If you are a student from another school at Harvard, or are attending MIT or Tufts University, and are interested in cross-registering for the Harvard Law School’s Dispute System Design Clinic, welcome! You should find all the information you need here to cross-register. Please read this page in full.
The first thing you should do is reach out to the DSD Clinic Program Coordinator, Tracy Blanchard, and express your interest. Tracy can set up a conversation with one of our Clinical Instructors to let you know a bit about how the clinic works and to answer any questions you might have.
REGISTRATION DETAILS
Number of credits
Cross-registrants are allowed to take a maximum of 6 credits at HLS in an academic year. As a result you can choose to register for the DSD Clinic for either 3 or 4 credits with each credit being 4 hours of work per week (3 credits = 12 hours, 4 credits = 16 credits). The DSD Clinical Seminar will count for 2 additional credits. Unfortunately the system will sometimes automatically register you for 5 credits for the clinic without giving you a choice. This is easily fixed. Once you’ve registered, please email our HLS colleague Maggie Bay to let her know how many credits (3 or 4) you’d like to register for and she’ll make the adjustment in the system. Tracy will do her best to remind you of this step once she has approved you in my.Harvard.
Co-required seminar
Harvard Law School co-requires a 2-credit seminar for all clinics. You must register for both the DSD Clinic (HLS #8019) and for the DSD Clinical Seminar (HLS #2194). The Clinical Seminar meets Wednesdays, 1:30-3:30pm in both the Fall of 2026 and the Spring of 2027. The Clinic does not have specific hours. You will work out your hours with your team/supervisor based on the rest of your schedule.
Managing the transfer of credits to your school
Credits do not always transfer directly from HLS to other schools. What this might look like is that you register for the Clinic for 3 credits and the Clinical Seminar for 2 credits (for a total of 5 HLS credits), but when they transfer to your school, they land on your transcript as 4 credits, or 6 credits It is absolutely essential that you contact your home institution’s Registrar before the semester begins to find out from them how many credits will transfer and make any necessary adjustments on your HLS registration so that you are meeting the requirements of your home institution. Too many people don’t do this step and then find out mid-semester that they have too few or (more frequently) too many credits and need to adjust, but the deadline to do so has passed. If you need to adjust your credits, please email our HLS colleague Maggie Bay. She can adjust your credits. However, please note that you can’t take the seminar for less than 2 credits or the clinic for less than 3. Please plan accordingly. If you are confused or panicking about any of this, please reach out to the DSD Clinic Coordinator Tracy and she will help you out.
Special early cross-registration window
There is a special, early cross-registration window for clinics at HLS. For Fall 2026, cross-registration opens at 9am on August 18. We must approve you by EOD on August 21 in order to have you set up in all our systems (including Canvas) by the start of school, so please complete your registration in my.Harvard by noon on August 20. Otherwise you will have to wait to be approved (and hence get your clinic email and get access to Canvas and other systems) until after the Firesale at HLS, which happens in week 2 of the semester. Getting you registered early is important.
There are two orientation meetings on the first and fifth Friday of the semester that we will alert you to upon registration.
Please register at https://my.harvard.edu/
***Reminder: you must register for both the Dispute Systems Design Clinic (HLS 8019) and the Dispute Systems Design Clinic Seminar (HLS 2194).***