In an effort to provide assistance to new Harvard graduates, Harvard Law has recently launched the Public Venture Fund. The creation of this Public Service Venture Fund will help a number of the school’s graduates in building their own non-profit organizations. Apart from that, this newly established fund will also provide assistance to Harvard Alumni who are looking for several job opportunities in public interest groups and government agencies.

Each year, Harvard Law’s Public Service Fund will work to provide a total of $1 million worth of grants to a number of graduating students. However, the grant will only be divided among those students who have completed and submitted a detailed proposal on how they are planning to use the money to pursue a career in public interest law.

The objective of this program is to provide the graduating JD students of Harvard with “seed money” in order to establish their own start-up non-profit ventures. According to Martha Minow, the current Harvard Law School Dean, the creation of the school’s Public Service Venture Fund was inspired by the students’ passion for justice. She considers Harvard Law’s new fund as an investment that will bring in dividends to aspiring graduates as well as for the numerous benefactors of their future public service careers.

Prior to the launching of this program, Harvard Law has also made several changes to the public service incentives during the previous year. Last November 2009, Harvard had made an announcement regarding its Holmes Interest Fellowship program. The program plans to provide several 2010 graduates with allowances of up to $35,000 in order to prompt them to work in the field of public interest law for a year. Apart from that, the school has also suspended its Public Service Initiative, a program which was launched in 2008. The Public Service Initiative will only take effect up to the graduating class of 2012.