Board of Student Advisers

The Board of Student Advisers (BSA)^[1] is one of three traditional “honor” societies at Harvard Law School, along with the Harvard Law Review and Harvard Legal Aid Bureau ^[2] The Board of Student Advisers has been substantially involved in the first year education of Harvard Law students for 100 years. The group's centennial was in 2010.

Overview

First year students at Harvard Law School come into contact with BSA members in their First Year Legal Research and Writing (LRW) program and through their participation in the Ames competitions.

The BSA's role has continuously evolved in light of the equally shifting needs of the HLS community. In its modern form, designed along with the 2002 implementation of the First Year LRW Program, the Board walks a fine line. Its members are staff of the law school and serve as both academic and pastoral mentors to the 1L class in and beyond the LRW Program. Members of the Board are dedicated to service of their law school and the betterment of the HLS experience.

BSA Today

Today, members of the Board of Student Advisers serve several important roles in the law school. First, BSAs advise 1L and transfer students on clerkships, exam preparation, internships, and other aspects of the law school experience. Included in this role, as of the 2016-2017 academic year, the BSA is responsible for orientation programming at the beginning of the year.

Second, the board oversees the annual Ames Moot Court Competition— a staple of HLS since 1905.^[3]

Most substantively, the BSAs work with teachers in the legal research and writing (LRW) program (known as Climenko Fellows) to assist 1Ls with their instruction and written assignments.

Previously, full-time professors ran a program called LRA. Unfortunately, there were not enough full-time professors willing to teach the class, and for those who did, there was no central curriculum, leading to widely diverging experiences between sections. Furthermore, some sections relied completely on BSAs, who were only one year removed from the program. In the fall of 1998, an LRA Committee was formed to explore ways to reform the program. These proposals would eventually lead to the LRW program in place today.

History

For almost 150 years, HLS students organized themselves into “law clubs.” These small groups (such as the Marshall Club, the Kent Club and the Pow-Wow Club) were formed to discuss and argue cases, as well as to provide a social atmosphere for their members. Many clubs established their own moot courts, which ran in parallel to the faculty-run HLS moot court.^[4]

By the turn of the twentieth century, enrollment at HLS had dramatically increased, leading to the cancellation of the faculty-run moot court, which became too burdensome to administer. This left the law clubs as the only places where HLS students could receive training in court practice.

Although a number of new clubs were formed during the early part of the century, they still counted among their members only a small minority of students. In response, a concerned faculty passed a resolution in 1910 that established the Board of Student Advisers “for encouraging among first year students early and intelligent use of the law library and also for rendering the work of the law clubs more efficient.”

The BSA was originally an honorary society, with membership chosen by the faculty. (Students whose grades were directly below those of the Harvard Law Review editors were invited to join). They focused mainly on the Ames competition: writing the cases to be argued, teaching legal research and organizing independent law clubs so that all first-year students could participate.^[5]

Although its student-centered teaching methods were lauded, the Board ran into its share of difficulties, especially as it had trouble finding faculty who were willing to take responsibility for training its teachers. In addition, participation in the Ames competition steadily declined over the years. By 1970, most of the law clubs had disappeared, and the Board was in need of a new role.

The BSA’s first response was to begin offering courses (including Gambling, Bartending and Bicycle-Care), organizing social activities and leading orientation. That, however, led many to conclude that the Board had drifted away from its dedication to legal research and education, which in turn prompted the faculty to redefine the organization’s role in 1993. The faculty agreed to directly oversee selection of BSA applicants, who then were enlisted to teach the 1L “Introduction to Lawyering” course. This course was later renamed “Legal Reasoning and Argument“ (LRA) and was the precursor to today’s LRW.

Alumni

• Anthony Kennedy, Supreme Court Justice
• Patti B. Saris, Chief Judge of United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts
• Clive Davis, Music Producer
• Anthony Brown, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland
• James Anaya, Dean of University of Colorado Law School
• Debra L. Lee, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Black Entertainment Television
• Reena Raggi, Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
• Jennifer Walker Elrod, Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
• Randy Gordon, former Senator in the Washington State Senate
• Jack Reed, United States Senator from Rhode Island

References