Author: sdrescher

Wesley is one of PLAP’s Impact Litigation Directors and is a member of the JD class of 2026.

I joined the Prison Legal Assistance Project during my 1L year, and it has been one of the most meaningful aspects of my experience at HLS. PLAP quickly became a community for me, and I am grateful to be surrounded by other students deeply committed to the same values that brought me to law school in the first place. 

One of the aspects I have valued most is the mentorship built into PLAP. As a 1L, I relied heavily on older PLAPpers during my weekly office hours shifts. They offered practical advice on everything from client phone calls to picking courses that fit my interests. It was incredible to have people a few steps ahead who were so open about their experiences and made me feel welcome.

Beginning in my 2L fall, I began as an Impact Litigation Director and was introduced to the depth of PLAP’s work and its commitment to broader change. Over the past two years, I have worked on cases involving disability rights, excessive use of force claims, false disciplinary tickets, and force-feeding. The impact litigation team is designed to help coordinate and contribute to litigation efforts addressing systemic issues within the Massachusetts prison system, advocating for our clients while also supporting broader initiatives led by other organizations, including through contributions to amicus briefs. Contributing to impact litigation in an organization that prioritizes direct client representation has been an amazing experience. The cases we take on are always motivated against the systemic injustices we have seen affecting clients every single day.

Last year, I worked on the case of a client with a disability who was incarcerated for years (due to his disability) despite being granted parole. After years of PLAP’s efforts, he was finally released. An attorney at my internship, after learning I was in PLAP, said she had worked on his case years ago while at HLS and had been overjoyed when her fellow PLAP alum told her he had been released. The impact litigation team has taught me how incredible it is when student attorneys across multiple years work towards a common goal, and it seems like every internship I have worked at has a Harvard PLAPper amongst them ready to share fond memories of their time.

Direct client work remains at the heart of PLAP’s work. One of the most memorable moments of my time in PLAP came when my client was granted parole after nearly 30 years of incarceration. Myself and another student attorney had met with him weekly for months, building a relationship and helping him to prepare for his hearing. Contributing in any way to that positive outcome was truly a privilege. PLAP has fundamentally shaped my HLS experience. It has given me an incredible community and shown me the kind of advocate I would like to be. 

Reilly is a PLAP Office Hours supervisor and a member of the JD class of 2027.

 I joined PLAP on the advice of an HLS grad I used to work with. He told me I would get good experience. “It’s really cool.” He was right–I did get good experiencelitigating, building relationships with clients, and crafting legal arguments. It’s been really cool. But PLAP for me has been about a lot more than legal skills. I’velearned three things from my clients that I wish everyone, and especially anyone who wants to put people in prison, knew.

First, being in prison is terrible. Lots of people think that’s the point, but substantive theories of punishment aside, there’s a lot about life in prison that should offendanyone. Like that many incarcerated people, like my client Mr. P, work full time for $1 an hour. Or that, despite the Massachusetts Legislature’s attempt to ban it, MAprisons still use solitary confinement both administratively and as punishment. My very first client, Mr. J, got a disciplinary ticket for using a cloth to cover his cellwindow while he used the toilet and shouting at the guard when the guard knocked it down. That day, staff “lugged” him to the Behavioral Assessment Unit (BAU),where he got only a few hours out of his cell, spent either handcuffed to a table or standing in an outdoor cage. When I visited him, he was marched into the room inchains, one officer at each arm. He struggled to shake my hand because his right hand was cuffed to the desk. These incredibly restrictive conditions are basicallyidentical to those banned by the MA Legislature in the 2018 Criminal Justice Reform Act, but the Department of Correction claims that the BAU and other restrictiveunits are not covered by the law. But whether they’re in solitary, mental health housing, or general population, I have seen the dehumanizing and demoralizing effectof every part of our clients’ lives being subject to the whims of the prison and its staff, from getting lugged to the BAU to where they can be to how they can spendtheir time.

Which brings me to my second point: it’s incredibly rewarding to work with people stuck in this system. Even though many disciplinary reports are absolutelyunfounded, and the adjudicator at disciplinary hearings is themself a correctional officer, and the superintendent has to my knowledge never reversed the hearingofficer’s conclusion – in other words, even though the deck is pretty well stacked – it has meant so much to me to be the person who listens and cares about myclients’ side of the story. And in parole cases, where we’re fighting not to exculpate a client of an in-prison violation but to get them home for good, it is so inspiring tohelp get people out of the violent and dehumanizing prison environment. And I know that our clients appreciate our help, because every semester we are inundatedwith requests for representation, even though fighting a disciplinary ticket can draw the frustration of the very correctional staff who control our clients’ lives. 

Third, and most importantly, I have learned so much about resilience from my clients. As a student advocate, it’s frustrating to deal with the obstacles to representation–the inability to call our clients, the 5+ hours it takes to meet in person, the days of delay in sending mail. But I have been inspired over and over by the grace and strength that my clients exhibit in an environment that tells them they don’t matter. Mr. S taught himself about his rights and drafted his own legal arguments for his defense. When I visited, he gave me several pages of arguments written in beautiful longhand. Mr. P buys Christmas gifts for every one of his over two dozen coworkers every year–this year it was packaged cheesecakes. Mr. J refused to plea out to the ticket he got over yelling at the staff member, even though he was offered several ‘good’ plea deals, because he wanted to stand up for the principle that the guard had acted wrongly. When it is easiest to keep their heads down, our clients assert their rights.

PLAP has hundreds of members this year, but we always have more prisoners who need help. There is something for everyone in PLAP, whether its functional legalskills or the kinds of lessons I’ve learned from my clients.

Kiran is PLAP’s Internal Community Director for 2025-26 and is one of the PLAP Executive Directors for the 2026-27 year. She is a member of the JD class of 2027.

I joined PLAP in the spring of my 1L year. I had joined Harvard Defenders in my first semester and my team lead Maddie Stuzin (one of PLAP’s Parole Directors for 2025-26) and colleague Katrina Weinert (one of PLAP’s Disciplinary Hearing Directors for 2025-26) encouraged me to join PLAP for the opportunity to work on parole cases and get to develop a longer-term relationship with our clients. Since then, I have worked on two parole cases, half a dozen disciplinary tickets, and am currently working on my first commutation case. Though each of these types of cases are incredibly different, there are a lot of similarities – our clients live very tightly regulated lives under the near complete control of the Department of Corrections and their days are characterized both by very rigid routine and outsized unpredictability. Time in prison passes both very slowly and very quickly. Every time I go to prison to visit a client, I feel like it completely changes me even though I have done it dozens of times.

When you are accused of breaking a rule in prison, you are not entitled to any representation. The person deciding your case will be a colleague and friend of the person who is accusing you of breaking the rule in the first place since the disciplinary officer in charge of managing the case and facilitating our access to evidence, the reporting officer prosecuting the case, and the hearing officer adjudicating the case are all coworkers employed by the the Department of Corrections, the institution incarcerating our clients in the first place. The agency prosecuting you also has complete control over the evidence collected, the investigation done into the matter, and how much of that information they choose to share with you – that is, if you even know exactly how to request it in the first place. When it comes to parole cases and commutations, the odds can feel even steeper since it could take years for your case to even be chosen for review. Once you have the chance to make your case, you are being graded on a rubric you will never see by people who have never been in your shoes.

Despite these incredibly challenging circumstances, PLAP student attorneys and our clients actually win their cases all the time! As PLAP’s Community Director, I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about what is going on within the organization when interviewing a PLAP member every week for our “PLAPper of the Week” feature series and I am constantly impressed by everyone’s creativity and determination. PLAP members view hundreds of hours of video footage, comb through hundreds of pages of confusing and contradictory case files, get dozens of letters of support from our clients’ community members who can support their release, spend dozens of hours driving to and from various prisons, and so much more. Our clients are amazing self-advocates but having the support of someone who the DOC treats as a third party worthy of respect can often make a real difference in the outcome of a case.

But for most people in PLAP, the central part of their PLAP experience is not driving to prisons to visit their clients, drafting discovery requests, or reviewing evidence but answering PLAP’s phones during our weekly office hours. Here, we conduct intakes for our cases, fulfill research requests for callers inside prison, answer callers’ questions about other legal resources they can avail of, and share with them information about their rights. Each shift is staffed by 5–10 PLAP members, many of whom would never have met if not for being randomly assigned to the same office hours shift. In my first semester of PLAP, my office hours shift-mates helped me pick classes, choose clinics, navigate the social complexities of law school, apply to summer jobs, find the best food near campus, and so much more in between answering client calls. I feel so lucky to be surrounded by people who are so passionate about the same type of work as I am and who will do anything to help their clients.

Jack is a PLAP Office Hour supervisor and is a member of the JD class of 2026.

Coming into law school, I knew I wanted to 1) serve communities in need of legal assistance in some way and 2) build relationships with people who were different from me. Thankfully, during my 1L year, I decided to join PLAP, which has been an incredible way to do both. PLAP has taught me how to be a client-centered advocate, a better listener, and allowed me to engage deeply in the HLS community.

Client-centered Advocate

Client-centered lawyering involves giving primacy to clients’ decisions, amplifying clients’ voices, and working alongside the client to achieve the best result for them. I had heard those lessons before PLAP, but they took on new meaning once I worked on a disciplinary report case. One of my first clients was far more knowledgeable about the process than I was. He walked me through the pre-hearing steps. We brainstormed case strategy together. He knew exactly what evidence he wanted to see. For me, it was a great lesson that the relationship between a defense attorney and a client should not be hierarchical — it should be collaborative. Especially since our clients have little autonomy in prison, walking alongside them as they take ownership of their case is a beautiful way to amplify their voices using our skills.

Learning to Listen

One of the most important roles I’ve learned to play as a PLAPper is a conscientious listener. Many clients call in part because they know that we will listen when no one else will. We will listen to their stories and we will empathize, commiserate, and look for ways to help. Answering a call during office hours is more than an exercise in issue spotting. It’s also a chance to treat a client who is dehumanized every day like a real person. During 3L, I have had a client who would call nearly every week just to check in and tell us about what was going on in his life. He told me that he knew his PLAP student attorneys were in his corner because we believed what he was saying — we didn’t treat him like the COs or the prison administration did. I knew that even when I didn’t have anything substantive to report or when PLAP couldn’t help with the issue he was facing, it meant something to him that we would always pick up the phone. By the end of our case, even when we had lost the appeal, he was incredibly thankful for our steadfast representation and how we stood by him when he felt no one else would.

Engaging in Community

PLAP members are a beautiful cross-section of the school — 1Ls, 2Ls, 3Ls, LLMs, people from all corners of the globe, from varied pre-law experiences and with wide-ranging plans after law school. When I was a 1L, my office hours were a great source of knowledge about classes to take, summer jobs to apply to, and where the best outlines are. But beyond talking about school, PLAP office hours were a place to feel welcome and to get to know people beyond how they answered cold calls in Contracts. In between answering phone calls and struggling with the copier, we still found time to learn about each other’s lives. Faces in the crowd became friends who had a shared interest in serving vulnerable populations. I truly met some of my favorite people at HLS in office hours!

Thanks for everything, PLAP. And thank you to everyone who keeps PLAP running.