Public Interest Law Center

Program Directors

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Daniel Harawa, Faculty Co-director 

Associate Professor of Clinical Law Daniel Harawa is a faculty director for the Root-Tilden-Kern Program. After law school, Harawa clerked for the Honorable Roger L. Gregory of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Before joining the Law School in 2023, Harawa was an appellate public defender at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, where he directed the appellate clinic. At the Law School, Harawa directs the Federal Appellate Clinic, which represents indigent incarcerated clients in criminal, habeas, and civil rights appeals. Flowing from his extensive practice experience, Harawa’s scholarship focuses on mitigating racial bias in the criminal legal system. Harawa received his BA from the University of Richmond and JD from Georgetown University Law Center. 

Lisa Hoyes ’99, Assistant Dean for Public Service 

Lisa Hoyes joined the Law School from the Federal Defenders of New York, where she served as an Assistant Federal Defender from 2009 to 2015. At Federal Defenders, Lisa handled a wide variety of cases, including terrorism, narcotics, weapons, immigration, and securities fraud. As the Federal Defender liaison to two innovative court diversion programs, one for young offenders and one for defendants struggling with substance abuse, Lisa worked alongside the judges of the Eastern District of New York to implement and expand the programs.

Prior to joining the Federal Defenders, Lisa spent nearly a decade at the Bronx Defenders, advocating for thousands of indigent clients. She took a leave of absence from the Bronx Defenders in 2004 to serve as an NYU Law Fellow at the Equal Justice Initiative, working with Professor of Clinical Law Bryan Stevenson to represent death row inmates and other offenders facing life sentences under three-strikes laws. Lisa later returned to the Bronx Defenders as a Supervising Attorney and a member of the Advanced Felony Trial Unit.

After graduating from NYU Law, Lisa won a Soros Justice Postgraduate Fellowship to undertake a project she designed to provide civil legal services to juveniles involved in delinquency proceedings and the criminal justice system. For two years, she provided immigration, housing, family law, and benefits representation to young people under the auspices of Legal Aid’s Juvenile Rights Division and The Door’s Legal Services Center.

While at the Law School, Lisa was a Sinsheimer Scholar, an active member of BALSA, an associate editor of NYU Law Review, and a participant in the Juvenile Rights clinic. Lisa received a BA in Language and Culture and Political Science from SUNY Purchase. 

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Nancy Morawetz ’81, Faculty Co-director

Professor of Clinical Law Nancy Morawetz ’81 is the faculty director for the Root-Tilden-Kern Program. As a former Root Scholar, Morawetz has a deep understanding of the RTK Program, and brings significant student mentorship experience from her years teaching the Immigrant Rights Clinic, an innovative program that combines litigation and non-litigation work on behalf of individual immigrants and community-based organizations. In addition to her teaching, Morawetz engages in scholarship focused on immigration and Supreme Court litigation. Prior to joining the Law School faculty in 1987, she clerked for Judge Patricia M. Wald of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and served as a staff attorney with the Civil Appeals Unit of the Legal Aid Society of New York for five years. She received the 2007 Daniel Levy Memorial Award for Outstanding Achievement in Immigration Law, the 2009 Albert Podell Distinguished Teaching Award, and the 2011 Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award. Morawetz received her AB in Economics summa cum laude from Princeton University.

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Andrew Williams ’02, Faculty Co-director

Andrew Williams ’02, director of NYU Law’s Lawyering Program and a former Root Scholar, is the Root-Tilden-Kern Program’s faculty director.  After law school, Williams was awarded a Skadden Fellowship to work at the Bronx Defenders’ Civil Action Project, where he continued as a staff attorney prior to joining the Law School. Williams provided civil legal advice, service, and representation to Bronx residents accused of crimes, as well as to their families, in order to mitigate the collateral consequences of being criminally charged. Williams joined the Law School as an acting assistant professor of Lawyering in 2006. He was the associate director of the Lawyering Program during the 2009-2010 academic year before becoming the director of the Lawyering Program in 2010. Williams received his AB in social studies and anthropology in 1997 from Harvard College summa cum laude.