Welcoming Kendra Albert and Kicking Off the 2017-18 Academic Year!

With September just around the corner, we here in the Cyberlaw Clinic are eager to get the fall semester underway. And, we are especially excited to announce that the start of the new term comes with a new addition to our practice and teaching team in the form of the one and only Kendra Albert! Kendra is a familiar face around Harvard Law School and the Berkman Klein Center, having worked at Berkman before attending law school at HLS. Kendra was a student in the Cyberlaw Clinic during the spring term of their third year, back in 2016. Kendra spent a year in private practice at Zeitgeist Law in San Francisco from 2016-17 before rejoining us as a Clinical Instructional Fellow this week.  We are delighted to have Kendra on board and anticipate that they will contribute to a wide variety of our projects involving privacy, copyright, and related issues.

Kendra’s arrival comes in the midst of some additional staff changes at the Clinic. We are delighted to report that Jessica Fjeld has assumed the role of Acting Assistant Director of the Clinic and has been appointed a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. In that capacity, Jess will co-teach the Cyberlaw Clinic Seminar along with Clinical Professor Chris Bavitz this fall. Vivek Krishnamurthy will take on the role of Clinic Attorney, splitting his time between Clinic projects concerning technology and human rights and Berkman Klein Center research initiatives (primarily from his new homebase on the west coast).

Susan Crawford will continue to oversee projects relating to government use of technology and civic innovation, with support from Maria Smith on the Clinic staff and Clinic Advisor Waide Warner. And, Mason Kortz will round out the teaching team, continuing his first year as a Fellow with us and spearheading a lot of our initiatives involving civil liberties and big data.

Our incoming students will be pleased to know that the Clinic’s docket for the coming year is as diverse as ever, with the usual array of projects that touch on copyright, speech, privacy, security, and civic tech.  We anticipate playing a role in the United States Copyright Office’s triennial review of exemption requests pursuant to 17 USC § 1201; engaging in some amicus advocacy; and counseling cutting-edge organizations in fields ranging from arts, to ed tech, to legal services.

We also anticipate that the Cyberlaw Clinic staff and students will play a significant role in the Berkman Klein Center’s Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence initiative, launched earlier this year. Kira Hessekiel on the Clinic staff will help to support a number of research initiatives that focus on the broad theme of “algorithms and justice,” considering the ways in which technology can help to inform government decisions about allocation of scarce resources and assessments of risk in the criminal justice system.

All in all, it promises to be an extraordinary year!