Margaret Holden ’14
Margaret Holden ’14 – came to HLS to study environmental law and jumped right in as a 1L, joining Richard Lazarus’ reading group on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and both the Environmental Law Society (ELS) and the Environmental Law Review (ELR). The summer after her 1L year, she worked at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. in the Environmental Crimes Section. As a 2L, she was elected co-president of the ELS, served as a research assistant for both Lazarus and Kate Konschnik, director of the ELP Policy Initiative, and during J-term, worked on a fracking project in the clinic. That summer she worked at the DC office of the Natural Resources Defense Council. As a 3L, she enrolled again in the clinic and was elected Editor-in-Chief of the Environmental Law Review. Holden traveled to India this past J-term to research a paper on the solar industry. Next year, she will be clerking for the DC Court of Appeals, then working in environmental policy with a focus on climate and energy issues.
Says Holden: “In terms of support, it’s been incredible. The clinic and classes are really great, and the faculty are so supportive and connected — they’ve really helped me to do everything I’ve wanted to do. Working at DOJ and NRDC were my dream summer internships, and the faculty recommendations and experience I’ve had with ELP definitely enabled me to get them.”
“One of the projects that I worked on for the clinic evaluated whether FracFocus, a voluntary chemical disclosure registry for fracking projects, was an adequate regulatory tool. We found major shortcomings with the registry, and published a report containing our findings that was distributed to relevant stakeholders and picked up in several media outlets.”
Genevieve Parshalle ’15
Genevieve Parshalle ’15 – is in a joint degree program at the Harvard Kennedy School, and matriculated at HLS after working at the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. After her 1L year, Parshalle worked in the California Attorney General’s office in the Environment Section; last summer, she worked for the NRDC in San Francisco. In the fall, she worked on fracking issues in the clinic, and over J-term, she took a course in natural resources. This spring, she is heavily involved in organizing the ELS’s symposium, which, in recognition of the 20th anniversary of President Clinton’s Executive Order on Environmental Justice, is “Environmental Justice: Where Are We Now?” She was recently elected Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review.
Says Parshalle: “I think by far most outstanding thing about the Environmental Law Program here are the professors and the students. If you look at professor evaluations, Jody Freeman and Richard Lazarus have outstanding evaluations, some of the highest of all the faculty I’ve seen. Students sign up to take environmental law because they’ve heard such great things about the faculty, even if they have no interest in environmental law.”
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