Student Reports

NEW ENGLAND
Margaret Ciborowski reports:

The New England School of Law NLG Chapter started off 2009 by hosting a great turn out for our Landlord/Tenant Street Clinic, taught by attorney Jeff Feuer. Later on, we co-sponsored an event about the New Bedford Raids with the Immigration Law Society and were very fortunate to have both John Willshire-Carrera and Nancy Kelly speak about their involvement with the raids. Our first event for the 2009-2010 was a Stop and Search Clinic, taught by attorney Andrew Cowan. As for the rest of the year, we plan on holding many more clinics and to hopefully have a panel on Eviction/Foreclosure.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY
Marianne Tassone reports:

Boston University doesn’t have an official NLG branch but there are several students interested in starting up a branch, and even more who would like to get involved in the Street Law Clinics. I and a couple other students have been working with Carolyn Goodwin in the CDO to try to host a handful of trainings here at BU and then start running clinics. As a 1L I have spent the past couple months getting acclimated to law school, but I and another student, Elizabeth Rossi have been talking about holding an informational meeting and getting BU active in the Guild again. We’re anxious for any input or assistance we can get!

SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY
Margaret Aylward reports:

The Suffolk Guild has been working hard to get things moving this semester. We had an excellent turnout at our Club Fair at the beginning of the semester.  We met the incoming 1Ls and collected a lot of new emails from interested students.  We’ve successfully added most of them as Street Law volunteers as well.

Following up on the success of our anti-death penalty events last year, we recently co-sponsored an event with the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy and the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty.  We held an awards reception to honor the work done by pro bono attorneys and academics in the field of anti-death penalty work.

We’re working with the Suffolk National Women’s Law Student Association to sponsor a team of students that are running in the Boston Marathon.  We’re raising money for the American Liver Foundation.  In addition to soliciting donations from the Suffolk community, we’re holding bar events and trivia fundraisers to increase our donations.

We’ve also been working to put together a series of debates for Spring semester.  We’re planning to host a model debate, featuring a member of the Suffolk Guild community debating a nominee from the Suffolk Federalist Society.  Using this debate as a model, we will have a second round of debates, featuring students from each group.  As the format is a combination of both debate and mock trial, we feel it will be both informative to the student body as well as good experience for our students.  It will also provide an excellent platform to explain the beliefs and principles of the Guild.

The Suffolk Guild is exciting to keep things moving and continue getting more students involved.  And we’re looking forward to the Holiday Raffle in December!

BOSTON COLLEGE
James Racine reports:

Law school can certainly be an alienating place.  For one, it is often isolating.  Most of my classmates seem to have different values, political orientations, and career goals than me and there is constant pressure to compete with classmates for grades and jobs.  It is also disempowering.  The structure of classrooms is intensely hierarchical and I’m learning a new language that was, at first, incomprehensible and bewildering.  In this environment, it is easy to lapse into self-interested careerism; survival becomes a law student’s main concern, not the pursuit of social justice.

In order to make it through law school without forgetting why I came in the first place, it will help to meet like-minded students and professionals.  Bringing together progressive students can help build solidarity instead of competition and agency rather than passivity.  For these reasons I’m interested in starting a chapter of the National Lawyers Guild at Boston College Law School in 2010.

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
Jillian Tuck reports:

The Northeastern School of Law Chapter of NLG was very active in 2009. In March, NUSL-NLG organized an event series that examine the impact of the presidential election on socially marginalized groups and the implications for social justice movements. Events aimed at laying out the political landscape- post Obama’s election and grappled with such questions as, “Is racism dead?” and analyzed the impact of specific ballot decisions on LGBT, immigrant, and other marginalized communities.

On October 5^th, NUSL-NLG co-sponsored a speaking event, “Why We Refuse: Israeli Conscientious Objectors Speak Out.”  The speakers, Maya Wind and Netta Mishly, both 19, are part of a group of Israeli high school seniors called the Shministim and have been imprisoned for their principled refusal to join the Israeli Army. They spoke of eloquently and passionately of their reasons for refusal to a crowd of about 45 people.

NUSL-NLG held a successful Tenant Rights Training on October 13th, as part of the Street Law Clinic Project.  At least 14 law students participated and became trained to teach clinics throughout the community as part of a movement to empower and educate citizens about their legal rights. A well attended Legal Observer training was held as well. Both trainings were facilitated by Northeastern Faculty and Guild Member, Millie Drew.

On October 16^th, NUSL-NLG hosted an panel event entitled: The Human Right to Health Denied: How Health Reform is Failing Immigrants. The event drew a substantial crowd from immigration law students, medical professional and concerned members from the community. The panel discussed how the current health care reform affects immigrants’ access to healthcare at local and international levels. The panelists included: Toby Guevin, the State Policy Director at the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition; Kathleen Sullivan, a lawyer at Physicians for Human Rights (PHR); and Helen Potts, the Chief Program Officer of Health Programs at PHR. The event allowed for an interesting, lively debate ranging from Massachusetts health insurance reform and recent health care cuts to the international debate surrounding the right to health.

We look forward to 2010!