Leverett House
Prelaw Committee & Contact Information
2005 -2006
Meet our 2005-06 Prelaw Resident Tutors:
Susannah Tobin, |
This is my fourth year in Leverett and my eighth on Harvard's campus. I look forward to living and working with you all, and especially with those of you interested in applying to law school--I co-chair the PreLaw Committee along with Jessica Budnitz--or interested in studying classics (my old concentration). I also serve as one of the House Committee Tutors, along with Paul Nguyen and Nick Vines, so I'm always happy to hear suggestions about how HoCo can help improve House life and what songs to add to the 80s dance playlist. Before becoming a Leverite, I graduated from Lowell House in June 2000 with a degree in Classics. As an undergraduate I spent a good many of my waking hours at The Crimson, where I wrote for the editorial page and argued over our daily staff positions on issues ranging from the serious (presidential impeachment) to the not-so-serious (more fro-yo in Annenberg!). When not at 14 Plympton, I did read Greek and Latin and always wanted more time for my concentration. I got my wish when a Harvard fellowship kindly sent me to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where I took a master's degree in Classics with a thesis on Ovid's poetry. I loved England (and am happy to discuss everything from the mores of British University life to Pete Sampras's serve at Wimbledon) and spent some memorable weeks traveling in Europe, but Boston is home, so I'm back. All that arguing at The Crimson stuck with me, not to mention a passion for First Amendment rights, so I went to law school and graduated in June 2004. I spent the summer after my first year working on free speech issues at the ACLU of Massachusetts and the summer after my second year doing litigation work at a corporate law firm. Stop me sometime and ask me to try to reconcile these two very different legal experiences. This year, I'll be working at the Federal Courthouse in Boston (overlooking the Harbor) as a law clerk to a trial judge, on my way to figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. I especially enjoy conversations about politics, history, sports (particularly the tragic comedy known as the Red Sox) and even the latest episodes of The West Wing and The Practice, otherwise now known as Boston Legal. |
Jessica Budnitz,
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I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, went to college in North Carolina, and eventually made my way up to Massachusetts for law school. This year, I am helping create a new child-focused center at Harvard Law School called the Child Advocacy Program (CAP). We'll provide Harvard Law School students the opportunity to study and apply innovative lawyering strategies to the area of children's rights. CAP will incorporate the work of a non-profit organization I founded: Juvenile Justice Partners. Through JJPartners, a child-focused legal clinic, Harvard Law School students represented indigent juveniles in Cambridge. Prior to JJPartners, I served as a law clerk to judges in juvenile courts in Massachusetts. I also worked at The Civil Rights Project at Harvard (studying the relationship between delinquency and education) and at the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School (studying girls in the delinquency system). I graduated from Harvard Law School in 2001 and Duke University in 1998. This is my fourth year as a tutor at Leverett and I feel lucky to be a part of such a great community. I've really enjoyed getting to know you and look forward to hearing how you are spending your time this year. I'm one of the prelaw tutors, and I work on HAND (public service), Race Relations, and once in a while, intramural sports. If you're interested in law school, juvenile justice and children's rights, starting a non-profit, or Atlanta, I'd love to talk to you! |
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Some Leverettites still remember my first tenure in Leverett House between 1999 and 2002 -- I'm sure Stuart Schechter and David Miyamoto do because they were both my entryway tutors! Ostensibly a social studies concentrator, I spent a lot of time at the Crimson with Susannah writing scandalous (well, I thought so at least) editorials, led FOP trips and worked at Let's Go, the IOP and with the Women's Leadership Project. After graduation, I spent a year in Edinburgh, Scotland getting a master's in international politics to complement my undergraduate preoccupation with America, and became an expert on obscure Scottish scholarships. Escaping the rainy highlands, I returned to Harvard the next year to start law school. When I wasn't proctoring in Weld, I was getting involved in human rights advocacy work and becoming very interested in criminal law. Luckily, I was able to combine these last two interests this past summer in Tanzania at the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. This time around in Leverett House, I'm one of the pre-law resident tutors, as well as a SASH tutor. I look forward to talking with Leverettites about Africa, criminal law, Munro-bagging, and my hometown of San Francisco (a.k.a. the Baghdad by the Bay) - among other things! |
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I graduated from Harvard College (Eliot House) in 2000. While here as an undergraduate, I studied social psychology purely out of curiosity and I still find it fascinating to think about. I also took the time to build up some pre-business classes by cross-registering at the KSG, HGSE, and Sloan/MIT - it can be fun to take some classes with non-undergrads just for a change-up. Although I was originally among the class of 1999, I took a year off to work and travel. I spent 9 months working at the Federal Reserve Bank here in Boston, and then blew every saved penny on a 5 month backpack trip around the world before returning to Harvard. Outside of classes, I worked with FOP each year, and I spent most of my time with the Harvard Sailing Team, traveling every weekend to compete and practicing every day down in the Charles River Basin near Boston. I still sail competitively sometimes, though I don't miss sailing in the snow. After college I spent two years in San Francisco working as a consultant at a small firm. I did business strategy work for tech companies throughout the valley and saw the rise and fall of the tech bubble. I went through the whole recruiting bit here on campus with all the banks and consulting firms, and then saw it all from the other side at a firm, so I'd be excited to talk about that kind of stuff with you. During my time as a consultant I needed some sort of entrepreneurial hobby, so I opened and managed a fine-arts gallery in San Fran. I was sad to let it go when I returned to the East Coast, because I'm not an artist at all but it was a blast dealing with artists and managing the place. When I returned to Cambridge, I set my sights on law school and began a small admissions consulting practice. Over the past couple of years I've been working with dozens of students who were applying to college, grad school, law school, and business school. From coaching standardized tests to essays and interviews, I've worked one-on-one with applicants to a broad range of schools and programs and I'm excited to work with Leverett House students in the same capacity. Now, I'm entering my second year at Harvard Law. Although I'm pursuing a track in corporate law, I did just spend a summer working for the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, practicing Asylum law and assisting refugees who are seeking asylum here from persecution in their home country. I feel fortunate to have become a part of Leverett as a Resident Tutor and I'm looking forward to a great year. Please don't hesitate to e-mail, or call, or grab me in the dinning hall, whether it's about some of the above or anything else... |
Meet our 2005-06 Senior Tutor and Assistant to the Senior Tutor:
Catherine Shapiro, |
Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Texas, I am happily transplanted in New England, although I remain a Steeler fan and a Texas partisan. I am delighted to be at Harvard and at Leverett in particular. My son Robert, my cats (Lorenzo, Tygmalion, Stella, and Olivia) and I are happily ensconced on the eleventh floor of T-Tower, and Robert and I - not the cats! - maintain a strong presence at the sandbox. I was a Political Science and Economics double major at Rice, then moved to California to get my PhD in Political Science at Stanford. Along the way, I interned for two members of Congress, worked at OEF International (an organization that helped Third World women advocate for themselves), and consulted for Emily's List. For almost ten years I was in the Government Department at Dartmouth College, teaching courses including Introduction to American Government, Congress, and Leadership in Politics. I worked with student groups at the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and led the Dartmouth in Washington, DC Program. My interests outside of political science include reading fiction - comedies of manners, children's books, science fiction, and mysteries for the most part; rock climbing; music of almost all kinds; and movies from the sublime to the ridiculous. I am a terrible athlete and an indifferent musician, but a great spectator, so if you are competing or performing I hope you will let me know. Please feel free to come and talk, whether in the House office, around a meal in the Dining Hall, at the sandbox, or at home in F-110. I am truly interested in how you are doing, your triumphs as well as your tragedies (most of us have some of both in our college years). |
Maura Tierney, |
In addition to my life as the Assistant to the Senior Tutor, I am an artist and the mother of my soon to be seven year old son, Sullivan. I aim to be helpful in all things administrative here at Leverett. Please stop by to discuss any of the above topics, forms or procedures. I have been at Harvard for a number of years now and know of many resources. |
Meet our 2005-06 Nonresident Prelaw Tutors:
| I am a 2004 graduate of Harvard Law School and currently a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where I am writing a dissertation on the important educative function legal opinions perform in a democracy. This fall I am a teaching fellow in Michael Sandel's core course “Justice.” While in law school, I worked for a large international law firm in New York City. Before coming to Harvard, I taught philosophy at a foreign university. I also have teaching experience in a number of other educational institutions, including public elementary schools and Head Start. I went to Williams for college (with a year at Oxford) and grew up around New York City. Even though I have been a Massachusetts resident for longer than I can remember, I still cannot bring myself to root for the Red Sox. (I prefer the team from the Bronx.) Feel free to talk to me about careers in law or education, including university teaching and research; studying in a dual degree program; applying from abroad; or other less weighty topics. |
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| What exactly are non-resident tutors, anyway? As an undergraduate in Quincy House, I was never quite sure. I couldn't decide whether they 1) loved dining hall food too much to give it up, 2) didn't cook for themselves, or 3) wanted to continue hanging around students in a sad, "St. Elmo's Fire" fashion. Now that I've become a non-res pre-law tutor, I've decided that it's mostly about the status and lucrative financial incentives. I left the College with a degree in History and Science and few skills attractive to OCS recruiters. Fortunately, I found a job at the software company Lotus, just down the river in Cambridge. I spent five years in various roles on the Notes / Domino team, including as a technical writer, Web developer, and systems engineer / consultant. (Notes is a sort of e-mail client on steroids, similar to Microsoft Outlook, but without the frequent viruses.) I came back to Harvard Law School just as the tech economy was entering its coma in 2001. Three years later, I'm a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the law school, where I work on the Internet Filtering project and think about spam and other information problems. As a pre-law tutor, I have marginally useful insight into the law school application process and options for legal careers. I'm also happy to talk about life at a software company, what consulting is like, the best dive sites in the Caribbean, and why the new "Star Wars" movies are so awful. I'm around Leverett pretty frequently; if you'd like to chat, stop me in the halls or drop me an e-mail. | |
| Hi! It's nice to cyber-meet you. My name's Chris Drake, and I'm one of the pre-law Non Resident Tutors at Leverett House. I was born and raised in San Francisco, California, and actually spent most of my 24 years on the West Coast before coming to Harvard to study law (except for a little traveling and a couple of "stints" in other places.. but more on that in a sec). I graduated from Stanford in 2003 with a BA in International Relations and a minor in Management Science & Engineering. My biggest extracurriculars at Stanford were radio sportscasting for the University radio station and playing music, mostly jazz and improvisational keyboards, and mostly solo, although I did play in a number of "impromptu" jazz ensembles and a hip-hop band. I studied in Italy for part of my junior year. After graduating, I kept working in radio, first at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. and then for the CBS Radio Network at their affiliate in San Francisco. I did a little traveling. Then I took the plunge and next thing I knew I was at HLS, where I am now wading through a sea of cases On the lighter side.. I'm what you might call easily enthused. I tend to laugh loudly and often, hopefully not to my own embarrassment, although that probably happens all the time and I'm so used to it that it doesn't bother me. I like all the cliche stuff like long walks on the beach, drinks at sunset, etc., but I'm also big into languages and cultures and geography and astronomy and lots of other random things (and when I say random, I swear it's about as random as you could think of, for the most part). As you can see, I also tend to be long-winded when I write, so I should probably stop now. But anywayz, thank you for putting up with my bio, which I hope was entertaining in at least some small measure. I hope you have a great day and/or a great night, depending on when you're reading this. And don't forget to smile! :-) | |
| My name is Hani Elias and I'm very much looking forward to helping you with the decision and application process for law school. I graduated in 2005 from the College with a degree in social studies. While at Harvard, I served on Eliot's House Committee and played a few IM sports here and there. I also co-founded CollegeCorps, a non-profit that supports undergraduate international work. I'm currently a joint JD/MPH student at Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Public Health. If you have any questions about law school, public health programs, joint-degree programs, or non-profit work, please don't hesitate to get in touch. | |
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I graduated from Harvard (and Leverett!) in 1999, with a degree in Government. (You can check out my facebook photo from freshmen year--1995--above. Hopefully, I look a bit older now.) I spent the following year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Sweden, studying public trust at the Stockholm Center for Organizational Research. Gainful employment drew me back to the U.S., where I worked until the summer of 2002 as a management consultant for Bain & Company in its New York office. I am now entering my third year at HLS and am very happy to talk law, business, fellowships or anything else you might be considering post Harvard. |
| I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana and arrived at Harvard (for the first time) as an undergraduate in the Class of 1982. After graduation, I moved to Washington, D.C., where I took the first of several journalism jobs, starting out as copy editor for the Wilson Quarterly at the Smithsonian Institution. From there, I headed to the Southern US, where I worked as a reporter for papers in Tennessee and Mississippi, writing mainly about politics and education, before moving on to a job working for Mississippi's higher education commissioner. During this time, I started a program called the Mississippi Teacher Corps, which I'm thrilled to say is still alive and well. Next came Law School, back here at Harvard. After graduation, I actually practiced for a time—first at a large glitzy Manhattan firm, then at a small but equally glitzy entertainment boutique—before acting on a long-deferred dream and quitting my job to write. It was a crazy, stressful time, as I scribbled away (or rather typed away) and watched my savings dwindle, but a year later, having met an agent by happenstance, I found myself with a book contract. My first novel, Equivocal Death (Little, Brown 2001), featured a young Harvard Law grad as its protagonist, while my second, The Anniversary (Little, Brown 2003), tells the story of three women whose lives become entangled with a notorious serial killer. In the fall of 2004, I returned to Harvard yet again—I'm now the assistant director for academic affairs at the Law School—and am very excited about the prospect of serving as a Leverett House non-resident tutor. I look forward to meeting you! | |
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I'm a Yalie and Yankees fan, which I guess count as two strikes against me here in Cambridge... Although I won't give up my allegiance to New York and New Haven, I'm loving my second year as a law student at Harvard and a Tutor at Leverett. I studied Chinese undergrad and have spent close to a year and a half in China and Taiwan. As far as a career goes, I'm hoping to get into international and/or public interest law. |
| Andy is a second year student at Harvard Law School. | |
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Hello, everyone! I was a Leverite as an undergrad and am very excited to be back as a non-resident tutor in law. I graduated in 2002 with a degree in economics, and have spent the last two years getting a master's degree in economics at Oxford. I'm currently a first-year student at HLS, and am always happy to talk about law school, living abroad, the Sox, the Pats, or anything else! |
| Jessica is a rising third year law student at Harvard Law School. | |
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Melissa is a rising third year law student at Harvard Law School. |
| My name is Vlad Perju and I am a pre-law tutor in international, comparative and foreign law. I am currently working on a doctoral thesis at Harvard Law School and this year I am also a graduate fellow in ethics at Kennedy School. Prior to coming to Harvard, I studied law in a variety of settings in Romania, France, Belgium, Greece, Finland and England. My interests range from comparative constitutionalism to international law and jurisprudence and from moral philosophy to social theory. If you are interested in understanding how law shapes cultures and how culture shapes laws, if you want to pursue questions about globalization and its challenges for our collective life, or if you simply contemplate adding an international perspective to your intellectual interests, then I'll be delighted to hear from you. | |
| After growing up down the road on Martha's Vineyard, I went to Hillsdale College in Michigan where I majored in East Asian Studies and History. I then spent a year trying to convince Japanese school children that English is useful, another writing a book on how conservative foundations have influenced the American conservative movement, and a third getting an M.Phil in Oriental Studies from Cambridge University. Now at HLS, I'm involved with the FederalistSociety, HLS GOP, a Senior Editor and Articles Board member for the JLPPubciting for JLPP, and a TA for Alan Dershowitz. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about law school or life in general. |
