This week, our “look inside” series for the first-released set of Clear Admit Law School Guides turns its attention to our Harvard Law School Guide!
(For previous entries, in which we looked at the Chicago and Columbia Law School Guides, respectively, please click here and here.)
Our HLS guide serves as a key resource for any applicant interested in learning about the program in detail, and for those who want to see the educational and employment opportunities that HLS provides. As we indicated in our post announcing the guides’ release, these publications can assist prospective students at all stages of the application process, from those who are just starting background research to applicants who seek to strengthen personal statements with school-specific details.
One detail appearing in our HLS guide touches on the significant curricular changes that have been approved for the Cambridge, Mass. school:
“The new curriculum was developed over 18 months by a committee of HLS faculty. Authorized in December of 2008, it will go into effect for the Class of 2012, and represents the largest overhaul in Harvard’s law curriculum since the nineteenth century…. [To develop] successful twenty-first practitioners of the law, the faculty committee agreed that Harvard needed to update the system of law education in three areas: international law, problem-solving as part of the daily practice of law, and adding more flexibility to the upper-level curriculum.”
Additionally, HLS hosts one of the largest clinical programs among leading law programs, as 29 alone are run by the school, in addition to other community, national and international clinical opportunities. Further, as we explain in our guide and epitomized by this example, HLS’s clinical programs are uniquely tied to coursework:
“Most clinics at HLS are offered in conjunction with classroom courses or workshops. This sets Harvard’s clinical program apart from those of many of its peer schools, which instead rely on the clinical professors and supervising attorneys to impart the applicable law to students at clinic sites. The HLS classroom courses attached to clinics are organized so that students are able to apply the concepts learned in class directly to actual clients. For example, students in the Predatory Lending and Consumer Protection Clinical Workshop spend much of the semester learning about bankruptcies in class while they represent clients filing for Chapter VII bankruptcy through the Predatory Lending/Consumer Protection clinic.”
And, as with all of our Law School Guides, the HLS edition includes details on the school’s international exchange offerings, clubs, student journals and graduates’ career statistics, in addition to many other topics.
The Harvard Law School Guide is on sale now at the Clear Admit Shop, along with law school guides from Chicago, Columbia, NYU and Yale. Please visit us again next Monday for another “look inside!”
