Gail Hupper is a lawyer in the Boston area, representing nonprofit organizations, their boards and their founders. She previously spent 25 years in graduate and international legal education, including service as Assistant Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and subsequently as the founding Director of LL.M. and International Programs at Boston College Law School. While at Boston College, she served on a special Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts task force on the admission of foreign-trained lawyers to the Massachusetts bar.
Gail has taught introductory courses in U.S. law at both Harvard and Boston College, served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris Nanterre, and lectured on U.S. law and legal education at universities in Europe, South America and Asia. Her scholarship includes a book-length study on the evolution of U.S. doctoral programs in law.
Gail holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Williams College and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. Before entering academia, she practiced corporate and securities law at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and Hale and Dorr (now WilmerHale) in Boston, among other activities.
For her Access to Justice Fellows project, Gail will work with two organizations. First, she will be advising One Can Help on governance and compliance matters. One Can Help is a nonprofit that provides the missing resources that at-risk and foster children involved in the juvenile court system need to improve their lives and reach higher. Second, she will be working with Lawyers Clearinghouse to create a seminar series on the legal fundamentals of starting a nonprofit. Rather than focusing solely on formation, this will be an in-depth look at entity selection and the day-to-day mechanical and legal hurdles that face new nonprofits.