To say that we have had a whirlwind past few months at the Cyberlaw Clinic would be an enormous understatement. As we head into the homestretch of summer and prepare for the arrival of our new fall term students next Monday, September 8th, it seems like a good time to reflect on all of the changes that have taken place just since July.
NEW FACES
We begin the new 2014-15 academic year with two new members on the Cyberlaw Clinic team:
- Vivek Krishnamurthy has joined the Clinic as a Clinical Instructor. Vivek is a graduate of University of Toronto, St Antony’s College (Oxford), and Yale Law School, and we have gotten to know him in recent years through his work on the Corporate Social Responsibility team at the law firm, Foley Hoag LLP. Vivek brings to the Clinic extensive experience with litigation, privacy and data security, and counseling companies from the Information and Communications Technology sector on social responsibility and human rights issues (among many other things). He will contribute to our core work on tech law issues and will help us expand into some new areas of practice.
- Kira Hessekiel has joined the Clinic as our new Project Coordinator. Kira is a 2013 graduate of Tufts University, where she majored in Political Science. She joins us after a year spent working in a teaching program in Barentin, France.
We are excited to have Vivek and Kira join us and look forward to their contributions to our program over the coming year.
OLD FRIENDS
We are thrilled to report that Clinical Instructor and Lecturer on Law Dalia Topelson has been named Assistant Director of the Clinic effective this academic year. Dalia has been with the Clinic for just over two years and has been an integral part of our the Clinic’s transactional and counseling practice. She co-taught the long-running Practical Lawyering in Cyberspace seminar at Harvard Law School last year and will continue to co-teach it in its new form, as Counseling and Legal Strategy in the Digital Age. Dalia has been a huge asset to the Clinic, and we are excited to recognize her role in managing the program.
We could not be happier that our long-time collaborator, Berkman Center colleague, and good friend Andy Sellars has officially joined us in the Clinic as our new Clinical Fellow. Andy is a very familiar face around the Berkman Center, having interned at the Clinic for two summers during his time at George Washington University Law School and having then spent three years helping to run Berkman’s Digital Media Law Project and the DMLP’s Online Media Legal Network. Andy remains the Corydon B. Dunham First Amendment Fellow at the Berkman Center heading into 2014-15, and he brings a strong interest and extensive experience in issues pertaining to the intersection between speech and intellectual property protection.
On a somewhat more bittersweet note, Andy steps into the void left for us by the departure of our previous Fellow, Kit Walsh, who left at the end of June for an extraordinary opportunity working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the other coast. Kit is a remarkable lawyer, a terrific teacher, and a passionate advocate on issues relating to intellectual property and digital civil liberties. While we look forward to fruitful collaborations with him in the future, he will be sorely missed.
DIGITAL MEDIA LAW PROJECT
Andy’s move to the Clinic coincides with the wind-down this summer of the Digital Media Law Project’s regular operations and the departure from Berkman of DMLP’s Director, Jeff Hermes. The DMLP was born as the Citizen Media Law Project, an offshoot of the Cyberlaw Clinic, seven years ago, and the Clinic will take on some of the work previously done by the Project.
While we are sad to see Jeff go, we are ecstatic about his new role as Deputy Director of the Media Law Resource Center (details here). MLRC is a non-profit membership organization for media defense lawyers and institutions and is one of the premier advocates in the US on issues relating to media law and the First Amendment. This is a tremendous opportunity for Jeff and for MLRC, and — as with Kit — we look forward to staying connected with Jeff in his new role.
SUSAN CRAWFORD
For the second consecutive semester, we are privileged to have Susan Crawford working with us in the Cyberlaw Clinic as an advisor during the coming months. Susan continues to be a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School during the fall term and will again work with Clinic students on issues relating to telecommunications and government innovation. Susan was a phenomenal addition to our team last spring, and we’re thrilled to have her back again.
IN CONCLUSION….
Please read our blog (cyberlawclinic.berkman.harvard.edu/blog), follow us on Twitter (@cyberlawclinic), and like us on Facebook (facebook.com/cyberlawclinic) to keep up with all that we’re doing. We are looking forward to a busy and exciting year!
