The Board of Student Advisers is a selective student organization that provides a number of essential services to the Harvard Law School community:  we serve as teaching assistants in the First Year Legal Research and Writing Program, as academic and pastoral advisers to members of the first-year class, and as administrators of the Ames Moot Court competition. We are therefore unique among student organizations in that our role is both to provide opportunities for students to intellectually engage with challenging legal problems and to serve as a support network for students going through the difficult academic and personal transition to law school.  Our mission is to build a community, both among first-year students and across the diverse student body that is Harvard Law School.

This year (2008-2009), the BSA has forty-two student members.  Our current members have been recommended from a broad pool of applicants by a committee of sitting Board members based on comments from fellow BSAs, editing and feedback skills, prior work or teaching experience, and a personal statement essay. These recommendations were reviewed by Elizabeth Bangs, the head of the First Year LRW program, who incorporated first-year grades and faculty input to arrive at the final admissions decisions.

Please use the links to the left to navigate the site.  For general questions about the Board of Student Advisers, contact Yvonne Smith (yvsmith@law.harvard.edu).  For questions about this website, contact Andrew Ungberg (aungberg@jd10.law.harvard.edu).

2008-2009 BSA Executive Board

Matthew Kelly, Executive Chair (matkelly@law.harvard.edu)
Katie Palms, Executive Vice-Chair Ames (kpalms@law.harvard.edu)
Jason Szanyi, Executive Vice-Chair 1L Program (jszanyi@law.harvard.edu)
Rebecca Wertzer, Executive Vice-Chair Management (rwertzer@law.harvard.edu)