Jeanne Charn and Gary Bellow
(Photo by Martha Stewart)

Founders

In the early 1970s, only a decade after graduating from Harvard Law School, Gary Bellow had already earned the reputation of being one of the best legal aid lawyers in the country. His fierce advocacy on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised, including representing Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and the Black Panthers, and his original approaches to clinical education at the University of Southern California Law School attracted national attention. Among those taking notice of Bellow’s successes and progressive ideas was Harvard Law School.

In 1971, in response to student complaints that there was no relevance to their legal education, the law school recruited Bellow to establish a clinical program similar to the one he had co-founded at USC. Initially, Bellow agreed to return east for one year as a visiting professor. The following year, he joined the Harvard faculty as a tenured professor, teaching two elective clinical courses per semester: the Lawyering Process–Civil and the Lawyering Process–Criminal, both of which continue to be offered today. Bellow spent the next three decades at Harvard, until his untimely death in April 2000, establishing one of the largest and most successful clinical programs in the country. 

Bellow had to create Harvard’s clinical program from the ground up, starting with establishing a staff that would help him develop and administer the extensive program of practice placements where students would be assigned for their clinical work. In 1972, he received support for the creation of an Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs, which was filled by Jeanne Charn, the first woman to hold a high-level administrative position at Harvard Law School. Like Bellow, Charn too had dedicated her legal career to helping the poor, having worked in legal aid throughout law school, and afterward in the Community Legal Assistance office in Cambridge and at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute before returning to Harvard Law School as Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs.

The meeting of Bellow and Charn marked the beginning of one of those rare and powerful alliances, a true meeting of mind and spirit. Their combined commitment and ardor for eradicating poverty, providing not just legal access to all but quality legal services, and reforming the American legal education system fueled a nearly 30-year collaboration that ultimately would expand to a life partnership and marriage. Those who worked closely with the two describe them as soul mates—in life and work, and in every other sense of the term. Together, their innovative contributions to improving the delivery of legal services and expanding the scope of legal education would help thousands of clients and students and ideally serve as a model for other institutions.

For more information on Gary, please see www.garybellow.org.

In 2006, Jeanne stepped down as Director of the Center after 27 years.  In addition to her teaching responsibilities as Senior Lecturer on Law, Jeanne is also director of the Harvard Law School Bellow-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project established to explore and make recommendations on expanding access to legal advice and assistance. Jeanne can be reached at: charn@law.harvard.edu.

Text by Shira Shaiman
The WilmerHale Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School of Harvard Law School: Ten Years of Creative Collaboration Among a Law School, Its Legal Services Center, and a Private Law Firm [PDF]