Info/Law

I am a little late to the game, but did not want to miss the opportunity to highlight the new job opening at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School (also blogged by the Center’s Executive Director, Professor John Palfrey, here). The Center is looking to hire an Assistant Director to help run the Center’s influential, and ever-expanding, Clinical Program in Cyberlaw.

As the outgoing incumbent occupant of this position, I’m happy to add my own endorsement and encouragement to anyone who might be interested in the job. It’s terrific work — you will get a good sense of how cutting-edge the legal issues are by perusing the list of recent cases from the Clinical Program’s home page. The cases involve both litigation and transactional work at the frontier of high technology and intellectual property law. The cases require work of a very high caliber, but the program is staffed by a number of excellent experienced attorneys, and the Harvard law students who work in the clinic are first-rate.

The job is full-time, but not unreasonably taxing — the time commitment involved differs substantially from, say, a job in private practice, such as the one I had before transitioning to academia. Serving as the Clinical Program’s Assistant Director left adequate time for me to write a journal article, start a family, co-teach classes in the fall and spring, find a full-time teaching position, and maintain a modest outside consulting practice. The clinical position would be particularly well suited to a private practitioner aiming to transition (in the short or mid term) to an academic career.

The greatest advantage of the position is that you become a part of the broader Berkman family. People who have been around Berkman and the Berkmanites for a long time are probably unaware of how exhilarating — transformative, even — the experience is for those who are new to it. Getting to meet and work with top-notch experts in the IP and cyber fields (people such as my estimable co-bloggers) is only the beginning. Participating actively in the life of the Center — attending fellows hours, lunch presentations, lectures by visiting researchers, and the like — is like riding a rocket sled; it’s the fastest way I know of to become conversant (and indeed, even expert) in a host of cutting-edge legal and policy debates that touch on the Internet and communications technology. It has been a wonderful job, and as much as I am looking forward to my new job, I will miss day-to-day life at Berkman a great deal.

Filed under: Berkman