Bureau History

For over nine decades, the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau has served as the first professional experience for hundreds of lawyers. Many former members—including such distinguished alumni as Supreme Court Justice William Brennan ’31, Governor Deval Patrick, and Professor Erwin Chemerinsky—have made immense contributions to the legal profession.

The Bureau was founded on the twin principles of public service and practical legal education. The students who are elected annually to the Bureau participate in the Legal Aid Bureau serve low income clients while learning powerful lessons about the legal profession.

In earlier days, "student-run" often meant largely unsupervised legal practice. While the level of case supervision has increased dramatically over the years, the student-run nature of the organization—described by some alumni as its "hallmark"—remains an integral part of the Bureau. Students have made and will continue to make most major policy decisions concerning practice, community, and pedagogy.


Here are some interesting excerpts from the Bureau's history as told in the 1996 book, A History of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, by Harry Sandick and John A. Freedman.

Founding of the Bureau
In the spring of 1913, several law students affiliated with the Phillips Brooks Society decided that “provision of legal aid and assistance to those unable to meet the expense of hiring counsel” would allow law students to do charitable work in an area in which they might be uniquely suited.

By 1914, offices for client meetings were established at the Prospect Union in Central Square, and the interlocking boards of the Legal Aid Bureau and the Phillips Brooks Society kept the organizations closely linked. Initially, the Bureau membership included twenty-five students selected on the basis of scholarship and general amenability to the work at hand. The Board of Directors was composed of a president, vice-president, secretary-treasurer, and two at-large members –a second- and third-year student. Even though the Bureau was less than 10 years old, it was praised by Reginald Heber Smith, the noted legal services pioneer, for being “the only law school organization of its type in the country which has justified its existence by serious work and substantial achievements.”

Uncertain of Student Practice Before Rule 3:03, Adopted in April 1975
"With the continued legality of student practice in doubt, the Bureau voted to close its doors on October 8, 1935. . . Dean Roscoe Pound called the Bureau's closure ‘perhaps the most serious event of the past school year’. . . The Boston Herald urged the General Court to ‘enable the Bureau to resume its useful work.’” [Reopened for business March 8, 1937]

The questionable legality of law practices by students continued to influence the Bureau’s relationship with the law school administration. In 1949, when an article in the Harvard Crimson stated that Bureau members were “students who are permitted by Massachusetts law to argue any cases necessary in the Massachusetts courts, without being members of the bar,” Dean Griswold wrote a letter to the Bureau explaining that such a statement must be immediately corrected. Dean Griswold's letter suggests that although twelve years had passed since the Bureau reopened after the student practice crisis, law school officials still believed that “the legal status of the Legal Aid Bureau was very delicate." It also reflects the law school's uncertainty about the Bureau's value. One member at the time believed that "Dean Griswold was most dubious about us—as we read it, he feared the good we did was not worth the harm we could cause HLS.”

The Bureau's Brush With McCarthyism
In 1952, two Harvard law students were called to testify before a subcommittee of the House Un-American Activities Committee at a hearing in Boston. Both Jonathan and David Lubell '54 declined to answer questions about membership in subversive organizations, invoking their Fifth Amendment privilege. The episode resulted in some unfavorable media coverage for the law school. Jonathan Lubell was a Bureau member in 1953, and David Lubell was elected to Bureau membership that year. However, in April 1953, the Board requested Jonathan's resignation and voted not to offer membership to David.

The vice-president of the Bureau at the time describes the decision as follows: "We (the president of the Bureau and I) were told by Dean Griswold that he could not guarantee the continued existence of the Bureau if we extended membership to the Lubells. The Board of the Bureau, after extended discussion, voted to deny them membership." Another member from that era described this matter as "by far the most memorable Legal Aid episode for me. There were only two of us at the Bureau who fully supported [David's] right to be elected to the Bureau and the fight was a tough one." Although the Lubell brothers were readmitted to Bureau membership in the early 1970s, the decision to expel the brothers could not be undone.

The Bureau and Diversity
In 1951, shortly after the first women were admitted to Harvard Law School, Mary O'Connell '53 and Ann Pfohl '53 became the first women elected to the Bureau. In February of 1953, O'Connell was elected a junior director, becoming the first female member of the Board of Directors. Fourteen years later, in 1967, Deanne Siemer '68 was elected Bureau president, becoming not only the first woman to serve as Bureau president but also the first woman to head an honorary organization at Harvard Law School.

In the early 1970s, the membership of the Legal Aid Bureau reflected the larger law school population, which was overwhelmingly white and male. Although this imbalance—most clients being poor women and most members of the Bureau being well-off men—did not, in and of itself, prevent the delivery of high quality legal services, the lack of membership diversity did deprive clients of the opportunity to be represented by students who might better identify with unique problems of class, gender, and race.

The Bureau is now committed to diversity. The Bureau’s diversity policy is as follows:

Giving Up Its Honorary Society Status
“Perhaps the single-most controversial event in Bureau history was the decision to convert the Bureau from an honorary society based on grades.” In 1969, the Bureau was forced to abandon their grades competition when the law school formed a "Special Committee on Examinations, Grading, and Related Matters" headed by Professor Robert Keeton. The Keeton Committee recommended that the honorary status of the Legal Aid Bureau, the Law Review, and Board of Student Advisors be ended. As a result, the administration refused to allow the Bureau to use the rank list. Since then, the Bureau has used a blind application process. “The Bureau long treasured its status as one of Harvard's three honorary organizations.” From 1969 to 2007, when the Board of Directors radically changed the application process, various blind selection processes were used.

Development of the Bureau As a Clinical Program
In December 1970 the Bureau learned that Gary Bellow '60 had been hired to teach “The Lawyering Process,” Harvard's first true clinical class. The course description of the class promised to consider “the nature and dynamic of such lawyer tasks as interviewing, negotiation, drafting and counseling.” In addition to class work, the class would also include fieldwork “intensively supervised by people who have limited caseloads and who see themselves primarily as teachers.” The Bureau, both in a Board vote and in a membership vote, agreed to commit eight students to participate, with a few minor limitations to insure Bureau autonomy.

“The early 1970s saw the development of a clinical program at Harvard Law School. The establishment of a clinical program had three important effects on the Legal Aid Bureau. First, the clinical program brought extensive supervision to the Bureau, providing Bureau members with access to lawyers who could accompany them to court, who had great knowledge of substantive poverty law and advocacy skills, and who could provide the support needed to increase confidence. Second, the clinical program placed greater emphasis on improving client services. Finally, the clinical programs allowed Bureau members to receive academic credit for studying and improving advocacy techniques.”