Alumni Focus

Former HLS faculty member Anne-Marie Slaughter ’85 is the new director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department. She will provide Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with strategic policy analysis aimed at advancing U.S. interests around the world.

Michael Froman ’91 has been named deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, a position to be held jointly at the National Security Council and the National Economic Council.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today that Todd Stern ’77, a former White House assistant who was the senior U.S. negotiator at the…

Barack Obama ’91 was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States today. Chief Justice John Roberts ’79 administered the oath of office. Michelle Robinson Obama '88 became the nation's First Lady.

Since his election as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama ’91 has been tapping Harvard Law School alumni in putting together his team of top advisers and appointees. Numerous alumni have joined the Obama-Biden transition team and the incoming administration.

The first time (or two) Isaac Lidsky ’04 was denied a Supreme Court clerkship, he didn’t sweat it. He had overcome other challenges and wouldn’t let a few rejection letters get in the way of a dream he’d held since boyhood. “I used to joke that my rule for myself was that I’d continue applying until I was older than the youngest justice,” he says.

Oliver Oldman ‘53, Learned Hand Professor of Law Emeritus, died on December 5, 2008, at the age of 88. Educated at Harvard College (S.B. 1942) and the Harvard Law School (LL.B. 1953), Oldman taught at the Law School from 1959 to 1993.

Sheela Murthy LL.M. ’87 founded the Murthy Law Firm in Baltimore County, Md., in 1994. Her firm, of which she is managing partner and president, employs 14 lawyers who primarily practice U.S. immigration law.

The 2008 presidential race got off to an unusually early and competitive start. Few political observers are better equipped to analyze how this unusual campaign year will play out than two Harvard Law School alumni: David Gergen ’67 and Robert M. Shrum ’68.

Like so many of his classmates, when Jay Munir graduated from Harvard Law School in June 2001, he was headed for a job as a litigator at a large firm. If someone had asked him the standard interview question, Where do you see yourself in five years? his answer certainly would not have been, “Anbar Province, Iraq.”

For Paul Butler ’94, it’s been gospel music 24/7—ever since he joined the Gospel Music Channel in 2006, as vice president of business affairs and development.

As a teenager growing up in a suburb of Chicago, Susan D. Page ’89 already knew she wanted to live overseas: “I think it was an early reflection of my feelings about the U.S. and how I fit in. I have never felt like it’s really been home.”

High in the Andes mountains, five Harvard Law School alumni are changing the way law professors in Colombia are trained—and they are using HLS as a model.

Rutherford B. Hayes, Harvard Law School class of 1845, was the first and only other HLS alum to be elected president of the United States.

Barack Obama ’91 has won the general election for the presidency of the United States. Michelle Obama ’88 will become the first HLS alumna to serve as First Lady.

It was as a law student that Obama first made history—and national headlines—when he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review…

Michael B. Chertoff ’78, who will be stepping down as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security next January when a new Presidential administration takes office, took time following a panel presentation in October to answer questions about his experiences on the job and his plans for the future.

Although she is now a partner at Ropes & Gray in Boston, Jane Willis ’94 credits much of her success as a litigator to a simple strategy she learned outside the law firm and the courtroom—at the blackjack table.

Gerhardt Bubník LL.M. ’69 still likes the ice. The former competitive skater hung up his skates years ago but has kept his edge, as a skating judge and then a legal adviser to the International Skating Union—all while building a law practice that spanned three political regimes.

The international legal community needs to make “lawlessness” a top priority, said human rights scholar Samantha Power ’99 during a speech at Celebration 55: The Women’s Leadership Summit at Harvard Law School.

When Tony Rossmann ’71 started his own law practice in Sacramento, Calif., in 1976, he never expected he would help bring about one of the largest river restoration projects in the West.