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LITIGATION FUND
Our top fundraising priority is to increase the size of our litigation budget. Each year, the Law School allots litigation funds to the Bureau. This money is used over the course of the year as our sole source of funding for case-related expenses. As a result of the limited funding, all requests for expenditures that exceed $100 require approval by the Student Board. For each of the past few years, the Bureau has exhausted the annual funds provided by the Law School.

The litigation fund is used to cover all case-related expenses at the Bureau. This includes various minor administrative expenses such as FedEx mailings and copies of court or administrative files. More significant and substantive legal expenses include payments for depositions, court reporters, expert witnesses, and interpreters. Finally, all transportation costs for Bureau members to and from court, meetings with clients and opposing counsel, and conducting investigation come out of our litigation fund.

As we have expanded our practice areas to meet the needs of surrounding communities and to provide holistic legal services to our clients, the cost of providing these services has grown as well. Additional funds would allow the Bureau to successfully develop new practice areas, such as immigration and the fledgling wage and hour practice, as well as allowing us to take on more affirmative cases, which often involve higher expenditures than traditional Bureau cases. Each of these sets of improvements would benefit our clients and the community, while also providing Bureau members with more opportunities for professional development.

BUREAU TRAINING FUND
In order to provide quality legal services to their clients, Bureau members rely on the experience and expertise of their Clinical Instructors. All of our Clinical Instructors have practiced law in their respective areas for many years, but like all attorneys, they could benefit from attending Continuing Legal Education courses and other training opportunities. The skills that they gain from attending these courses would in turn be passed on to the Bureau members that they supervise. Such training is particularly useful when Bureau members establish new practice areas, like our wage and hour practice. Rather than depending on one or two Clinical Instructors with experience in a new practice area, all Clinical Instructors would be capable of supervising cases in the new area after sufficient training. As essential as these trainings are for Clinical Instructors and members alike, the Bureau does not have enough funding to send the Clinical Instructors to more of these training sessions.

In addition to training sessions for Clinical Instructors, Bureau members could also use additional funding to participate in relevant training sessions. For the past few years, members in our domestic practice have attended an annual domestic violence training, yet the members who have gone to this training have had to find funding for the registration fee on their own. Several members also travel to Yale Law School each year to attend the Rebellious Lawyering Conference, a student-run public interest conference, without any funding assistance from the Bureau. These trainings as well as others would help members in finding new approaches to their casework and would generally add to the knowledge base that members already receive from in-house trainings.

RESEARCH FUND
Although Harvard Law School has the largest law library in the world, Bureau members rely heavily on the Bureau’s own library of law collections, series, and treatises that pertain to its poverty law practice. Specifically, the Bureau needs to annually update its collections of the Massachusetts General Laws Annotated and the Massachusetts Practice Series on Employment, Family and Housing, respectively. These collections along with various other treatises provide members with immediately accessible research and reference materials. Additionally, Clinical Instructors and students require multiple copies of reference materials and annual supplements relating to the Wage and Hour practice area, and will need such materials for any new practice areas that the Bureau develops. Demands for these research materials put a strain on the Bureau’s budget, and particularly with regard to the materials needed for new practice areas, the Bureau often has to forego purchasing additional resources.

TECHNOLOGY ENHANCEMENT FUND
To continue its status as a first-rate legal services office providing free legal services to indigent clients, the Bureau needs to regularly maintain and update its computer hardware and software, in addition to maintaining or enhancing other equipment and technology. The Bureau needs to acquire and maintain software to enable members to track and manage case documents effectively. Members also need software to create visual representations for cases, run specialized reports and to diagram data for presentation.

Moreover, computer hardware quickly gets outdated and rundown, presenting a need every three years or so to replace existing computers. There is a current need for new computers, laptops, printers, projectors, and other peripherals.

ALUMNI OUTREACH FUND
Alumni are particularly important to the Bureau. They serve as our institutional memory, demonstrate the impact the Bureau experience can have on a young lawyer, and inspire current Bureau members to develop a strong public service ethos. As the law school reassesses and reorganizes its clinical programs, maintaining connections with Bureau alumni is even more critical. Recent alumni efforts to secure a satisfactory new home for the Bureau have been well received by the law school administration, and we hope to continue to offer former members opportunities to participate in shaping the Bureau experience.

The Bureau hopes to build on the experience and expertise of past Bureau members, who have shown continued dedication and commitment to the Bureau and the communities we serve. In the past several years, current Bureau members have increased our efforts to reach out to Bureau alumni. These efforts include the creation of an Alumni Advisory Board, organization of informal alumni lunches, alumni panels summer receptions, and bi-annual publishing of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau Newsletter.

For example, the funds could be used to hold an annual event for alumni members who return for class reunions or to hold a more formal graduation event to which past Bureau members would be invited. It could also be used in planning the Bureau’s Centennial Celebration in 2014. Other uses could include coordinating events or efforts that would connect Bureau alumni with each other in their respective cities and states.

ZIPCAR MEMBERSHIP FUND
As part of providing legal assistance to their clients, Bureau members often have to travel to distant towns and neighborhoods that lie on the borders of the counties that we serve. Members collectively spend hours each month traveling to places that are not easily accessible by public transportation, such as clients’ homes, community meetings, and district courts.

By obtaining a Zipcar membership, members would be able to access cars in the Cambridge area whenever necessary. It would greatly cut down on the amount of time that members must dedicate to travel each month, leaving them with more time to dedicate to client counseling and satisfying their other Bureau duties. It also would allow students greater opportunities to interact with clients in locations more convenient to them, rather than having clients, with children in tow, travel by trains and buses to our Cambridge location.