Media Mentions

Best-selling author and Harvard Law School lecturer Douglas Stone is one of the foremost experts on difficult conversations. Having literally written a book with that name, he has trained audiences around the world in how to navigate these discussions. This work has inspired his latest book, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, which he co-authored with his colleague Sheila Heen. When we spoke recently, Stone explained why feedback conversations are rife with challenges. “One of the biggest challenges is that the person receiving the feedback doesn’t know exactly what it means,” Stone says, “because it is given in language that is too general.”

An op-ed by Hugh Simons and Heidi Gardner. We know it’s coming. While Big Law on average may eke out growth in profitability this year, about half of firms will see a decline. For many, this will be the second down year in a row. For even more firms, momentum in profitability growth has been lost and increases in profit per equity partner (PPP) are not keeping pace with inflation. When we close the books for 2017, we know what to expect: partners will start to complain bitterly about inequities they perceive in the compensation system.

At the kick-off of Harvard Law School’s bicentennial celebration last week, Dean John F. Manning took the stage in Sanders Theatre and, in reverse order of their classes at the school, introduced a retired justice and four sitting justices of the Supreme Court: Neil M. Gorsuch, J.D. ’91; Elena Kagan, J.D. ’86; David H. Souter, retired, ’61, L.L.B. ’66, LL.D. 2010; Stephen G. Breyer, LL.B. ’64; and Anthony M. Kennedy, LL.B. ’61. He saved for last John G. Roberts Jr. ’76 and J.D. ’79, chief justice of the United States. Manning observed that “it’s very easy to take for granted just how exceptional” HLS is, so he shared some facts about the institution that were startling even after he said they would be:

The national priority in education can be summed up in a four-letter acronym: STEM. And that’s understandable. A country’s proficiency in science, technology, engineering and mathematics is vital in generating economic growth, advancing scientific innovation and creating good jobs...A working grasp of the principles of science and math should be essential knowledge for all Americans, said Michael S. Teitelbaum, an expert on science education and policy. But he believes that STEM advocates, often executives and lobbyists for technology companies, do a disservice when they raise the alarm that America is facing a worrying shortfall of STEM workers, based on shortages in a relative handful of fast-growing fields like data analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and computer security. “When it gets generalized to all of STEM, it’s misleading,” said Mr. Teitelbaum, a senior research associate in the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.

An article by Cass Sunstein. Despite its importance, impeachment is a challenging and arcane subject — the Finnegans Wake of constitutional law. Fortunately, there are some terrific books on the topic, helping to guide the perplexed.

Mark Zuckerberg’s original motto for Facebook was “Move fast and break things.” It now appears that he’s going to have to answer for moving too fast and breaking too many things. After years of trying to avoid oversight from Washington, the 2-billion-person social network platform is set for a reckoning. Facebook is approaching its first major congressional oversight hearings in November after it revealed that a Russian “troll factory,” called the Internet Research Agency, purchased advertisements in order to influence the 2016 election...Yochai Benkler, the Berkman professor of entrepreneurial legal studies at Harvard Law School, suggested another change: Lawmakers could pass a bill to require social networks to identify bots (automated accounts) and “sockpuppets” (fake accounts run by real people) to detail their role in spreading political advocacy advertising. No legislation has been discussed to tackle the problem of social media bots spreading paid propaganda...“Facebook is too immunized from competition to be left to adopt self-regulation,” Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler said.

When a Norwegian committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) for its work behind a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, 3,500 miles away six people at Harvard cheered loudly. They had reason to celebrate. Bonnie Docherty, associate director of armed conflict and civilian protection, and clinical instructor Anna Crowe, who teach at the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School (HLS), and four law students had taken part in the treaty negotiations spearheaded by ICAN, a Geneva-based international coalition of organizations from more than 100 countries...“The negotiations were timely and urgent,” said Docherty. “It reminded the world of the need to take tangible steps for nuclear disarmament. The treaty banning nuclear weapons will make a real difference in the world.”

At a time when American politics are beset by deep divisions and regular paralysis, five U.S. senators told a Harvard Law School (HLS) audience Friday that there is real reason for concern, yet some hope for their institution and the country. Returning to a school where all had graduated or taught, Democratic senators Tim Kaine, J.D. ’83, of Virginia, Jack Reed, J.D. ’82, of Rhode Island, and Mark Warner, J.D. ’80, of Virginia, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, ’98, J.D. ’02, of Arkansas, and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a former HLS professor, also urged students to help solve the nation’s challenges.

An op-ed by Ramy Khouili and Daniel Levine-Spound [`19]. For LGBTIQ Tunisians, abusive police-stops and arbitrary arrests at the hands of law enforcement are commonplace, while anti-gay hate speech and incitement to homophobic violence appear frequently in Tunisian media. After receiving several complaints, the Tunisian Independent High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HAICA) – in what can be considered the first official reaction from a public institution to violence against the LGBTIQ community – issued a warning against a TV station for homophobic statements in October, 2015.

An interview with Cass Sunstein. With special counsel Robert Mueller bringing federal charges against two former advisers to President Trump’s campaign, and a campaign foreign policy adviser pleading guilty to lying about efforts to obtain damaging information from the Russians about Hillary Clinton, what was once inconceivable has become a little less so. Should evidence eventually emerge of possible criminal activity involving Trump himself, analysts say, Congress might have to ponder opening the impeachment process against him, as it last did against President Bill Clinton in 1998. Few clauses in the U.S. Constitution are as mysterious or as misunderstood by Americans as impeachment, and that’s unfortunate, contends Cass R. Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School.

Is the Papadopoulos case the real bombshell of the day? While the initial announcement of indictments against President Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Manafort associate Rick Gates dominated the news early Monday morning, the allegations against them did not go directly to the question of whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians, who wanted to tip the 2016 election to Trump. But a second case made public later Monday did — and court records show the target in that matter is cooperating with federal investigators...Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law professor who is a former federal prosecutor and former investigations coordinator at the International Criminal Court, said that while Papadopoulos “seems to be cooperating,” the ultimate trajectory of the probe remains unclear. “Whether people will be charged with collusion, whether more senior officials will be charged, we just don’t know at this stage,” Whiting said.

The Post reports that former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI investigators in the Robert S. Mueller III probe. That is a big deal, bigger perhaps than the announced indictments of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, whose alleged crimes did not directly implicate anyone in the campaign, let alone President Trump. We see for the first time the words “Donald J. Trump” in a federal criminal plea bargain...To some legal experts, it looks as though Papadopoulos is now cooperating with Mueller. Constitutional law guru Laurence Tribe says to “keep in mind that ‘collusion’ isn’t a term of art in the criminal law lexicon but a concept more pertinent to impeachment.” He adds, “It seems to me that the guilty plea today by ex-Trump adviser George Papadopoulos, evidently cooperating with Mueller on his investigation … is likely to be the sleeper in today’s outpouring of news.”

One out of six U.S. Supreme Court justices attended Harvard Law. As the school celebrates its 200th anniversary, six of those justices attended a panel where they remembered their time as students.

An interview with Noah Feldman. The first charges in the Russia investigation. Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and an associate surrender to the FBI, while another campaign adviser pleads guilty -- we'll look at what it means.

After 5 1/2 months of speculation, anticipation and, in some cases, dread, Americans on Monday learned of the first charges in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign...What does all this mean for Mueller’s ongoing investigation—and for President Trump himself, who has called the probe a “witch hunt”?...[Alex Whiting]: The question on many people’s minds today upon hearing the news that Manafort and Gates have been charged will be: Where is this headed? And the answer is, we (the public) do not know, and Mueller may not know either. We do not know whether we are at the beginning, middle or end of this story, and we won’t know until the investigation has had a chance to fully play itself out.

Although the speakers were U.S. Supreme Court justices who routinely rule on the nation’s most serious issues, it was a jolly affair. Six high-court judges, five current and one retired, gathered Thursday evening to talk about their former lives as law students, about the lessons they learned, the classes they favored, and the memories they cherished from the years before they sat on the highest court in the land. Laid back and genial, the justices, all graduates of Harvard Law School (HLS), engaged in a roundtable conversation with fellow alumnus Dean John Manning ’82, J.D. ’85, before a packed house at Sanders Theatre to mark the beginning of the celebrations of the School’s 200th anniversary.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. So now we know how this game of Clue starts: Paul Manafort with a wire transfer in the parlor. But Democrats who are getting revved up for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to follow the money from Russia to Donald Trump’s campaign shouldn’t get too excited, at least not yet. The indictment of Manafort and his associate Rick Gates means that this investigation is going deep into the weeds. Once it’s there, it could become permanently entangled with arcane bank accounts, front companies with weird names and pro-Russian Ukrainians with even more unpronounceable names.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. When we think about the framers of the Constitution and how they handled the issue of race, we conjure up the extremes: the hypocrites and the heroes. At one end is Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that “all men are created equal” but believed Africans were inferior and fathered children with an enslaved woman. At the other end is Alexander Hamilton, who, at least as depicted by admirers like the biographer Ron Chernow and the playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda, was an ardent abolitionist. This framing, however, is simplistic and misleading.

The Education Department is considering only partially forgiving federal loans for students defrauded by for-profit colleges, according to department officials, abandoning the Obama administration's policy of erasing that debt..."Anything other than full cancellation is not a valid outcome," said Eileen Connor, a litigator at Harvard University's Project on Predatory Student Lending, which has represented hundreds of defrauded students of the now-shuttered Corinthian Colleges. "The nature of the wrong that was done to them, the harm is even bigger than the loans that they have."

A majority of Supreme Court justices reached across the ideological—and generational—divide Thursday to rule that their alma mater, Harvard Law School, totally rules. “The Harvard justices who preceded those on this stage, from Joseph Story to Antonin Scalia, have had an oversize influence on the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts, class of 1979, told a crowd of scholars, students and alumni gathered at Harvard’s Memorial Hall to celebrate the professional school’s bicentennial. Justices Anthony Kennedy (’61), Stephen Breyer (’64), Elena Kagan (’86) and Neil Gorsuch (’91), joined by retired Justice David Souter (’66), concurred. Then, under the gentle questioning of the law school dean, John Manning, the justices reminisced about law-school days, poked fun at one another (and their Yale-educated colleagues) and imagined dinner-table conversations with long-deceased predecessors. Although light in substance, the program gave a glimpse of the justices’ wit and personalities away from the solemn and sometimes somniferous legal points they make in oral arguments at the court.

Thousands of alumni, students, and faculty crowded Harvard Law School’s lecture halls and meeting rooms Friday for a full day of sessions with senators, judges, and renowned legal scholars to celebrate the school’s 200th birthday. The Law School, which was founded in 1817, has already hosted a series of events this year celebrating this milestone...Richard Lazarus, a Law School professor and the chair of the bicentennial programming, said the aim of the event was to celebrate the Law School with action, rather than reflection. “The basic aim and goal of the October summit is basically to celebrate the Law School, but not to celebrate the Law School by reflecting on how wonderful Harvard Law School is, but by kind of being wonderful,” Lazarus said...Rebecca A. Vastola [`20], a first-year law student who attended the Senators’ event, said that the focus on government and public interest speakers was especially appealing to her. “I think it’s an incredible opportunity, for those of us that this is corresponding with our first year at Harvard,” Vastola said.