OPIA Blog

An article from The Nation this past summer discusses the subprime mortgage crisis and its legal consequences in Atlanta, one of the cities hardest hit by the housing and loan crisis.

The article highlights how the subprime mortgage crisis played out both on the macro and micro level. Focusing on few family in Atlanta, Georgia, the article tries to focus on what the family went through in their efforts to keep their home.

Sarah Bolling an ‘07 alumni, is featured in the article. Bolling, who is working for the Legal Aid Society in Atlanta, is defending the Mitchell family and other families hit hard by the mortgage crisis.

To read the article, clink on this link

Sean Carter was a lawyer. He studied at Harvard with Barack Obama and comfortably worked as in-house counsel for a California mortgage company. Then he realized he was bored and deciding to unexpectedly change jobs, he pursued his other passion: comedy.

“Every month I’d take the same eight mortgage agreements and change the names and dates. It was not exactly the hardest job in the world. It was not heavy lifting. I was just bored,” he said. “It wasn’t horrible. How could you hate it? I worked indoors. I could do it asleep. Most of the time I did.”

Now working as a full-time legal humorist, he finds his job to finally have some meaning. He travels the country giving talks on subjects ranging from legal ethics to stress management. The difference between what he does and what a comedian does, as he sees it, is that he says “important things in a funny way.” Ultimately, he hopes that his lectures at corporate gatherings and organization meetings will inspire others to quit their careers and go after their dreams.

A recent article by the New York Law Journal profiles Robert D. McCreanor, a young HLS graduate who found a passion for public interest early in his legal career. Having recently moved to New York, he was approached by the immigrant residents of his building for help with a landlord hardly living up to his lease. Since then, he has founded the Tenant Advocacy Project with the backing of St. John’s University, as a one-man operation designed to represent recent immigrants being preyed on by their landlords. While enduring many challenges along the way, including potential bankruptcy, he now plans to leave a private career at the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison once the project becomes an official law clinic of St. John’s. To read more, please click here.

As we prepare for the arrival of students in a few weeks, we have also been looking back on the past year. In perusing the archives of the Record, we found a number of stories that highlight a year of public service at HLS. A selection of the Record’s public interest stories are linked below.

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In its Public Interest Issue, the Michigan Law Journal includes two excellent articles about public service.

The article (.pdf) by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm ‘87 focuses on justice in public interest lawyering. Writing that “justice was the concept that for me turned legalese into poetry,” Granholm argues that all lawyers must serve the public interest, reminding us of our oath to uphold truth, justice, and honor.

Michael Steinberg’s article (.pdf) focuses on the challenges of entering the public service field, concluding that the rewards greatly outweigh the sacrifices: “I cannot stand idly by and watch our freedoms slip away.”

Travis Altman writes in TheStreet.com that the rising cost of a law degree is harming grads’ abilities to go into public interest work. “Attorneys from the class of 2005 borrowed nearly $80,000 on average if they went to a private institution and just over $50,000 if they attended a public institution,” he writes. Altman cites Equal Justice Works as one way law grads can find assistance while doing public service work.

Harvard Law School’s Low Income Protection Plan (LIPP), the first law school program of its kind, is designed to ameliorate this post-graduate financial issue, preserving freedom of job choice for HLS grads. Lea Weems ‘05, who receives financial help from both Equal Justice Works and Harvard, is cited in Altman’s article as one graduate who lives a relatively comfortable lifestyle while doing public interest work in Chicago. “‘I am in a very lucky position,’ she says.”

Even after graduation, we’d still like to send you news of current public interest opportunities. And of course hear any news from you! To subscribe, send your post-graduation email address to pia@law.harvard.edu and specify if you’ll be a clerk or young alum next year.