Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School

About The Legal Services Center

Located in Boston's culturally diverse Jamaica Plain neighborhood, the Legal Services Center is a general practice law firm that provides legal counsel to over 1,200 clients annually, some of whom are very poor, but many of whom can and do make co-payments or pay on a lower-than-market basis for the service they receive.

The Center, Harvard Law School's oldest and largest clinical teaching facility, offers students an opportunity to gain practical legal experience and earn academic credit by handling real cases for real clients under the supervision of Clinical Instructors who are experienced practitioners and mentors. The Center sponsors up to 70 students each semester through several clinical courses offered at HLS and, during the summer, sponsors a program for volunteer law students from across the country.

The Legal Services Center Mission

Working to Educate Law Students for Practice & Professional Service while Meeting the Legal Needs of the Community

The overarching mission of the Legal Services Center is to be a place of innovation and experimentation for the development of effective approaches to the education of law students and the delivery of legal services.

• To provide comprehensive training and supervision to law students in substantive law, practice skills and legal judgment
• To educate students about the impact of law and social policy on the lives of our clients
• To educate students about the ways the court system and administrative bureaucracies work for our clients
• To encourage students to become reflective practitioners by structuring an educational environment where students continuously reflect on their experiences and use such reflection to inform their methods of advocacy

• To provide high quality legal services in areas most needed by our client communities
• To be a positive and stable influence in our community
• To offer community residents the opportunity to learn about some of the legal systems that impact their lives in order to more effectively use these systems to their advantage
• To educate and inform the courts, agencies and local institutions about our clients lives and legal rights