2008 Woodie Awards
Harvard Law: The New York of Public Interest Communities
Erin Archerd
Issue date: 3/15/07 Section: Opinion
Perhaps I'm not asking the right questions of the students who work at the LSC, HLAB, Greater Boston Legal Services, the Berkman Center, and any number of other organizations and offices that do public work. Maybe I approach people and simply ask, "How's it going?" or "What are you doing this summer?" and the majority of replies that I get are about classes and law firms, so I don't realize that they have a cool internship with a local judge, or that they incorporated two businesses last week, or that they do everything under the sun in their elder law clinical.
The public interest community at Harvard is huge, but still I feel somehow disconnected from it. It may be that there are too many options for things to do, so instead of gathering in one place and kvetching about how isolated we feel, we have to pick and choose among the dozens of groups and activities available. Do I want to teach kids about the law? Do I want to represent children in entering the foster care system? Should I work with immigrants and asylum seekers? What is it like to be a defense attorney, a criminal prosecutor? Maybe my time would be best spent representing tenants, and if that's what I want to do should I join the Tenant Advocacy Project or take the Housing clinical at the LSC? Couldn't I do many of these things at HLAB too? It's a surfeit of riches.
As for my own clinical, I feel like I'm learning so much, but at the same time hardly doing it justice. I'm overdue on my answers to discovery, which makes me feel like a failure, and not having any prior litigation experience, I'm not sure if this is a common occurrence or if I'm incredibly slow. But there's so much to learn! I came into my predatory lending clinical having no idea what a mortgage looked like or what a security was. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were a distant 1L memory. I had never dealt with legal clients before. So far, the three intakes I have done have been nerve wrecking. I never seem to be asking the right questions, or at least when I go back to my supervisor, he has three or four questions I never thought to ask. Plus, it makes me feel guilty to listen to someone's tale of woe and then have to say to her, "Sorry, but we won't be able to help you." These are all going to be valuable lessons if I ever have my own practice or work at a legal aid center and am forced to choose among individuals, but it's hard to say no and it's tough to feel like I'm behind all the time. Yet for my litany of doubts, I am learning.
The public interest community at Harvard is huge, but still I feel somehow disconnected from it. It may be that there are too many options for things to do, so instead of gathering in one place and kvetching about how isolated we feel, we have to pick and choose among the dozens of groups and activities available. Do I want to teach kids about the law? Do I want to represent children in entering the foster care system? Should I work with immigrants and asylum seekers? What is it like to be a defense attorney, a criminal prosecutor? Maybe my time would be best spent representing tenants, and if that's what I want to do should I join the Tenant Advocacy Project or take the Housing clinical at the LSC? Couldn't I do many of these things at HLAB too? It's a surfeit of riches.
As for my own clinical, I feel like I'm learning so much, but at the same time hardly doing it justice. I'm overdue on my answers to discovery, which makes me feel like a failure, and not having any prior litigation experience, I'm not sure if this is a common occurrence or if I'm incredibly slow. But there's so much to learn! I came into my predatory lending clinical having no idea what a mortgage looked like or what a security was. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were a distant 1L memory. I had never dealt with legal clients before. So far, the three intakes I have done have been nerve wrecking. I never seem to be asking the right questions, or at least when I go back to my supervisor, he has three or four questions I never thought to ask. Plus, it makes me feel guilty to listen to someone's tale of woe and then have to say to her, "Sorry, but we won't be able to help you." These are all going to be valuable lessons if I ever have my own practice or work at a legal aid center and am forced to choose among individuals, but it's hard to say no and it's tough to feel like I'm behind all the time. Yet for my litany of doubts, I am learning.
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