Promoting innovative partnerships between lawyers and community organizations
In honor of Harvard Law School Professor David Grossman’s memory as a mentor, teacher, and advocate for the poor, the David Abraham Grossman Fund for Social Justice works to promote social justice by fostering innovative partnerships between lawyers and community organizations. The Fund supports fellowships and grants that enable law students and young lawyers to engage in and to develop law and organizing partnerships and new approaches to fighting poverty.
The fund is managed as a dedicated fund at Harvard Law School that is set aside to create new fellowships and grants that enable lawyers to work with community organizations toward positive social change. Every $55,000 raised by the David Abraham Grossman Fund will be able to support an additional fellowship. The Fund’s goal is to raise $1 million in order to permanently endow a fellowship.
The DAG Fund supports work in the following areas:
Fellowships for lawyers and community organizers to work at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau toward community organization-lawyer partnerships
Fellowships for Harvard Law School graduates to work in community organization-lawyer partnerships
Grants for Harvard Law School students to create partnerships between law students, lawyers, and community organizations
Sarah Blatt-Herold ‘23 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Sarah will be carrying out her fellowship with the MacArthur Justice Center in Chicago, where she will work with a coalition of organizations fighting e-carceration, hoping to reduce the number of people who lose their liberty to Electronic Monitoring (EM). Here are Sarah’s words about her work:
Increasingly, people returning from prison and awaiting trial are subjected to electronic monitoring (“EM"), particularly ankle monitors that track a person's every move, cost up to $40/day, and come with extreme restrictions on movement. EM effectively transforms low-income people's homes into extensions of prison, hindering reentry.
As a David A. Grossman fellow, I will provide direct representation to individuals pre-trial and on parole. On the pre-trial side, I will represent people in motions to remove or modify EM as a condition of release, and provide legal services to a burgeoning mutual aid network of people on EM in Illinois. On the parole side, I will represent people before the parole board, defending against alleged violations of EM or seeking to remove/modify EM as a condition of release.
In addition to direct representation, I will engage in investigation and community outreach work. Working closely with a coalition of organizations fighting e-carceration, I will investigate the use of EM pre-trial, the parole board’s decision-making process in imposing EM, and the impacts of EM on those subjected to it. I will also create know-your-rights materials, fact-sheets, and participate in community trainings on EM.
Joy Sun ‘21 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Joy worked in the Consumers Rights Unit at Greater Boston Legal Services where she worked closely with grassroots community organizations to advise, represent, and educate low-income homeowners who are facing foreclosure, especially in Boston’s communities of color.
Alex Milvae ‘19 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Alex worked in the Asian Outreach Unit at Greater Boston Legal Services where he expanded AOU’s innovative, community based model of lawyering to the growing Chinese immigrant communities in Malden and Quincy.
Jackie Ebert ‘18 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Jackie Ebert spent her fellowship at Legal Services of Greater Miami where she worked with the staff and guests at Lotus Village, a trauma-informed homeless shelter serving over 500 women and children each night in Miami-Dade County, to address guests’ legal barriers to housing stability, sustainability, and self-determination.
Rebecca Donaldson ‘16 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Rebeccal used her fellowship to work in her hometown of Milwaukee and partner with Legal Action of Wisconsin where she led a pilot project focused on aiding victims of violent sexual crimes.
Joey Michalakes ‘16 awarded inaugural DAG Fund Fellowship
Joseph (Joey) Michalakes spent his fellowship term in the housing and employment units at Greater Boston Legal Services, where he worked in tandem with other staff attorneys as well as community organizations to develop strategies for combating displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods in Greater Boston, both through direct representation in eviction defense and affirmative employment litigation and community legal education.