Todd D. Rakoff

Todd Rakoff graduated from Harvard Law School in 1975, and joined the faculty in 1979 after clerking for Hon. Henry Friendly and practicing with Foley, Hoag and Eliot in Boston. He teaches contracts and administrative law, has been Dean of the J.D. Program, and is presently the Byrne Professor of Administrative Law. Since the mid-1980s he has been one of the editors of Gellhorn and Byse’s Administrative Law, a leading book in the field.

Professor Rakoff has been actively involved in many of HLS’s educational experiments and reforms of the last quarter century, including the experimental integrated curriculum of the 1980s and the move to smaller first year sections in the late 1990s. In the last several years, he and Professor Joseph Singer have created and led the School’s Problem Solving Workshop, an experiential course that is now a required part of the first year curriculum. He has also organized programs for teachers around the country, through the Association of American Law Schools, and internationally, through the parallel international association.