In May 2017, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court extended the American with Disabilities Act to mentally and physically disabled prisoners seeking parole, ruling that the state must help them get support systems in place in the community—thanks to years of work by students with Harvard’s Prison Legal Assistance Project.
A number of Harvard Law students from the Class of 2017 received special awards during Class Day. They were recognized for their outstanding leadership, citizenship, compassion and dedication to their studies and the profession.
Erika Johnson is this year’s winner of the David A. Grossman Exemplary Clinical Student Award, which is named in honor of the late Clinical Professor David Grossman ’88 and recognizes students who have demonstrated excellence in representing individual clients and undertaking advocacy or policy reform projects.
Harvard Law School student Lauren Kuhlik ’17 has won the 2017 Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)-Northeast Law Student Ethics Award, an award created to recognize students who have demonstrated exemplary commitment to ethics.
Five Harvard Law School students and recent graduates have been awarded Skadden Fellowships to support their work in public service.
Harvard Law School has produced plenty of senators, Supreme Court justices and two presidents, but no graduate has ever served as vice president. This election has presented the first opportunity in decades to end that drought with both Democrat Tim Kaine ’83 and Libertarian William Weld ’70 on the ballot as vice presidential candidates.
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.
On April 20, Harvard Law School honored two members of its community—Donna Harati ’15 and Laura Maslow-Armand ’92—with the Gary Bellow Public Service Award, established in 2001 to recognize commitment to public interest work.
A group of 29 foreign military lawyers, representing 21 countries, and enrolled in the Defense Institute for International Legal Studies (DIILS) (a program run by the program run by the U.S. Department of Defense), toured Harvard Law School on June 7 at the invitation of John Fitzpatrick ’87, a supervising attorney and senior clinical instructor at the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project.
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”
Those words, written by noted death penalty lawyer Bryan Stevenson ’85, were very much on the mind of Katie Wozencroft ’09 this summer, when she made the four-hour drive from Atlanta to an Alabama prison where condemned prisoners are executed.
