Law School Awards Ten Attorneys 1999 Wasserstein Fellowships

Lawyers for Gay Men's Health Crisis, the Department of Education and the NAACP were among the ten attorneys selected by Harvard Law School this week to be Wasserstein Public Interest fellows for 1999.

While corporate law firms have long conducted aggressive recruiting efforts, the Wasserstein fellows program was created nine years ago to give the same informational resources to students interested in public interest careers.

"There was a sense that we needed to put more resources into helping students find those jobs," said Alexa Shabecoff, the director of the office of public interest advising at the law school. "For a long time, it was hard for students, because they didn't have a lot of guidance into how to find public service careers."

The program brings lawyers to campus for one or two-day stays to advise students on career options, participate in panels and classes and conduct workshops.

One of the fellows--Antoinette Powell, a senior enforcement counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency--will also serve as a fellow-in-residence and provide advising for those interested in public service.

She will "spend one day a week for ten weeks counseling students, not only in their area of expertise but in all areas," said Shabecoff.

Six of this year's 10 fellows are also graduates of the law school, but Shabecoff said the Harvard bias was not intentional.

"It's about who finds out about the job," she said. The mailing which solicits fellowship applicants is sent to the law school's database of alumni and of employers.

"We don't favor people from Harvard," she added.

This year's visiting fellows include Morris Baller, a civil rights lawyer and law professor; Robert E. Banks, the director of the legal and advocacy department at Gay Men's Health Crisis; Eileen Brewer, a lawyer for the Cook County Board of Commissions who initiated the county's lawsuit against tobacco manufacturers and Kathryn A. Ellis, a department of education lawyer.

The other visiting fellows are Richard T. Foltin, a lawyer for the American Jewish Committee who also teaches at Cardozo Law School; William H. Kenety, a Department of Justice trial attorney; Katherine Kennedy, an environmental attorney with expertise in energy-related issues; Amy Schwartz, a New York district attorney; and Shavi F. Shrink, the founder and executive director of the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center.