Gary Bellow

CLINICAL PIONEER AND TIRELESS WORKER FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

Gary Bellow was one of the founders of the Clinical Legal Education movement and also played a key role in establishing legal services for the poor. He began his career as a highly-respected public defender in Washington, D.C., where in the mid-1960s he was influential in efforts to obtain funding for civil legal services for the poor under the newly formed Office of Economic Opportunity. With the funding in place, Gary worked for a two-year period with Neighborhood Legal Services in the District of Columbia, then moved to California to become Deputy Director of California Rural Legal Assistance, one of the most ambitious and innovative of the new OEO programs. In the fall of 1968, he became a law professor at the University of Southern California, while continuing to maintain a large and active caseload of both civil and criminal matters which he handled on a pro bono basis. Three years later, Gary left USC for Harvard, which was to be his professional home for almost thirty years.

By the time he arrived at Harvard, Gary had already developed a highly successful clinical program at USC, and had become one of the leading theoreticians of the movement. Clinical programs had been operational for only a year or two at the schools that had them, and did not exist at many other schools. Gary examined the question of how students best learn in the clinical setting, and began to develop innovative methods and materials. He also realized that there was a dearth of useful material on what lawyers actually do and need to know in practice, and, with Bea Moulton, began to compile the readings that would later be published as “The Lawyering Process: Materials for Clinical Instruction in Advocacy” (Foundation Press, 1978). Simultaneously, he also took on cases and became a leader in the legal services community in Boston, winning important legal victories and working tirelessly to strengthen and expand the services available to poor people. His most tangible legacy is Harvard’s community-based Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center, which for more than twenty years has served thousands of clients each year while providing a high quality clinical experience to hundreds of law students.