Recent Highlights

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  Law on the Home Front

  Last year alone, 12,233 home foreclosures were completed in Massachusetts, where foreclosure rates are considered elevated and are predicted to remain so. This is the story of how the student-run Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and two teaching clinics at the school’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center—the Post-Foreclosure Eviction Defense Housing Clinic and the Predatory Lending/Consumer Protection Clinic—are working together to use activism, community lawyering, bankruptcy to help redirect the path of the foreclosure wave in Boston.

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  How Judges Decide

  Arraignments on drug charges. Restraining orders in cases of domestic violence. Default judgments on overdue credit card payments and appeals on speeding tickets. When Judge Sabita Singh, an associate justice on the Massachusetts District Court, presides over these and a wide range of other civil and criminal matters, Allison Lukas ’11 is there.

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  Safe harbor: winning asylum for refugees from persecution

  After countless hours of interviewing their client, digging through documents and working with experts to prepare for two court hearings, students in the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic got what they were after: a grant of asylum.

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  Enforcing Domestic Human Rights

  From filing an emergency guardianship petition in probate court ensuring that the children of a dying mother are raised by the person she chooses, to appealing the denial of a disability claim in federal court for a critically ill client, the Harvard Law School Health Law and Policy Clinic prides itself on taking the toughest cases and working to shape policy to protect some of society’s most vulnerable people.

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  Soap Opera Stars Get Assist from HLS Negotiation and Mediation Clinic

  With the future of television soap operas looking grim, a group of actors participated in a day-long training with HLS’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinic to learn negotiation skills for dealing with networks during tough economic times and a changing daytime TV industry.

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  The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic lands a major court victory

  The Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic landed a major immigration court victory in early September when it obtained asylum status for a parent and his two children whose family members were singled out for torture and murder in El Salvador by a notoriously violent gang.

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  Through Harvard’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinic, students test classroom experience in the real-world

  Through participation in the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinic (HNMCP), nearly 30 Harvard Law School students have the opportunity to work on projects for real-world clients each year. Founded by Clinical Professor of Law Robert Bordone ’97 in 2006, it is the first legal clinic in the U.S. focusing on dispute systems design and conflict management.

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  Students provide much-needed legal defense services through HLS Criminal Justice Institute

  On June 3, as her classmates celebrated Class Day and prepared for graduation ceremonies, Kristina Matic ’09 stood in Roxbury District Court cross-examining a police officer who claimed her client had driven recklessly on his motorcycle and resisted arrest.

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  Law School students lend a legal hand

  The following article, "Law School students lend a legal hand," written by Colleen Walsh, was published in the May 21 issue of the Harvard Gazette. . The students profiled in the story, David Haller ’09 and Nick Hartigan ’09, both received the Outstanding Student Award from the Clinical Legal Education Association (read related story).