This year’s Andrew L. Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award was presented to Chad Baker, honored for demonstrating an extraordinary commitment to improving and delivering high quality volunteer legal services to disadvantaged communities. Baker contributed over 2000 pro bono hours working with the Tenant Advocacy Project, the Prison Legal Assistance Project, and the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.
Baker helped revitalize HLAB’s Social Security disability practice by recruiting students to take disability cases, creating and running a streamlined investigation and intake system, and developing an enormous resource-rich internal wiki containing all of the materials a Bureau student could need to handle a first disability law case.
The Andrew L. Kaufman Pro Bono Service Award is granted each year in honor of Professor Andrew Kaufman ’54, who has been instrumental in creating and supporting the Pro Bono Service Program at HLS. The J.D. student in the graduating class who performs the highest number of pro bono service hours receives the award and a $500 honorarium.
HLS requires all students to perform 50 hours of pro bono services but most go far beyond. This year, 10 students exceeded 2000 hours of service and 135 students volunteered more than 1000 hours.
Read more on the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs blog