Laila Hlass

Professor Laila Hlass joined BU Law’s clinical faculty in July 2014, directing and teaching in the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, a year-long course where students represent newly arrived unaccompanied children facing deportation, refugees fleeing human rights abuses and other vulnerable immigrants in court and administrative proceedings.

Previously, she was a teaching fellow with theCenter for Applied Legal Studies at Georgetown Law Center. In this role, she participated in all aspects of managing the clinic—through case selection, curriculum design, and budgeting—and specifically taught and supervised students in a semester-long asylum clinic. Additionally, as a clinical teaching fellow, she was trained in clinical pedagogy through a Georgetown course which spanned topics such as teaching ethics, cultural competency, as well as how to provide oral and written feedback, conducting rounds, and more.

Prior to Georgetown, Professor Hlass was a staff attorney in the Immigration Clinic at Loyola University New Orleans, College of Law, where she advocated for particularly vulnerable immigrants in the deep south, including survivors of violence, detainees, and children. While at Loyola, she also served as the interim director of the Office of Law Skills and Experiential Learning and as an adjunct professor, teaching a seminar in refugee and asylum law.

Previously, Professor Hlass provided holistic, legal services to immigrant youth in the New York City metropolitan area at the Door Legal Services. During 2009-10, she was selected as an Effective Leadership Fellow with Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, and she currently serves on the national advisory committee for Equal Justice Works.

Professor Hlass graduated from Columbia Law School, received her LLM with distinction from Georgetown University Law Center, and received her Bachelor of Arts from Rice University. While in law school, she co-founded the Student Hurricane Network, a national network of law students that recruited and placed more than 5,500 law students with pro bono placements in the hurricane-affected region.