and drink. Better yet, that site covers just one small part of this “City of Squares.” Porter, Inman, Central, and many others each have their own unique character and make quick, easy outings to blow off some of that law school steam.

- Lea

I was walking into the library to do some studying last Saturday when I noticed something was awry. On Saturdays Langdell is usually pretty well populated with students getting a jump on their weekend homework, but today it was unusually packed. What’s more, the people were all organized into groups of about 5-10 sprawled out at any given table. Each table had a couple bags of snacks strewn about and a book cart at the end that students were frantically going back and forth from. I was scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck was happening when it dawned on me: with journal recruitment in full swing, I was witnessing the first batch of massive fall sub-citing.

For those that don’t know what sub-citing is (I didn’t until a week ago) it’s the sometimes tedious process of double-checking every footnote in a given journal article to verify it’s accuracy. It is also a rite of passage for any first year student hoping to crack their way into the journal market. The journals usually hold mass sub-cites early in the fall and spring semesters to expose 1Ls to their work.

I was a little concerned watching all of this take place because I knew that the sub-cite for a journal I was joining, the Journal on Legislation, was taking place the next day. Thus far I had had what I guess is the typical 1L journal picking experience. I had gone to the journal fair, signed up for a bunch that I thought sounded interesting, attended a slew of info sessions, free lunches, and happy hours, then eventually narrowed it to the one that interested me most. I had felt pretty good about my choice, but watching my fellow first year students pore over their texts made me a little nervous about what I had gotten myself in to.

The next day I went to my sub-cite expecting mind-numbing work. I was shocked when the first thing that we did was actually go over the substance of our article and talk about ways that we thought it could be changed. The editors were interested in any feedback that they could relay to the article’s authors. Next came the sub-citing itself. Granted, the activity wasn’t horribly entertaining (you can only flip through so many political science books verifying that facts are correct before you start to go just a little bit crazy). However, it was good to be hanging out with a group of people interested in similar legal issues as me, and to work on a piece of scholarship in its very early stages. Also, I got some decent tips about law school and the legal profession in general from the 2Ls and 3Ls in the group. 

I think one of the benefits of going to a school the size of HLS is the sheer volume of extra-curricular opportunities available. With the massive number of journals, all jockeying for new recruits, I had the flexibility to shop around and find the one that made the most sense for me. This helped turn what could have been a pretty boring endeavor, into a rewarding extracurricular activity.

- Anit

I am always amazed by just how approachable the faculty is here. We had office hours in college but I never used them and didn’t really see professors around any of the dining areas. At HLS I see my professors around all the time. They stop and ask how I am doing and how I like my classes. Many professors host weekly lunches for groups of their students to get together and chat with them. It’s always nice to get to know people better over free food. One of my professors even sponsored a trip to the movies to see Crank 2.

Last semester I went to see one of my professors during office hours to talk about a paper I was writing for his class. Before we even started to talk about the paper he asked me questions about myself. He seemed to really care about how I was doing and whether I liked my classes. After chatting for a while we started talking about the assignment. He was really nice about answering my questions and leading me toward the right sources for my topic. Once all of the academic stuff was out of the way, we kept talking about things like career goals and family. When professors at HLS remind students about office hours they always say that students can come to them with questions about anything even if it has nothing to do with the law. I never believed them when they said it and didn’t really think I should bother them to ask about non-academic topics. During this visit to office hours, I realized that they mean what they say. I got all sorts of great advice about balancing work and home life and starting a family as a young lawyer. I left with more than just insight on how to write one paper.

There are even opportunities to get to know professors that you have never had classes with. Last year our student government organized faculty lunches for students to meet in groups of five or six and have discussions with various professors. I signed up for a lunch based my interest in trusts and estates. I had never met the professor before but I thought there would be less pressure if I got to chat with him in a group setting. We went to a Chinese restaurant that I hadn’t been to before. He explained that it was a popular hangout for professors. He was right. We saw several professors while we were there. We talked about classes and the transition to HLS because all the students in the group were 1Ls. The professor talked to us about his experience as a clerk for Judge Posner in Chicago and how he came to be a professor. He even made himself available for questions or advice later on. I felt like he really wanted to be there and meet with us rather than just use it as a working lunch.

Just last week, I was sitting with several friends from my 1L section out on the Hark patio when we saw our civil procedure professor walking by. We greeted him and asked how he was doing and before I knew it, he was sitting down with us for lunch. I was apprehensive about it because I thought for sure we would start to talk about something related to the law and I would feel like I was in class because my other experiences with professors outside of class had only revolved around classes and HLS news. What happened was completely different. I don’t know exactly how it happened but we started to talk about television and celebrity gossip. It was actually my professor who brought up the Kardashian sisters. It was really nice to see my professor as a person outside of his professional capacity. While listening to him talk about reality television, I realized that not too long ago, he was a law student just like me.

- Elizabeth

It’s getting to be mid-October, which is a fun time for 2Ls and 3Ls because everyone’s deciding what to do for this year’s  J-term.  J-term is the HLS word for January term, a month-long semester where you go to the same class from 9-5 everyday.  It’s really good for classes like the Trial Advocacy Workshop, where you need long chunks of time for mock trials, and it works for people who want to earn credits off-campus, too.  You can propose an independent writing project, you can sign on to do a clinical internship domestically or abroad, or if you’re like me, you can zone out in one of your fall classes last year and see a chalkboard announcement that said “Want to go to India for J-term?  Pound Hall 101, 7 p.m. tonight.”  It wasn’t a whole lot of information, but it was enough for me.  Um, yes I did want to go to India for J-term, thank you. 

Fast forward to the part where I got selected for the trip (paper proposal, then lottery) and then arrived in Bombay with nine other HLS students who would soon become friends.  It was hot and humid, and I had made the mistake of watching Slumdog Millionaire the night before I left, so I was paranoid about getting sick from “fake” bottled water and was thus hauling around about 15 jumbo bottles of Poland Spring from the Newark airport in my luggage.  My soon-to-be friend and roommate Neema taught me that there are certain brands of water that you can’t tamper with the seal, which was a much better solution to hydration than my brilliant—but backbreaking—plan.   

We worked in Indian law firms, which was an amazing opportunity to see a legal system that’s currently closed to foreign law firms.  A lot of people think India may open its legal practice in the near future, and I guess if that happens, the ten of us are going to have a few weeks’ head start on everyone else!  The work was both substantive and doable, which is a rare combination in short internships.  I did contract interpretation, corporate plans, litigation work, and met with clients (including Bollywood directors, how fun is that?), and the whole trip was expertly planned and really well thought out.   

I did think I was going to die a couple of times, but really, the cab driver only fell asleep for a few seconds, and we were only going like 60 km per hour.  And the only reason that wild monkey attacked me when we were hiking on Elephanta Island was because it was almost 100 degrees and he wanted my Limca (Indian version of Sprite, totally delicious and refreshing—or at least it was until a toddler-sized wild monkey ripped it out of my hands and drank it).  That monkey had his own hydration plan, and it was a lot better than my Poland Spring debacle.  Now I just have to choose what to do this year. . .

 - Erin