Promoting innovative partnerships between lawyers and community organizations
In honor of Harvard Law School Professor David Grossman’s memory as a mentor, teacher, and advocate for the poor, the David Abraham Grossman Fund for Social Justice works to promote social justice by fostering innovative partnerships between lawyers and community organizations. The Fund supports fellowships and grants that enable law students and young lawyers to engage in and to develop law and organizing partnerships and new approaches to fighting poverty.
The fund is managed as a dedicated fund at Harvard Law School that is set aside to create new fellowships and grants that enable lawyers to work with community organizations toward positive social change. The Fund has raised over $1 million to date and currently supports an annual one year $65,000 fellowship. We hope to continue to raise funds so that we may support a 2-year fellowship term.
The DAG Fund supports work in the following areas:
Fellowships for lawyers and community organizers to work at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau toward community organization-lawyer partnerships
Fellowships for Harvard Law School graduates to work in community organization-lawyer partnerships
Grants for Harvard Law School students to create partnerships between law students, lawyers, and community organizations
Sarah Blatt-Herold ‘23 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Sarah spent her fellowship term working at the MacArthur Justice Center in Chicago, where she joined a coalition of organizations fighting e-carceration, hoping to reduce the number of people who lose their liberty to Electronic Monitoring (EM).
Joy Sun ‘21 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Joy spent her fellowship term working in the Consumers Rights Unit at Greater Boston Legal Services where she aligned with grassroots community organizations to advise, represent, and educate low-income homeowners who are facing foreclosure, especially in Boston’s communities of color.
Alex Milvae ‘19 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Alex spent his fellowship term working in the Asian Outreach Unit at Greater Boston Legal Services where he expanded AOU’s innovative, community based model of lawyering to the growing Chinese immigrant communities in Malden and Quincy.
Jackie Ebert ‘18 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Jackie Ebert spent her fellowship term at Legal Services of Greater Miami where she worked with the staff and guests at Lotus Village, a trauma-informed homeless shelter serving over 500 women and children each night in Miami-Dade County, to address guests’ legal barriers to housing stability, sustainability, and self-determination.
Rebecca Donaldson ‘16 awarded DAG Fund Fellowship
Rebeccal spent her fellowship term to work in her hometown of Milwaukee and partner with Legal Action of Wisconsin where she led a pilot project focused on aiding victims of violent sexual crimes.
Joey Michalakes ‘16 awarded inaugural DAG Fund Fellowship
Joseph (Joey) Michalakes spent his fellowship term in the housing and employment units at Greater Boston Legal Services, where he worked in tandem with other staff attorneys as well as community organizations to develop strategies for combating displacement in gentrifying neighborhoods in Greater Boston, both through direct representation in eviction defense and affirmative employment litigation and community legal education.