The Experience

Harvard Law School Executive Education programs are a learning experience created for lawyers by lawyers. You will learn from renowned faculty to help you advance to the next level of leadership.

“I don’t think there’s anything like this anywhere else in the world…”

Orla Muldoon, Leadership in Corporate Counsel ’17
Chief Counsel EMEIA and Asia-Pacific, Archer Daniels Midland Company

As you advance through your career, your increasingly complex leadership roles and responsibilities present challenges and opportunities beyond the scope of your initial law degree. We rapidly prepare participants to apply leadership and business principles to the multifaceted challenges you face in serving clients and leading within you organizations.

Harvard Law School offers executive education programs that reflect the school’s academic excellence, leading research, and expert faculty to help lawyers and other legal professionals navigate current challenges. HLS Executive Education immerses you in a classroom experience designed to help you build leadership skills, consider strategy, practice relevant frameworks, and expand your network.

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About the Executive Education Experience

  • An Immersive Experience

    Our programs are designed to maximize the effectiveness of classroom learning. We do this by diversifying the ways in which we teach content, allowing you to experiment with and experience new frameworks in the classroom before applying them to your own practice. Through case discussions focused on real-world situations facing legal professionals, and a mixture of group work and lectures, our participants leave with a broader set of leadership tools.

    The HLS Executive Education classroom and program space is uniquely designed to foster discovery. With the latest in Microsoft technology, interactive simulations and group exercises are even more impactful, and you can easily access all of the program resources when you return to your organization.

  • The Teaching Model

    We believe in the power of learning from real-world situations. That’s why our programs use the business school-style case method to explore concepts, rather than purely teaching through lecture. The case method allows you to experiment with a variety of approaches and frameworks in real-time with insight from our expert faculty and the cohort – together, the group examines concepts from a variety of perspectives and the resulting discussions cement the learning, ensuring the enduring value of the content for you.

    Along with case studies, you will learn from lectures, hands-on group work, simulations, and other activities. The programs maximize opportunities for you to learn from your cohort, as much as you will learn from the faculty. Participants develop close ties with their classmates and build a network of peers that serve as resources beyond the HLS Executive Education classroom.

  • Global Perspectives

    As a participant in one of our programs, you will join a cohort of lawyers from around the world. With over 95 countries represented in our alumni network, our participants have found that they learn just as much from our faculty as they do from their peers in the HLS Executive Education classroom.

  • Program Schedule

    Most of our programs take place on the Harvard Law School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Programs are generally 3-6 days long. During that time, you will learn from renowned faculty as they facilitate case discussions and lectures to help you develop a more advanced approach to leadership. Here’s a sample of what a day in a program looks like:

    8:00am: Breakfast

    9:00am: Case Discussion

    10:30am: Networking break

    11:00am: Lecture

    12:30pm: Lunch

    2:00pm: Interactive Workshop

    4:30pm: Optional tour of campus

    6:00pm: Cocktail Reception and Dinner

  • The Customized Approach

    Beyond our popular open enrollment programs, we offer custom programs for law firms and corporate law departments. We carefully tailor those programs to meet a variety of needs, from associate training in business skills and professional skills to immersive leadership programs for a law firm’s or law department’s senior leadership group. To discover more about our custom programs, please contact us or visit our Custom Programs page.