Professor Jeanne Charn

Jeanne Charn – Senior Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School; Director of the Bellow-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project. B.A., Michigan, 1967; J.D. Harvard, 1970.

Ms. Charn directs the Bellow-Sacks Access to Civil Legal Services Project a research and policy effort aimed at making civil legal services more widely and effectively available. She is a member of the ABA Standing Committee on Delivery of Legal Services. From 1970-1973, Ms. Charn was a legal aid lawyer. In 1973, Ms. Charn was appointed Assistant Dean for Clinical Programs at Harvard Law School and worked with Professor Gary Bellow to develop Harvard’s clinical program. In 1975, she was appointed Lecturer in Law and continues to teach The Lawyering Process, an introduction to professional ethics and civil practice; Delivery of Legal Services; Legal Needs of Moderate Income Households; Poverty, Law, Policy and Practice; and, with Professor Duncan Kennedy, Housing Law and Policy. In 1979, Ms. Charn and Professor Bellow founded a clinical practice center, now the WilmerHale Legal Services Center. From 1979 to 2006, Ms Charn directed WilmerHale Legal Services Center, the largest clinical center at Harvard which also serves as a laboratory for new approaches to service learning and for experiments in delivery of high quality and cost effective legal services.