Harvard Law School

Harvard Law Launches New Clinic

Harvard Law has launched a new LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic.

The Harvard Crimson reports that the new clinic, which focuses on legal issues affecting BGLTQ individuals, will start a pilot program this semester. Students involved in the clinic will, according to the Crimson, “work on impact litigation, and assist BGLTQ clients — particularly underrepresented groups and individuals — in need of legal services.”

AN OPPORTUNITY

The clinic, which is staffed by four students, will offer law students the opportunity to work within an “important and rapidly developing field.”

“The LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic will give our students a wonderful opportunity to address vital legal issues in an important and rapidly developing field, to provide first-rate legal representation to the LGBTQ+ community, to develop practice skills and substantive knowledge at the very highest levels, and to make a positive difference in the world,” Harvard Law School Dean John F. Manning says in a press release.

Alexander L. Chen, the founding director of the clinic, will also be teaching a courses on gender identity in the law at Harvard Law, covering topics such as sex-segregated spaces, health care access, and non-binary and intersex identities, according to the Crimson.

“I think for a long time, students here have felt that the Law School should be providing more curricular opportunities and course offerings for that focus on sort of LGBTQ-related legal issues, especially as more and more people who identify as LGBTQ go to law school,” Chen tells the Crimson.

Chen says he hopes the clinic will help spread awareness around legal issues facing the LGBT community.

“The hope is that the students will get an opportunity to get a sense of the issues that particularly affect underrepresented people within the LGBT community, and the goal of the clinic is to focus on the areas of legal advocacy that really disproportionately affect marginalized and underrepresented individuals within the LGBTQ community,” he tells the Crimson.

Harvard Crimson, Harvard Law