A lot has changed since Elle Woods aced her Law School Admission Test to land a spot at Harvard Law in “Legally Blonde.” Now, you may not even need an LSAT score to get in.

As part of a new pilot program this fall, Harvard will begin accepting scores from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), in addition to the LSAT, which it currently considers.

The new move is part of Harvard’s efforts to attract more diverse applicants, as well as those who may be weighing other graduate school options but don’t want to take two different entry tests because of cost and convenience. The GRE, which is available in more than 150 countries, could also help bring in more international students. It can be taken year-round and on a computer, unlike the LSAT, which is a written test offered four times a year.

Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow said:

All students benefit when we can diversify our community in terms of academic background, country of origin, and financial circumstances. Also, given the promise of the revolutions in biology, computer science, and engineering, law needs students with science, technology, engineering and math backgrounds. For these students, international students, multidisciplinary scholars, and joint-degree students, the GRE is a familiar and accessible test, and using it is a great way to reach candidates not only for law school, but for tackling the issues and opportunities society will be facing.

Though this could be a first step toward making the LSAT permanently optional, law schools are required by the American Bar Association to measure the impact of a GRE policy before they change their admission criteria. Last year, the University of Arizona’s law school started giving students a choice between submitting GRE and LSAT scores. The Law School Admission Council (LSAC), which  administers the LSAT, criticized the University of Arizona at the time, saying that all students should be required to take the test.

The announcement about testing the new admissions policy comes as Harvard faces falling enrollment numbers. The number of applicants to the most highly-ranked law schools has decreased overall between 2011 and 2015, and Harvard specifically has seen an 18 percent drop in applications.

Victoria Sheridan

Victoria is an editorial intern at Law Street. She is a senior journalism major and French minor at George Washington University. She’s also an editor at GW’s student newspaper, The Hatchet. In her free time, she is either traveling or planning her next trip abroad. Contact Victoria at VSheridan@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Let’s take a moment to reflect, shall we? But PLEASE, let’s not discuss Trump’s most recent gaffe or ISIS’s newest target. Throw away those gosh darn Thanksgiving leftovers you keep “saving” but will find covered in mold at the back of the fridge next week, and actually give thanks for the non-edible items in your life.

When’s the last time you showed gratitude for your education, job, or physical abilities? And when’s the last time you complained about one of the above? Thought so.

So, keep this next story in mind for the next time you unload the complaint wagon on a friend or co-worker.

I first came across the story of Haben Girma after she was featured on Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls Facebook page. (Yes, it’s the organization founded by that Amy Poehler). Haben Girma is Harvard Law’s first deaf-blind graduate. Now, Girma works as a public service lawyer, fighting for the rights of people with disabilities.

The White House has recognized Girma as a Champion of Change, and in July of 2015, she delivered introductory remarks for the 25^th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. She spoke directly with President Obama, using a digital device that displays Braille characters.

Girma’s Etrirean refugee parents, tenacious spirit, and access to opportunities afforded by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have all contributed to her success. She is no stranger to adversity, having grown up facing access barriers as a deaf-blind person. What was the best way for other students and friends to communicate with her? How could she form personal relationships? How the heck could she have access to her school’s cafeteria menu?

She addresses all of these points in her celebrated Ted Talk from TedxBaltimore 2014 (which has garnered over 180,000 views on Youtube).

So, what does a Harvard educated public service lawyer and bonafide hero do for fun? Salsa dance and surf, of course. Girma was taught swing and salsa by a blind dancer, and was a member of the Harvard Ballroom Dance Team. She also enjoys tandem surfing, as seen in this video.

Whether you’re thankful for a job, family member, or just grateful that it’s not snowing yet, take some inspiration from Haben Girma and reflect on the positive things in your life.

Corinne Fitamant

Corinne Fitamant is a graduate of Fordham College at Lincoln Center where she received a Bachelors degree in Communications and a minor in Theatre Arts. When she isn’t pondering issues of social justice and/or celebrity culture, she can be found playing the guitar and eating chocolate. Contact Corinne at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post No Complaints Here: Deaf-Blind Champ Haben Girma Graduates from Harvard Law appeared first on Law Street.

Harvard Law is currently on edge as police officers investigate a possible hate crime on campus. Black tape was placed over the faces of portraits of Harvard Law’s black professors in Wasserstein Hall, where more than 180 professor’s portraits are displayed.

In response to yesterday’s protests, cowards have covered the faces of Harvard Law’s Black professors w/ black tape. pic.twitter.com/IuNd9ckucj

— the other one (@imfromraleigh) November 19, 2015

BREAKING: Overnight at @Harvard Law, portraits of black faculty desecrated in response to black student activism pic.twitter.com/tlJbDrkQUV

— Graham White (@GrahamWhite1010) November 19, 2015

The tape appeared despite many protests around the country about the treatment of students of color at schools such as Mizzou and Yale. Other schools have protested incidents on their own campuses, or protested in solidarity with schools and students nationwide. At Harvard, the day before the tape was found, undergraduate students marched with nearby Tufts University students in solidarity for Mizzou and Yale.

The tape that was used on the black professors’ portraits appears to have been taken from a nearby demonstration protesting the law school seal. Students placed black tape over a seal located in Wasserstein Hall. The seal comes from the family of Isaac Royall Jr., a well-known and ruthless slave owner. The campus group Royall Must Fall or (RMF) is dedicated to getting the logo removed from official use at Harvard Law.  

Royall was a slaver family, $ helped fund @Harvard Law and their shield is part of law school logo @carltonwilliamspic.twitter.com/5vZYdZLwWW — Wendi C. Thomas (@wendi_c_thomas) November 20, 2015

After the defacements were discovered on Thursday morning, students interrupted Dean Martha Minow’s class to discuss the issue. All said and done, more than 300 concerned students, staff, and faculty met on Thursday afternoon to discuss the incident and how to move forward, and police are still investigating it as a hate crime. There have been a wide range of reactions at Harvard Law in light of the incident, from shock to horror to (most depressingly) a lack of surprise. For example, A.J. Clayburn, a student, told CNN: 

Speaking as a student of color, I know that, while I am hurt and saddened, I am not surprised. This is merely a symptom of the greater systemic racism that currently permeates this law school and legal institutions in general.

The black tape from the portraits was quickly removed, and instead many students left post it notes on the affected professors’ portraits praising and applauding them. 

I love my HLS students! They’ve replaced the act of defacement with “love notes” to all the black faculty. pic.twitter.com/6LLHEbY9bA — Ronald S. Sullivan (@ProfRonSullivan) November 19, 2015

While it’s a nice touch, it’s obviously not going to make the problems at Harvard Law, or the overall protests and air of discontent at many of our nation’s preeminent educational institutions, go away. The investigation is pending, and tensions are clearly still palpable.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Police Investigate Possible Hate Crime at Harvard Law appeared first on Law Street.

Harvard Law is working with an analytics platform called Ravel Law to digitize American case law and make it open-access and free online. The project has been named “Free the Law” and is a huge and massively beneficial endeavor for law school students, lawyers, researchers, nonprofits, and the public as a whole.

The collection that Harvard Law is digitizing consists of roughly 40,000 books containing four million pages of legal decisions. Harvard Law has the largest academic law library in the world; these books have been curated over the last two centuries. The database is expected to be completed in full by 2017, selections will be open to the public before then. For example, Harvard Law and Ravel Law are attempting to complete state databases for California and New York by the end of this fall.

There are a few different motivations for why Harvard Law and Ravel Law are taking this dramatic step–the fact that preserving pages on the internet is certainly more compact and efficient does come in to play. But the main motivation appears to be a desire to provide free, open-access information to the public all in one place. Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources, stated:

Libraries were founded as an engine for the democratization of knowledge, and the digitization of Harvard Law School’s collection of U.S. case law is a tremendous step forward in making legal information open and easily accessible to the public. The materials in the library’s collection tell a story that goes back to the founding of America, and we’re proud to preserve and share that story.

Currently, many of the cases that are being compiled by the Free the Law project are accessible to the public–but not in an easily usable or searchable format. Instead, many firms have to pay commercial services like LexisNexis or Westlaw to gain easy access. The Free the Law project aims to make this information accessible to even those who don’t have the money to pay for such services. Whether or not this project will hurt companies like LexisNexis and Westlaw will have to be seen–although it is doubtful because they do offer other legal tools and services as well that won’t be replicated in the Harvard Law and Ravel Law database.

Overall, the goals of transparency and access in the justice system are laudable, and consistent with the general move toward open-access and equality that the internet has enabled in recent years. It’s a big project to take on for the school and the digital platform, but if it has the intended effects, it will have a big influence as well.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Harvard Law and Ravel Law Work to “Free the Law” appeared first on Law Street.

Professor Jon Hanson of Harvard Law School has set out to change the way law is taught. This spring, the professor welcomed roughly 50 students into the inaugural Systemic Justice class at Harvard Law. The class will teach students to examine the common causes of injustice in history and explore ways to use law and activism to make positive changes.

From the first day of the term, it became clear to students that the new class was unique. Referring to the students in the class as a “community,” Professor Hanson came across lighthearted and funny, cracking jokes and even asking the class to come up with a name for said “community.” He said to students on the first day of class: “None of us really knows what ‘systemic justice’ is—yet you’re all here.”

Traditionally, law students enter law school expecting to master existing law and to learn how to apply those laws to jobs as attorneys. However, a survey revealed that students are actually most concerned with big, unsolved social issues–which is where this class comes in. Students believe that law is part of the issue when looking at social problems such as climate change, income inequality, and racial bias in policing. The goal of this class is to introduce a new approach to examining and dealing with these issues.

This class is just one facet of a new Systemic Justice Project at Harvard, which is led by Professor Hanson and recent law school graduate Jacob Lipton. The project arose out of a growing recognition that law students need to be trained to be problem solvers and policy makers. Another part of the program is a class called the Justice Lab, which is a think tank style class designed to ask students to analyze systemic societal problems and propose solutions from a legal perspective. In April, students from both classes will attend a conference alongside experts to discuss their findings.

In some ways, this project is part of a widespread effort to introduce a greater policy focus into law schools. For example, Stanford Law School recently launched a Law and Policy Lab that tasks students with finding policy solutions to real-world problems. After graduation, many former law students will go on to become policy makers, judges, politicians, and organizational leaders. According to Sergio Campos, a law professor at the University of Miami and a visiting professor at Harvard, those lawyers could be in trouble if they do not develop a background on policy during their time in law school. He worries that for those students,  “when you get to a position where you can change the law, you don’t have a background on policy and what it should be.”

The program has already gained popularity with students at Harvard who are, or desire to be, active in fighting for social causes. However, not all law students are interested in learning about policy–some just want to learn about existing law, and that’s fine too. This project is designed to be a way to extend a traditional legal education, not replace it. Even so, participating in a class such as the Systemic Justice class can give law students a new and valuable perspective that will strengthen their overall legal education.

Brittany Alzfan

Brittany Alzfan is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Harvard Law School Launches New Systemic Justice Project appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Anneliese Mahoney, Brittany Alzfan, Erika Bethmann, Matt DeWilde, and Natasha Paulmeno.

Click here to read more coverage on Law Street’s Law School Specialty Rankings 2014.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Featured image courtesy of [Chensiyuan via Wikipedia]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for Environmental & Energy Law: #9 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Anneliese Mahoney, Brittany Alzfan, Erika Bethmann, Matt DeWilde, and Natasha Paulmeno.

Click here to read more coverage on Law Street’s Law School Specialty Rankings 2014.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Featured image courtesy of [Chensiyuan via Wikipedia]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for Business Law: #2 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

The healthcare law specialty has grown exponentially in recent years, especially with the development of the Affordable Care Act and the varied state-level initiatives for implementation. The call for qualified lawyers in the field will only grow as battles over the ACA continue. Here are Law Street’s top ten law schools that provide their students with extensive and holistic educations in Healthcare Law.

Click here for detailed ranking information for each of the Top 10 Law Schools for Healthcare Law, and click here for the methodology used.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Anneliese Mahoney, Brittany Alzfan, Erika Bethmann, Matt DeWilde, and Natasha Paulmeno.

Click here for detailed ranking information for each of the Top 10 Law Schools for Healthcare Law.

Featured image courtesy of [UBC Library via Flickr]

Correction 7/9/14: The Top 10 Law Schools for Healthcare Law rankings have been updated to include new information since their release on July 7.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Law Schools for Healthcare Law appeared first on Law Street.

Research and analysis done by Law Street’s Law School Rankings team: Anneliese Mahoney, Brittany Alzfan, Erika Bethmann, Matt DeWilde, and Natasha Paulmeno.

Click here to read more coverage on Law Street’s Law School Specialty Rankings 2014.

Click here for information on rankings methodology.

Featured image courtesy of [Chensiyuan via Wikipedia]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Top 10 Schools for Healthcare Law: #6 Harvard Law School appeared first on Law Street.

As the highest court in the United States, the Supreme Court is viewed as having the greatest authority over the interpretation of the law. It is often assumed that when the court issues a decision, the ruling marks the final word on the legal question proposed. However, something that many citizens might not know is that the Supreme Court decisions can be altered after their publication without public notice.

Richard J. Lazarus, professor of law at Harvard University, has written an article set for publication in the December 2014 Harvard Law Review that exposes the Supreme Court’s practice of editing and changing opinions after they are initially published. He states that the Court’s decisions do include a statement in small text that reads, “this opinion is subject to formal revision before publication.” However, in many cases, these changes are not simple edits, and the court does not make a public notification of these additions or deletions from opinions.

This practice of editing court opinions is by no means new: the Supreme Court has been altering the wording of its decisions since the early days of its existence. Indeed, some of the most famous rulings have been edited after they were issued. The 1857 Dred Scott case, for example, received an additional 18 pages written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the majority opinion for the case. More recently, the 2003 case Lawrence v. Texas, which significantly struck down a Texas law against sodomy, was altered: a sentence written in Sandra Day O’Connor‘s concurring opinion was struck in which she had stated that Justice Antonin Scalia “apparently agrees that […] Texas’ sodomy law would not pass scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.” In these cases and so many others, justices have changed the wording, added or deleted sentences, and made other edits to their opinions without the notification of these alterations. Something here doesn’t seem right.

3 reasons why these discrete changes are problematic:

1. It can cause discrepancies in understanding the law.

Law professors rely on many court decisions in their instruction. If changes to court decisions are not announced, these professors continue to teach and discuss older versions of court decisions that may have undergone important edits. How can professors properly instruct the next generation of lawyers and lawmakers if they do not have access to the most recently updated copies of case law? Additionally, lawyers also need to have the correct version of court cases at their disposal in order to use Supreme Court decisions as precedents for their current cases.

2. Failing to notify what changes were made in the final draft of a decision does not allow for uniformity of the law.

The fact that the court makes unpublicized changes to the law leads to a number of different versions of court decisions, which can become confusing. Supreme Court decisions are extremely important: as the highest judicial body in the nation, the Supreme Court can, through its rulings, overturn decisions by lower courts and declare laws at the local, state, and national level unconstitutional. After the Supreme Court reaches a decision, government at all levels in the United States must comply with the Court’s ruling and make the necessary changes to the law. However, in order to do so, there needs to be a uniform understanding of what the Supreme Court has ruled.

The fact that the court makes discreet changes to the law without public notification allows for different renditions of their decisions to circulate. Some who pay close attention to the court may realize that a ruling’s wording has changed, but many websites continue to have older versions of court rulings. The copy of O’Connor’s concurring opinion on the Cornell Law website, for example, still contains the sentence that, as previously explained, has been admitted. The fact that even law websites exhibit older versions of cases is troubling.

3. The public deserves to be made aware of any changes to the interpretation of law that could affect them.

The Court not publicly announcing when edits are made to its decisions provides yet another example of the lack of government transparency. Even though the court notes that its decisions are subject to change, it is hard for average citizen to realize when edits are made unless the Court announces them. And while many of these changes constitute simple word changes, it could also be the case that the court could make a substantial addition to a case that could affect the livelihoods of Americans. Even something as simple as the addition or deletion of a few words could change the way a phrase in a decision is interpreted, and this could be crucial in Americans’ understanding of the law.

Unfortunately, there is no law or mechanism that can force the supreme judicial body to publicize these changes. However, the court should still choose to do so, and some justices of recent times such as Harry Blackman realized that the Court “operates on a strange and ‘reverse’ basis, where the professional editing is done after initial public release.” To preserve the credibility of their institution, it is incumbent upon justices to publicize their changes

[NY Times] [Harvard Law] [Cornell Law]

—

Sarah Helden (@sheldren430)

Featured image courtesy of [Kenudigit via Flickr]

Sarah Helden

Sarah Helden is a graduate of The George Washington University and a student at the London School of Economics. She was formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Sarah at staff@LawStreetmedia.com.

The post 3 Reasons Why the Supreme Court Needs To Publicize Its Edits appeared first on Law Street.