Learn more about the Animal Law & Policy Clinic

The Animal Law & Policy Clinic provides students the opportunity to advance the interests of wild, farmed, and captive animals through litigation, administrative rulemaking, policy initiatives, organizing, and other legal advocacy avenues. You will gain direct experience with a broad range of federal and state laws—such as the Endangered Species Act, the Animal Welfare Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act—and develop critically important strategic thinking and analytical skills. You will have significant responsibility over your projects, and will learn best practices of case management, including how to juggle multiple projects and how to work with co-counsel.

Meet the Instructors

Mary Hollingsworth
Visiting Clinical Professor and Director
[email protected]

Mary Hollingsworth, Visiting Clinical Professor and Clinical Director of Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Clinic was formerly a senior trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, Wildlife and Marine Resources Section, where she worked from 2011-2023. She has more than a decade of experience litigating cases arising under the Endangered Species Act in federal courts across the country.

She received a B.A. in Political Science and Russian & East European Studies from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from the University of Arizona College of Law. After law school, she clerked for Justice Michael Ryan of the Arizona Supreme Court and Judge Murray Snow of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona before joining the U.S. Department of Justice through the Honors Program.

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“It’s one of the cases that matters to me the most,” Hollingsworth told her students. “I hope that you will have a case like that in your lifetime: something that you feel passionate about and that sticks with you.”

Lucky Penny

Credit: James Rasaiah.