Dear Harvard Law School Community,
With Spring semester upon us, preparations are underway for one of the most highly anticipated events of the year: The Public Interest Scavenger Hunt, which will now take place on Friday, April 3, 2020.
For those of you entering Hunt season for the first time (hi 1Ls and LLMs!), allow us to explain why the Hunt is so special. For one, it is the only day of the year when you have an opportunity to cross off two bucket list items at the same time: (1) run around the school competing with your classmates without looking like a gunner, and (2) win an opportunity to go shopping, karaoke-ing, and more with your favorite professors. Seriously, what more could you want on a Friday afternoon in spring? As if this wasn’t enough, teams often compete in costume, answering HLS trivia questions while snagging selfies with professors to earn points. In short, this is not an afternoon you’ll want to miss.
As fun as the Hunt is, it’s not just the competition that makes the Hunt a beloved law school tradition. The Hunt is also the one day a year when the law school community comes together to celebrate and support our peers pursuing public interest work. And there is so much to celebrate. Our alumni are using the skills and opportunities provided by Harvard Law School to change the world every day. Thanks to public interest funding provided through the Public Service Venture Fund, graduates of the Class of 2019 are providing zealous advocacy to incarcerated clients; improving access to healthcare for low-income transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex New Yorkers; fighting for enhanced labor standards for domestic workers; developing Family Defense Practices, and so much more.
The Class of 2019 is not alone. Harvard Law has a rich tradition of sending lawyers out into the world to do incredible public interest work. But we also all know that it remains challenging for students to do this type of work. According to the American Bar Association, the average starting salary for entry-level civil legal services attorneys is a mere $48,000, while incoming attorneys at public interest organizations more broadly make an average of $50,300. Even at those salaries, the evidence shows that, “[g]etting a permanent public interest job is more challenging than getting a large firm job.”
Given these challenges, the public interest hopefuls among us could use a little extra help from the Harvard Law community. That is exactly what the Hunt aims to provide: In addition to building community and having a great time on campus, the Public Interest Scavenger Hunt aims to aims to support our classmates who plan to go into public interest work with additional fellowship opportunities, above and beyond what the School already provides. The Hunt, in other words, is our chance to do our part, as students and as future lawyers, to promote public interest careers.
In order to do that, we need to raise some serious money, which we can do if we all join in with the Hunt’s philanthropic mission. Toward that end, each participant in the Hunt is asked to make some kind of financial contribution, all of which goes to fund one (or more!) public interest fellowship(s) for a graduating 3L. For those of you who are going to firms, we’re continuing our tradition this year of asking that you consider making the One Day’s Work pledge by donating $520—the amount an entry-level associate makes in just one day of Big Law—to fund public interest fellowships at HLS.
The One Day’s Work idea isn’t new. Harvard Law students have been supporting each other through One Day’s Work initiatives for decades. The Hunt first incorporated the One Day’s Work pledge last year with enormous success and we hope to continue this tradition as a way to channel the excitement of the Hunt into a concrete culture of student-led giving and service amongst peers.
On its face, One Day’s Work is a lot of money. But if sixty-six graduating 3Ls make the pledge, that alone will be enough to provide a PSVF fellowship that would otherwise not exist, funding an entire year of work for a public interest classmate. And don’t worry — it’s a pledge, not an upfront donation, so you can wait until you’ve actually gotten your feet under yourself in the fall before cutting the check.
Even so, we understand that it’s a big ask. If one day’s salary just isn’t manageable in the end, we ask that you still consider giving a portion of the amount. How much will you make in an hour? An afternoon? How much will your employer spend on just one of many summer lunches? Consider donating that number instead. We’ve set up a convenient registration page that makes signing up and donating quick and easy.
One last note on donations: This year, we’re adding a new feature to the One Day’s Work drive. We will be keeping track of the donations made by students who are heading to work at specific law firms after graduation. The law firm whose students collectively donate the largest amount to the Hunt will be named the Public Interest Ally Firm of 2020. We will announce this award during the Hunt itself—so encourage your future co-workers to join in on the fun!
Whatever donation you can give, we hope you’ll come out on April 3rd and join in one of Harvard Law’s most exciting and empowering traditions. We look forward to spending an afternoon amongst friends, peers and professors, while creating real and meaningful change and renewing our commitment to student-led philanthropy in order to benefit each other and those we aim to serve. See you at the Hunt.