ABOUT THE FOUNDERS

The 2009 HLS Summer Theory Institute will be facilitated by Nisha Agarwal and Jocelyn Simonson, the founders of STI.

Nisha Agarwal recently completed a Skadden Fellowship at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), where she is the Director of the Access to Health Care Program.  At NYLPI, Nisha’s work focuses on community-based advocacy to reduce racial & ethnic disparities in health care. Jocelyn Simonson is a public defender at the Bronx Defenders, Inc. Before joining the Bronx Defenders, she was a judicial clerk for Judge B.D. Parker on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

Nisha and Jocelyn both graduated from HLS in 2006, where Nisha was Vice-President for Membership of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau and Jocelyn was an Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review.  Nisha and Jocelyn have been collaborating with each other since their third year of law school as they explore ways to bridge the theory-practice divide in the world of public interest law.  In New York, they lead a regular “theory workshop” consisting of practitioners from a variety of fields.  They are currently writing an article that discusses the inaugural summer of STI in the context of the gap between theory and practice in legal education.

For more information, please visit the PLP website.

Check out the following Pieces by Ben Heineman, PLP Senior Distinguished Practitioner Fellow:

The Junior Justice, washingtonpost.com (May 18, 2009) Read the Post

Stop Bribery Everywhere, Corporate Counsel (June, 2009) Read the Article

The Long Goodbye, washingtonpost.com (May 11, 2009) Read the Post

Function, Not Form, Matters Most in Board’s Non-executive Leader, harvardbusiness.org (May 5, 2009) Read the Post

How to Prevent Panic?,, washingtonpost.com (April 27, 2009) Read the Post

Redefining the CEO Role, businessweek.com (April 16, 2009) Read the Post

It’s About Accountability, Stupid, washingtonpost.com (March 30, 2009) Read the Post

Pitchfork Populism, washingtonpost.com (March 22, 2009) Read the Post

AIG’s Bonuses: A Dangerous Failure of Leadership, harvardbusiness.org Confersation Starter blog (March 19, 2009) Read the Post

Dangerous Obfuscation of Facts, washingtonpost.com (March 18, 2009) Read the Post

Google’s Bad Options, harvardbusiness.org Conversation Starter blog (March 10, 2009) Read the Post

PLP Director David Wilkins was quoted in the New York Times:
Billable Hours Giving Ground at Law Firms, by Jonathan D. Glater (January 30, 2009) Read the Article

Please join us for the next event in our PLP Speaker Series.

Tuesday, February 3
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Pound 108

Regulating Law Firm Ethical Infrastructure: An Empirical Assessment of the Potential for Management-Based Regulation of Legal Practices
Christine Elizabeth Parker, University of Melbourne Law School

Read the related paper.

Lunch will be provided, but space is limited. Please RSVP to Nicola Seaholm.

HOW TO APPLY TO STI 2009

If you are a 1L or 2L interested in becoming a Fellow of the HLS Summer Theory Institute, please submit a statement of interest by April 3, 2009.  Statements should be emailed to Jocelyn Simonson and Nisha Agarwal.  In your statement of interest, please explain (1) your anticipated or desired internship plans for the summer and (2) your interest in the Summer Theory Institute.

No experience with social or critical theory is necessary to participate.  Instead, we are looking for a group of Fellows who are excited about public interest work and open to thinking in innovative and sometimes critical ways about that work.  While we understand that HLS students may not finalize their summer plans until after the application deadline, all Fellows will eventually be required to secure a summer internship with a public interest organization in New York City.  Fellows must be located in New York City for the full ten weeks of STI.  Please do not hesitate to contact Jocelyn and Nisha if you have any questions.

For more information, please visit the PLP website.

Globalization of Professional Service Firms: A Comparative Study Between Management Consulting and Law Firms

In 2007-08 academic year, with funding provided by a PLP Student Fellowship, Xiaoying (Catherine) Zhang completed a project on the globalization of professional services, which involved a comparative analysis of the strategic choices made by US versus indigenous law firms operating in China. Read the paper

The Program on the Legal Profession has created a student fellowship program designed to enhance and contribute to student research at Harvard Law School.  The fellowships include access to the Program’s research resources, the opportunity to meet and discuss program-related research with faculty and peers, and financial support to enable upper-class students to conduct research and writing projects that otherwise would be cost-prohibitive.  For more information and to download the application, visit the PLP website.