Public defender

Daniel Harawa, ’09, argued his first case when he was a month out of law school. He was only provisionally licensed to practice and found himself in front of a nine-judge en banc panel at the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals. He was asking the court to overturn its own 140-year-old precedent: a blanket prohibition on people with mental illness entering into contracts. And he was successful.

“It was terrifying,” Harawa said. “I don’t recommend starting your law career that way.”

Harawa always wanted to be a lawyer, he said. An externship with the D.C. public defender’s office was a natural expansion of his undergraduate research on juvenile justice issues and alternatives to incarceration.

It’s not a politically popular job, he admits, but the job gives him perspective on the type of reforms he’d like to see: changes to how we conceptualize punishment and treat offenders. Harawa said it’s important to take into account factors that intersect with the criminal justice system like mental health, substance abuse, poverty, and racial bias in law enforcement. He counts his office as one of the luckier ones around the country. It has more resources and smaller caseloads that allow him to focus on the best work he can provide to clients.

“So much of what public defenders do across the country gets undervalued or overlooked,” Harawa said. “Being somebody’s advocate at one of the most difficult times of their lives inspires me to continue doing the work I do with the hope that I can help shift the law in a way that brings the justice system into balance.”