2024 CLEA Awards for Outstanding Clinical and Externship Students: Berkeley's Grace Erger and Kat Harlow

Each year, the Clinical Legal Education Association invites law schools to nominate students as their Outstanding Clinic Student or Team and Outstanding Externship student. This series includes submissions from law schools celebrating their outstanding students. 

From Berkeley Law:

Outstanding Clinic Student: Grace Erger

Grace Erger shined in Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic, spending the year working on a case where a client could soon face execution. She developed a full-scale operation to identify, speak to, and get support from people such as correctional officers advocating for the client, resulting in 30 new witnesses willing to provide statements under penalty of perjury in a capital case. She demonstrated excellence across many projects, including organizing major investigation trips and helping write a U.S. Supreme Court cert petition in four days. Her supervisors say she has the “maturity, thoughtfulness, effectiveness, legal skill, and nuanced judgment of a seasoned lawyer — and she tops it off with endless passion and commitment to her work.”

Erger says, “I learned what it means to provide zealous, caring, and creative representation, and I learned that being in community with a group of generous, supportive, kind, and very funny people can make even the heaviest tasks a bit lighter.”

Outstanding Externship Student: Kat Harlow

While at Berkeley Law, Kat Harlow did three field placements with the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, TGI Justice Project, and Transgender Law Center. She also did summer internships at EBCLC and Lambda Legal, and co-led the student-led Queer Justice Project. Harlow helped transgender youth and adults appeal disability benefits denials and legally change their name and gender, and worked on impact litigation issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community, including challenges to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay censorship law and laws targeting transgender youth. Her supervisors praise her professionalism, commitment, and curiosity, and her “smart advocacy on behalf of transgender and gender-variant communities.”

Harlow says, "Pro bono work has provided me the opportunity to give back to my community while collaborating with clients, fellow students, and supervisors that have lent me so much inspiration and support, and kept me grounded in the values that brought me to law school in the first place."