Center on the Legal Profession

To encourage collaboration, on September 15, 2022 the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, together with the Harvard Business School Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society, the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership, and the Harvard Data Science Initiative, will host Reimagining the Role of Business in the Public Square: Multistakeholder Engagement on ESG Commitments, Metrics, and Accountability.

‘Everyone is struggling to understand what this new world is going to look like’

“This is a unique moment, particularly to be a Black law student,” Harvard Law School Professor David B. Wilkins ’80, told an audience of students during a talk titled Black Lawyers Matter — Race, Obligation, and Professionalism from the Civil Rights Movement to BLM and Black Corporate Power.

The Center on the Legal Profession convenes experts from public and private sectors for a day-long symposium on crisis lawyering.

Even if there was no COVID-19, online courts would still be the wave of the future: This idea was the starting point for a recent webinar, “Online Courts: Perspectives from the Bench and the Bar,” a half-day event convened by the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession.

Joe Leccese, chairman of Proskauer, joined Professor David Wilkins ’80, faculty director of Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession, for a lunchtime talk sponsored by the Harvard Association for Law and Business.

Practitioners, technologists and innovators from across the legal spectrum came together for a series of discussions on the impact of ever-changing modern technologies on today’s practice of law at the 2018 Harvard Legal Technology Symposium.

On Google’s main campus in Mountain View, Calif., Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession convened more than 80 innovation leaders from around the world—half from law firms and half from in-house legal departments—in June, for a series of in-depth workshops around how their organizations operationalize innovation.

Mary E. Klotman M.D., dean of Duke University School of Medicine and vice chancellor for health affairs, recently sat down with Professor David B. Wilkins, faculty director of the Center on the Legal Profession, for a conversation on how medicine has changed over time, particularly with respect to the development of professional roles within it.

HLS Professor Mnookin, who for many years chaired the school’s Program on Negotiation, joins two other Harvard-affiliated professors in a study of the former secretary of state’s public and private deal-making, based on extensive interviews with Henry Kissinger on negotiation strategy and tactics.

Kicking of the Harvard Association for Law & Business' seventh annual symposium on Feb. 26, a panel of top-level executives in the financial world explored the possibilities of crossing over from a legal to a financial career.

Prof. David Wilkins, vice dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession and faculty director of Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession (CLP), recently sat down to discuss CLP's project on Globalization Lawyers and Emerging Economies (GLEE) and what lies ahead for the innovative program.

Kristin Turner ’17 was selected as the recipient of Harvard Law School's Public Welfare Foundation A2J Tech Fellowship. She will spend year working with Upsolve, a nonprofit that has developed a platform designed to guide both debtors and attorneys through the Chapter 7 bankruptcy process.

This fall, the Harvard Law School Library hosted a series of book talks by HLS authors, with topics ranging from Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts to a Citizen's Guide to Impeachment. As part of this ongoing series, faculty authors from various disciplines shared their research and discussed their recently published books.

A room that was meant to offer a respite from the rigors of the Harvard Law School curriculum became a portal to exploring some of the most important issues in American law.

Harvard Law Professor John F. Coates has been named a fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).

John Coates, the John F. Cogan, Jr., Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, has joined the American College of Governance Counsel as a Fellow.

David Wilkins ’80, the Lester Kissel Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, has been named to the American Bar Association’s Commission on the Future of Legal Education, the ABA has announced.

Since its founding nine months ago, Harvard Law School’s Access to Justice Lab has aimed to revolutionize thinking about access to legal help. Often misunderstood and sometimes controversial, the lab sponsored a five-hour symposium in April that drew scholars from across the country to Harvard Law School.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that HLS Professor John Coates and Former SEC Chairman Elisse Walter are two of three new members appointed to its Investor Advisory Committee. The SEC also reappointed five members whose terms recently expired.

Harvard Law School’s 2016 renovation of Pound Hall’s second floor has received LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, marking the seventh certification for HLS.

Change is coming to the legal profession—whether attorneys like it or not—and HLS is at the forefront of efforts to anticipate it, and prepare students.

In late May, four Harvard Law faculty members, Charles Fried, Michael Gregory, Kathryn Spier and David Wilkins, each shared a snapshot of innovative research with the HLS community, followed by discussion as part of the 2015 Harvard Law School Thinks Big lecture.

HLS Professor of Practice Scott Westfahl '88, faculty director of HLS Executive Education, recently wrote "More women means more success," an article for the National Association of Women Lawyers' Women Lawyers Journal on the economic reasons for diversity at the management level.

For the growing number of empiricists at HLS, there’s nothing quite so satisfying—or unimpeachable—as resolving a thorny, often contentious, legal or policy question through rigorous analysis of cold, hard data.

The legal profession is going through dramatic change, affected by factors ranging from globalization to new technology to a fragile economic recovery. And a Harvard Law School institution dedicated to studying the profession is undergoing its own big change.

From rethinking how venture capital firms meet their legal needs to focusing on broadening access to legal services for all people, Sarah Reed '91 has been a pragmatic innovator.

Bharat Anand, a partner at Khaitan & Co., in New Delhi, India, was the keynote speaker on Sept. 23 at an event sponsored by the Center On The Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. Khaitan & Co. partners with the Center on the Legal Profession’s Globalization, Lawyers and Emerging Economies (GLEE) on research in India.

Professor David Wilkins was honored twice in July by academic societies in Spain. Wilkins is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, as well as the director of the Program on the Legal Profession and Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession.

When Clayton Christensen, professor at Harvard Business School and best-selling author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma,” coined the term “disruptive innovation,” he wasn’t focusing on the world of law.

Grover Cleveland, a Seattle attorney and the author of "Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks: The Essential Guide to Thriving as a New Lawyer," delivered a talk at Harvard Law School on Wednesday, March 5. Cleveland’s talk, sponsored by the Program on the Legal Profession, focused on career advice for students and recent law school graduates. In a Q&A with Harvard Law Today, Cleveland offered practical tips for career success.

How best to assist people in financial trouble is the focus of the Consumer Financial Distress Project, a groundbreaking new study designed and led by Harvard Law School Professor Jim Greiner, Professor Dalié Jiménez at the University of Connecticut School of Law, and Professor Lois Lupica at the University of Maine School of Law.

Some recent faculty and clinical highlights—from research on anti-corruption efforts to conferences on financial regulation.

Thousands of international attorneys gathered in Boston in October to attend the week-long International Bar Association's 2013 Annual Conference.

Ashish Nanda, the Robert Braucher Professor of Practice, faculty director of executive education, and research director at the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, has been appointed director of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), in India.

On Thursday, Aug. 8, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) delivered an address at Harvard Law School on proposed legislation to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, just hours after news outlets reported additional revelations concerning the scope of information gathered by the National Security Agency.

On Dec. 11, Harvard Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession (PLP) and the Indian School of Business (ISB) co-hosted a major international conference on the future of corporate business in India and the role of the legal profession. The event was held at the ISB campus in Hyderabad, India.

Stockholm University conferred an honorary doctoral degree on Harvard Law School Professor David B. Wilkins ’80, director of the Program on the Legal Profession and vice dean for global initiatives on the legal profession.

Viet D. Dinh '93, founding partner of Bancroft and a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, spoke at Harvard Law School on Sept. 18 at an event sponsored by Harvard Law School's Program on the Legal Profession. Dinh, who served as U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Legal Policy from 2001 to 2003 and played a key role in developing legal policy initiatives to combat terrorism, focused his remarks on “Peripatetic Reflections: Government, Academia and Boutique Law Practice."

Over the past 40 years the role of the general counsel has changed dramatically, according to HLS Professor David Wilkins '80, “so that it has become, in my view, the most important position in the legal profession, particularly in the corporate legal world,” he says. But until recently, that model remained uniquely American.

On February 27, the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession sponsored a lecture by ABA President William Robinson III about a critical issue facing the legal system – state court underfunding. Robinson outlined facts and figures that speak to the enormity of the crisis, and underscored what those numbers mean to those seeking justice and to the American concept of democracy.

In today’s NY Times ‘Room for Debate’ online forum, Harvard Law School Professor David Wilkins ’80 writes on the topic of whether or not the Socratic method should still have a role in American legal education today.

It was hard to see him though the cheering crowd when he first walked in, a small, amiable-looking man. By the end of the session, he had gotten his message across about the importance of global leadership and youth empowerment. He was even able to get a room full of people to recite poetry with him. He is Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the 11th president of India.

According to attorney and author Grover E. Cleveland, young lawyers should be reassured by assignments that require all-nighters. “If a senior lawyer left work on your desk and went to sleep, that means that you’ve successfully earned her trust,” he said. Cleveland offered this and other nuggets of wisdom at “Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks: Thriving in the First Two Years of Law Practice,” an event jointly sponsored by the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession and Office of Career Services on October 4.

Harvard Law School Professor David B. Wilkins will receive the Outstanding Scholar Award from The Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. The award is given annually to a member of the academy who has engaged in outstanding scholarship in the law or in government.