Bill Beardall receives Harvard Law School’s 2012 Gary Bellow Public Service Award

Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow (left) with Bill Beardall after he received the 2012 Gary Bellow Public Service Award.

Bill Beardall, director of the Law School’s Transnational Worker Rights Clinic,  has been honored with Harvard Law School’s 2012 Gary Bellow Public Service Award. Each year the student body of  the Harvard Law School votes to present the Bellow award to an alumnus or alumna in recognition of the recipient’s work to achieve social justice through public-interest law.  Beardall was honored for his thirty-five-year career advancing justice in the workplace and in the legal system for low-income workers and families. In addition to directing the Transnational Worker Rights Clinic, Beardall also serves as executive director of the Equal Justice Center, a non-profit law firm that helps low-wage working people across Texas enforce their basic employment rights. The award was presented to Beardall April 9, 2012, in a ceremony held at the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachu­setts, with Harvard Law Dean Martha Minow presiding.

Commenting on the award, Beardall remarked, “I’ve had the good fortune to work with an array of extraordinary lawyers, justice advocates, and clients who have allowed me to share in their dedication, courage, and talent and who together have advanced the march of justice.”

According to Harvard Law School, the Gary Bellow Public Service Award is conferred in honor of the late Harvard Law Professor Gary Bellow, who died in April 2000.  Bellow joined the faculty at Harvard Law School in the early 1970s, where he founded and directed the Law School’s clinical programs.  Beardall was among the first generation of Harvard Law School students mentored by Bellow, who according to Beardall continues to exert a profound influence in his law practice for low-wage workers.

Category: Faculty News
Tags: , , ,