OPIA Mentoring Community

Volunteer to join our online mentoring community and serve as a valuable contact for other HLS students! This resource, run through Sidebar, the Harvard Law School networking site, replaces the 2L/3L public interest contact list formerly maintained by OPIA. We’re excited to move this feature online; Sidebar allows you to search for students based on their interest areas, practice settings, and numerous other criteria.

All students may sign up to serve as mentors or to reach out to others students for advice and support. First-year students, this is a great way for you learn more about the public interest community at HLS while you are considering your many options on and off campus.

Join Sidebar and the OPIA Mentoring Community!

You can join the community by updating your Sidebar profile, indicating that you are willing to mentor, and becoming a member of the “OPIA Mentoring Community” group. We’re listed under “HLS Endorsed Groups.” Students looking just to contact others do not need to indicate that they are willing to mentor.

In addition to filling out the fields on your education, interests, and work experience, please include information on clinics that you’ve taken and your public interest experience before coming to HLS. We also hope that 2Ls and 3Ls will use it not just as mentors but also to seek advice from each other.

Many of you already have Sidebar profiles, set up by admissions or another group at HLS. If you don’t have a profile, simply request access using the link on Sidebar’s homepage: http://sidebar.law.harvard.edu.

No formal partnerships will be set up; rather, we will encourage the 1L class to reach out to the students they believe will be personally helpful. OPIA will be holding several informal social events this year – brown bags, happy hours and potlucks – that will give you the chance to meet and connect further. We’ll highlight these events through our regular emails and on the Sidebar group’s front page.