A new blog post from the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program discusses student work with the Harvard Immigration Project’s Bond Hearing Project’s campaign to provide free representation to detained immigrants seeking release from custody. In an excerpt from the post below, students talk about the value of their clinical experience. Read the article at HIRC’s blog.

SPOs, like HIP, allow first-year students, who are not yet eligible for enrollment in a clinic, to begin learning valuable legal skills, such as interviewing a client and presenting an argument in court.  These skills can then be developed in greater depth when students take advantage of the myriad clinical opportunities at HLS following their first year.

“You can do all of this, and even as a first year law student, really have the opportunity to help someone,” Heeger said.

Vigil added that the Bond Hearing Project and other HIP projects are valuable because they ground the law school experience: “You put in a lot, but you get so much more out of it in terms of finding your motivation and direction, and getting back to why we decided to come to law school in the first place.”