Clinics

Through the Clinical Legal Education program, HLS students represent clients in actual cases under the supervision of Harvard faculty and staff attorneys. With clinical placements in more than 30 areas of the law and the opportunity for students to create their own, HLS has more clinical opportunities than any law school in the world, including:

Child Advocacy Program: Students represent children in advocacy cases and promote systemic change through impact litigation and legislative reform.

Criminal Justice Institute: Students handle misdemeanor and felony cases in court, and represent juvenile clients in administrative and school hearings.

Criminal Prosecution Clinic: Students represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts prosecuting non-jury District Court criminal cases.

Cyberlaw and Intellectual Property Clinic (Berkman Center for Internet and Society): Students engage in cutting-edge Net issues including governance, privacy, and content control.

Death Penalty Clinic: Students work for death penalty resource centers, primarily in the southern United States.

Environmental Law and Policy Clinic: Students pursue litigation and legislative reforms in a wide spectrum of environmental issues.

Gender Violence Clinic: Students explore the causes and effects of gender violence through work at Equality Now and other organizations.

Government Lawyer Clinic: Students work in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boston and with other prosecutors and agencies.

Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic: Students represent applicants for U.S. refugee status and related protections.

Harvard Legal Aid Bureau: A civil legal services office run by students who represent low-income clients with housing, family law and other problems.

International Human Rights Clinic (Human Rights Program): Students work on issues related to the human rights movement, and travel abroad with clinical supervisors to promote the rule of law and document abuses.

Judicial Process: Students work with individual justices of the District Court, Boston Municipal Court, Juvenile Court, and Housing Court Departments of the Massachusetts Trial Court.

Negotiation and Mediation Clinic: Involves dispute resolution skill-building to prepare students for complex, multi-level negotiations.

Sports Law: Sports Law clinical placements are in a variety of settings including legal departments of major leagues or sports franchises, and with law firms and lawyers doing sports law in representing individual players or teams/leagues.

Supreme Court Clinic: Students work on high-profile and high-impact cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, federal courts of appeal, and state supreme courts.

War Crimes: This clinic will commence in the Winter 2007 term, with Assistant Clinical Professor Alex Whiting supervising a group of students through an introduction to international courts and training at the Hague.

WilmerHale Legal Services Center: At the center, located in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, students work with clinical instructors to represent clients in one of 14 diverse clinics.

Independent Clinical: 2L, 3L, and LLM students can also design a clinical placement in areas not included in the clinical curriculum.

Read more about our clinics, including what students have to say about them, in Clinical Voices.

1L Practice -- Student Practice Organizations

Although students must wait until their 2L or 3L year to participate in a clinical, there are many opportunities for 1L students to work directly with clients through the student-run Student Practice Organizations (SPOs). Student Practice Organizations are open to 2L and 3Ls as well.

Watch a video of a panel of students talk about SPOs (from September 16, 2008)

HLS Advocates for Human Rights: Students engage in human rights advocacy including representing the interests of victims of human rights violations.

Harvard Defenders: Students represent low-income clients in criminal show-cause hearings and welfare fraud investigations.

Mediation Program (HMP): Students provide mediation services for clients in landlord-tenant, small claims, and other cases.

Prison Legal Assistance Project (PLAP): Students represent inmates in Massachusetts state prisons in disciplinary hearings and other matters.

Tenant Advocacy Project (TAP): Provides assistance to low- and moderate-income tenants facing eviction or with other legal problems.