Harvard Law School promotes prison abolition

• Latinx, BIPOC, first-generation college and law students
• Those working in labor law, anti-trust, health policy, racial justice, public defense and criminal justice reform (particularly prison abolition work), gun violence prevention, preserving democratic norms and institutions, and those working in private public interest or plaintiff’s side law firms.

In addition to our cohort of 10-12 domestic, three-day Fellows, OPIA will select three international law practitioners to spend a full week in residence at Harvard Law School advising students on pathways to international public service at nonprofit organizations and intergovernmental institutions. International Fellows can expect to meet with a high volume of LLMs, as well as JD students. We especially encourage applicants engaged in transitional justice, human rights litigation, digital rights, democratic erosion, and global climate work to apply.

We encourage you to apply for the Fellowship, and/or circulate the opportunity widely among your public interest networks. If you know a colleague, mentor, or mentee that would make a fantastic Wasserstein Fellow, send us their name and email address, and we will invite them to apply.

The application deadline is April 3, 2023.

Any questions about the Wasserstein Fellowship program can be emailed to Jillian Tuck, Associate Director for J.D. and LL.M. Advising, Programs, and Community Building.

The Public Service Venture Fund
This past May, the Public Service Venture Fund (PSVF) selected 20 students and alumni as public interest grant recipients. The Fund awards up to $1.1 million each year in seed money to students and alumni for startup nonprofit ventures and in salary support to graduating J.D. students and judicial law clerks for postgraduate work at nonprofit or government agencies in the United States and abroad.

To date, the PSVF has funded 19 new nonprofits and over 300 organization-based fellowships. Please take a few moments to review the list of our past organization-based fellows (updated through 2022).

Public Interest Advising and Clinical Program Updates

• In 2021-2022, OPIA conducted 2,218 individual advising appointments and counseled nearly 1,000 individual students and alumni, including approximately 55 percent of the 1L class.
• The Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs reports that during the 2021-2022 academic year, there were 1,067 clinical placements among eligible students. As you may be aware, students become eligible for clinic work once they have finished their first year. Students’ participation in winter term clinical placements off campus is returning again after the pandemic where they gain hands-on experience both domestically and around the world. In addition to clinical work, there were 761 placements in volunteer student practice organizations, which students can participate in as early as their 1L year. Students in the class of 2022 performed 378,379 pro bono hours, bringing the total number of student hours to 6,001,401 since the HLS pro bono requirement began with the class of 2005.
• This past summer over 400 students took summer public service jobs funded by Harvard Law School’s guaranteed Summer Public Interest Funding (SPIF). They worked in 21 different countries and 34 states, in addition to Washington, D.C.
• OPIA has been tracking postgraduate and post-clerkship placement of recent graduates (class years from 2012-2022), and the statistics show, on average, that 20 percent of recent graduates are entering public service work at graduation or after clerking.