Law Firm To Fund First Cyberlaw Fellowship for Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society

The Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School announced a new fellowship position last week that will be funded by Cooley Godward Kronish, a technology-focused law firm. The fellowship will be aimed at establishing a closer link between the organizations.

The clinic—part of the Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society—defends anonymous online posters against legal demands for their identities, negotiates online music and software licensing agreements, and explores issues such as internet surveillance and the influence of the internet on democracy, according to its director, Phillip R. Malone ’81.

Cooley, Godward, and Kronish is an national law firm that specializes in technology law and has an office in Boston.

The new fellowship will provide of financial support for one of two fellows already working in the clinic, who will become the Cooley Cyberlaw Clinic Fellow, according to Malone.

The position will also provide closer collaboration with the Cooley firm, which Malone said will allow the clinic to draw on the large firm’s expertise and resources.

John G. Palfrey ’94, a Law School professor who formerly oversaw the Clinic, called the fellowship a “major step forward for the study of cyberlaw at Harvard Law School” and said the relationship with Cooley—“a leader in intellectual property law”—would be a boon for the Clinic.

Current fellows have proven immensely helpful to students, according to Tom B. Sullivan, a student at the Law School, who worked at the clinic in 2008 and remains affiliated with the Berkman Center. Sullivan called his interactions with the fellows a “chance to get actual experience, and to be able to encounter problems you don’t encounter in the classroom.”