HLS in Focus

1L and Chair of La Alianza’s Conference on Law and Policy, Reuben Rodriguez, recently filled us in on this annual event.

Q: What is La Alianza and in particular what is the Law and Policy Conference all about?

A: La Alianza is the organization for Hispanic and Latino students here at Harvard Law School.  Our mission is to make HLS the nation’s premier center for Latino legal education by fostering a sense of community among Latino students and raising awareness of Latino legal issues.

One of the major events every year is the Latino Law and Policy Conference where we bring leaders from the world of law, business, and politics to talk about pressing issues of interest to the Latino community.  This year’s theme was “Building Bridges: Connecting the U.S. and Latin America.”  Our keynote speaker was Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, and we had panels on the Obama Administration’s Latin America Policy, Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime, Domestic Policy Affecting Latinos, the Summit of the Americas, and the Obama Campaign’s Latino Vote Efforts.  Finally, we topped the whole thing off with a Salsa party with a live band on Saturday night.  Planned in conjunction with the Latino Caucus at the Harvard Kennedy School, the conference is currently in its twelfth year.

Q: What has gone into preparing for this conference and what have you gotten out of the experience as co-chair?

A: We started planning the conference back in October.  Going into it, I’d never planned anything larger than dinner reservations, so I was somewhat unprepared for the experience.  I mostly learned what to do next along the way.  Starting in November I met weekly with representatives from the Kennedy School to discuss conference themes, panels, guests, promotion, and logistics.  Apart from larger thematic challenges, I was responsible for the logistical intricacies involved in any conference such as booking hotel rooms, updating the conference website, ordering tote bags, and searching for speakers.  While stressful at times, the experience taught me a lot about all the little details that go into planning an event and I made some good friends at the Kennedy School in the process.  It’s not every day you get to hang out with a major world figure  like Secretary Insulza, although perhaps it happens more frequently here at Harvard than other places.

Q: What do you think are some pressing issues facing Latinos in the legal world right now?  What is the organization doing to address them?

A: The past few decades have seen a great influx of Latinos into positions throughout the legal world, from partners at law firms to general counsels at government agencies; however, it remains a pressing issue to make sure that Latinos are continually represented at all levels of the legal world and in rates proportional to the number of Latinos in the community.  La Alianza is working to provide a community at Harvard Law School that will enable students not just to have a positive experience at HLS, but to excel academicaly, socially, and professionally.  Even before they arrive on campus, La Alianza sends incoming Latino students helpful literature like Getting to Maybe.  Once the students arrive, La Alianza is a connection to successful alumni mentors across the country and the world.  We hope these and other programs will encourage the further growth and success of the Latino legal community.

Q: Why should admitted and prospective students seeking a strong Latino community choose Harvard?

A: Harvard Law School and the Cambridge and greater Boston community is rich with culture.  The Latinos at HLS have worked diligently to create and foster strong relationships both within the Law School and the greater community.  With a dedicated student community and Latino alumni association, the Latino community at HLS is filled with opportunity to express oneself and to get involved in a variety of facets at the Law School.  From organizing social events like our much beloved Salsa Party, to working on more substantive projects like the annual Latino Law and Public Policy Conference and the new Latino Symposium Speaker Series, the possibilities for a Latino student to engage his or her new peers and the broader Latino community are many.

As for me, the thing that jumped out at me about Harvard was the sense of dynamism around here.  There’s just this sense of excitement that everyone seems to share, whether it’s about their clinic, their journal, their reading group, or a group like Alianza.  I saw it when I went to the Admitted Applicant Program and I’ve seen it throughout this year.  Being in a place where so many people are excited about what they, you can’t help but want to be a part of it.

Justin Levitt graduated HLS in 2002, with a joint degree from the Kennedy School. “I always had more than a passing interest in public policy, but hadn’t really figured out how that interest fit in a future career.” Then in law school, he found his way fairly quickly into the public interest nonprofit world, and civil rights law in particular.

Give us a sense of what you’ve been doing since you graduated from HLS.

Since I graduated, I’ve been immersed in elections and voting rights work, and very happily so. Immediately after a clerkship, I drove to Little Rock to volunteer on General Wes Clark’s presidential campaign, with a utility infielder’s role cycling through a fair number of responsibilities in five very short months. I then went to work in Washington as the in-house counsel for America Coming Together, which would become the country’s largest independent voter registration and mobilization operation. When the 2004 campaign cycle was over, I moved up to New York, to woo the woman I’d started dating when we were both 1Ls, with lockers in the basement of Pound Hall; we’ve been married for the last two years, and I still feel unfathomably lucky for every one of those days.

In New York, I joined the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law: part think-tank, part advocacy shop, and part nonprofit law firm. I’ve been there ever since, working on voting rights and election administration and redistricting, with a brief leave this past fall to help run the national voter protection program of the Obama campaign. The Brennan Center gives me the chance to conduct original research, to publish for both scholarly and public audiences, to advocate for voting rights policies, to counsel federal and state administrators and legislators, and then to litigate, when all else fails to deliver the change the voters deserve.

What classes or activities exist at HLS for those students interested in public policy? Did you partake in any of them? If so, how do you think they’ve shaped the way you decided to approach your career?

There are countless classes and activities at HLS for anyone interested in public policy, along the spread of the ideological spectrum, and on any substantive topic you might imagine. Actually, one of the biggest surprises for me in the HLS curriculum was the degree to which most of the classes involved public policy to some degree, from first-year torts to the most specialized third-year electives. Clinical courses even more so; there is no better way to get a handle on policy problems than to get some hands-on experience in the area. And now as a practitioner, I’ve got an even greater appreciation for the way in which each and every class informs policy. In public interest litigation, for example, I’m constantly wishing that I’d paid more attention in civil procedure.

As for activities, one of the virtues of an institution the size of HLS is that there are so many active students with varied interests, any three of whom can and will form a club of some kind. So there are avowedly partisan groups, and groups that focus on a public policy subject, and then there are lectures and speakers year-round, not just at HLS but throughout the entire university campus. I was involved in some of these activities — I was active in the Student Public Interest Network, and in the Civil Rights Project, and on the founding board of Harvard’s American Constitution Society chapter, all of which are connected to the public policy world in various ways. There were dozens of other options that friends chose instead. And at least for me, one of the principal benefits of all of these activities was the chance to get to know the other students involved — I spent far more time just talking or hanging out with friends, many of whom now have fascinating policy-related careers, than I did in policy-related activity time.

Having been out in the world of politics and public policy now for a few years, what would you tell someone interested in following a similar path?

Dive in. The single best way to get involved in politics is to volunteer on a campaign; the single best way to get involved in influencing public policy is to find a subject-matter that interests you, find someone who’s working in the area, and offer to help. Your ability and your hard work will be recognized and rewarded  even if it won’t always be recognized immediately. There are many different paths to make a career in public policy possible. Some start off looking for a job in their chosen subject, while others make their policy interest their avocation; some aim for public office, and others prefer to work outside of the government. There is no “best” answer, and the only common thread is that the people who have made the most successful lives in the public policy world have spent an enormous amount of time and energy working on the subjects that interest them most.

Any advice for the incoming class?

Have fun. You’ll have plenty of friends at HLS; spend time with them, and they will be some of your best friends for years afterward. Talk to your professors outside of class, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they are extraordinary people. Look around enough to find something that really fires you up, something you can get truly passionate about, and stick with it for a while. Make sure that the path you happen to be on at the moment is the path you actually want to be on, and not just the path of least resistance and switch course if you have to. Wander out to the Common on the first night it really snows. Have fun.

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!

If someone told you that the solution to save the planet was building more skyscrapers, you probably wouldn’t believe it. Yet, as explained by Harvard economics professor, Ed Glaeser, in a recent discussion with the HLS Real Estate Association, if you want to be good to the environment, you should stay away from it. In fact, suburbanite Americans are guilty of leaving some of the deepest carbon footprints on the national landscape. Professor Glaeser’s most recent work looks at “the greenness of cities,” with a particular focus on carbon dioxide emissions and urban development. “When environmentalists resist new construction in dense cities,” he said, “they inadvertently ensure that it will take place somewhere else with higher carbon emissions.”

In his study with Professor Matthew Kahn of UCLA, Professor Glaeser began by estimating the amount of carbon dioxide an average household (measured by family size and income) would emit if it settled in a variety of major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and then measured comparative data between projected central city versus suburban emissions within new or recently built homes. “We calculate carbon emissions from four different sources,” said Glaeser, “including home heating, electricity, driving, and public transportation, which make up approximately 40% of America’s carbon footprint.”

When examining the results, it may not come as a surprise that the five metropolitan areas with the lowest levels of carbon emissions are all in California. Naturally temperate climates and dedicated environmentalists battling for the use of energy efficient appliances and hydroelectric power are two factors that make colder or warmer cities like Rochester (with more heating emissions) or Houston (more electricity use) appear ‘browner.’ And New York, in spite of low electricity usage and impressively low transportation-related CO2 emissions, tends to use dirtier sources of power such as coal. Sunbelt cities, like Atlanta and Memphis, ranked worst not by heating their homes but rather by electricity (dirtier sources of energy and hot summers) and the geographic sprawl that demands driving. “The data suggests that households in dense urban areas have significantly lower carbon emissions than households in the suburbs,” said Glaeser.

The question of environmental damage associated with carbon emissions nationwide remains. Even by the most conservative estimates, new homes in Memphis do more than $600 worth of environmental harm per year than homes in San Francisco, which are associated with fewer tons of carbon. “Before carbon taxes,” said Glaeser, “the country should rethink its land-use policies which currently push people towards high emissions areas and away from greener ones.” Specifically, Glaeser referred to California’s strict land use regulations that inhibit the growth both upward and outward of cities. “By restricting local development, California regulators just make that construction occur elsewhere… [more] building in the state would reduce average commute lengths and improve per-capita emissions. Higher densities could also justify more investment in new, low-emissions energy plants.”

Professor Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston.

For students interested in 2010 clerkships, spring is the time to start getting serious about the process. In a recent orientation program held by the Office of Career Services, Associate Director for Judicial Clerkships and JD Advising, Kirsten Solberg, covered such topics as application components, assessing one’s candidacy, researching judges, and the timetable for current 2Ls.
The bulk of Solberg’s discussion of clerkships focused on clerkship applications. Cover letters and resumes are par for the course, but the weightiest components typically are grades, recommendation letters, and especially writing samples. Networking also goes a long way in this process. “Become acquainted with 3Ls clerking next year,” suggested Solberg. “Reach out to family and friends who are or know judges… by asking questions and advice you build relationships.”

Self assessment is another big part of the process, including the type of court you envision for yourself and researching the judges to whom you apply to find personality and interest matches. “Trial courts tend to offer more practical work,” offered Solberg. “I think it’s the best complement to law school on a theoretical level.” Appellate courts on the other hand tend to focus more on legal arguments with more individual research on a fewer number of cases.

How many judges should one apply to? “That’s a difficult decision… most applicants apply to anywhere between 70 to 80 judges. This is a high number, but this process is by no means a sure thing. Be flexible and ask questions.”

For more information including tips and pointers, please visit the Office of Career Services website.

After seventeen years of making his way around Washington, Jeff Senger ’88 is now the Deputy Chief Counsel of the Food and Drug Administration. During a recent brown bag lunch he offered some general wisdom about lawyering in DC and with the FDA in particular. After several years working in the civil rights division of the DOJ, working in alternative dispute resolution under Janet Reno, and a rotation in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Jeff took on some management work in the environmental, health, and tax divisions that honed his interest in public health.

Indeed, as the second-ranking and senior career lawyer at the FDA, he now oversees and manages the legal affairs of an agency that regulates 25 percent of every dollar Americans spend. At the FDA, he said, lawyers and policymakers are helping people more directly than at the DOJ. “Food and medicine are more primal,” he joked. With the rapid expansion of health law practices across the country, the FDA is an especially active agency. One of the latest contentious cases is that of Wyeth v. Levine, a Supreme Court case the drug industry is watching with bated breath. The particulars involve a Vermont musician and migraine sufferer who allegedly lost part of one arm due to side effects caused from the misadministration of Wyeth’s nausea drug Phenergan. The key question: does the fact that drugs are regulated by the federal government preempt drug companies from being sued in state court? “It’s a legal and public policy battle to which there is no easy answer, particularly since the drug is so effective when administered properly,” said Senger.

So what are the advantages of public sector lawyering? “The diversity, experience, and weight of responsibilities in addition to better hours and the flexibility to travel, teach, and write are all arguments for government life,” he said.

In a recent phone interview with staffer Julia Foresman, HLS alumnus Ethan Levisohn ‘06 talked about his career path in criminal justice including the DOJ application process and considerations for those interested in pursuing a career in government.  After graduation, Ethan clerked for Judge Charles Sifton in the Eastern District of New York and now serves in the Criminal Division of the Public Integrity Section in the US Department of Justice.

Ethan Levisohn: (18:40)

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.”

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!