Alumni Focus

When Bryan Cressey J.D./M.B.A. ’76, a native of Seattle, was putting himself through the University of Washington by working at a conveyor-belt company, he grew intrigued by the “go-go era of the ’60s,” as he puts it, when business innovators such as James J. Ling were creating giant conglomerates. Cressey decided he wanted to build companies and applied to the J.D./M.B.A. program at Harvard. From his first job in 1976 with a venture capital firm in Chicago; to four years later co-founding Golder, Thoma & Cressey (later Golder, Thoma, Cressey, Rauner); to the present, Cressey’s leadership in industry consolidation with a particular expertise in the health care and medical services fields has been recognized by Fortune and Time magazines, among many other publications.

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.

Until last spring, scores of destitute people—virtually all of them African-Americans—were locked up in the city jail of Montgomery, Alabama, for traffic tickets they couldn’t pay, sentenced to a day in jail for every $50 they owed. They could earn a $25 credit daily by providing free labor, scrubbing blood and feces off jail floors and cleaning buildings.

On the second floor of the City-County Building in Madison, Wisconsin, there now hangs the portrait of a man named Nathan Dane. The same steady gaze examines visitors 1,100 miles away as they step off the elevator on the fourth floor in Langdell Hall at Harvard Law School.

Do recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on class actions mean less security in numbers?

A nonprofit law firm whose clients have ranged from Hobby Lobby to a Santeria priest

Twenty-two years. That’s how long Tom Mela ’68 and his colleagues fought the Boston Public Schools in a class-action lawsuit over huge backlogs in providing special education to students with disabilities.

It’s not often that Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow gets rattled. But then, it’s not every day that Clive Davis, the legendary record label executive, producer, and talent nurturer, stops by Wasserstein Hall to reminisce about his illustrious, six-decade career in the music industry.

Benjamin B. Ferencz ’43, known for his role as chief prosecutor in the Nuremburg Trials and for his work promoting an international rule of law and the creation of an International Criminal Court, has been awarded Harvard Law School’s highest honor: the Medal of Freedom.

Lacey Schwartz ’03 will return to Cambridge this weekend to speak about her new documentary “Little White Lie,” showing Saturday Nov. 15 and 17 as part of the Boston Jewish Film Festival. The film traces her personal story of being raised as a white Jewish girl in Woodstock, N.Y., only to find out as a young adult that her biological father was an African-American man with whom her mother had an affair.

Harvard Law School graduates across the country won political victories as part of the nation’s midterm elections. Rep. Tom Cotton ’02 (R-Ark.) successfully challenged two-term…

On Wednesday, Oct. 22, Martha Minow hosted a Q&A session with Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Nancy Ramirez at an event sponsored by the Black Law Students Association, La Alianza and The Journal on Racial and Ethic Justice.

In one of the first interviews since his election as Major League Baseball's 10th commissioner, Rob Manfred '83 recently spoke with the Harvard Gazette about the challenges facing baseball and his vision for the future of the game.

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe and HLS alumni Edward M. Ginsburg ’58 and Alan Howard ’87 were honored by the American Bar Association during the association’s annual meeting in Boston in August.

On June 17, about 200 Harvard Law School alumni and students gathered to mark the 30th anniversary of the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinical Program (HIRC). It was a celebration of "30 Years of Social Change Lawyering," and it brought together advocates from around the country and the world.

Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95 sat down for a conversation with Julius Genachowski ’91, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and partner…

Until last month, scores of destitute people—virtually all of them African Americans— languished in the city jail of Montgomery, Ala., for unpaid traffic tickets they…

Law School graduate Elliot Schwab multitasks, from music to real estate to Talmudic studies

An immigration lawyer impresses the MacArthur Foundation (Even the General would have been impressed).

For this great negotiator, it comes naturally

In a transition from corporate law, an attorney focuses on increasing opportunities for women.