Participants, faculty, and staff celebrate the completion of the inaugural cohort of individual learners to go through Harvard Law’s online legal fundamentals course
Diana Staley has spent her life trying to make a difference, in the lives of fellow colleagues and in the restaurant industry, where she’s worked for years. For Staley, who will be attending Harvard Kennedy School this fall, the online legal fundamentals course she completed this spring at Harvard Law School helped fuel her advocacy work.
“I see the law as an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others,” she said, reflecting on her experience. A 1985 Harvard College graduate, Staley has a diverse professional background, from serving as president of the National Restaurant Association to owner of Reverie Kitchen in Branford, Connecticut to a period as a tennis pro and championship squash player.
Called Zero-L, the self-paced course covering fundamental elements of the law was originally designed to prepare students for their first year at Harvard Law School. Taught by leading Harvard Law faculty members, it was previously offered exclusively to incoming Harvard Law students, then to other law schools, which made the material available to their matriculants. (The name Zero-L is a play on the traditional terms for first-, second-, and third-year law students — 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls).
But this year, the course was opened for the first time to individual users interested in participating, whether they are about to enter law school, exploring whether to apply to law school, or just want to learn about the American legal system.
Staley’s longstanding desire to make a difference, she explained in a recent interview, “was amplified when I went to Washington to advocate for independent restaurants, the second largest independent employer in America, that were shuttered by the government during the pandemic.” When her advocacy proved unsuccessful, she took it “as a message that I needed to do even more to help.”
A Harvard College graduate, Diana Staley sees the law as “an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others.”
One way to do that, she realized, was to learn more about the law. And Zero-L provided her with the perfect opportunity. “For me, the class reignited my love of the law, that it can be a positive force to achieve change.” She is now tentatively planning to apply to Harvard Law School once she graduates from the Kennedy School.
This first run of this six-week course for individual learners, which wrapped up with an online celebration, including faculty comments and a mini learning exercise, via Zoom in late June, marked a milestone for Zero-L.
“This celebration was a big deal for us,” said Leah Plunkett ’06, Harvard Law School’s associate dean of Learning Experience and Innovation and executive director of Harvard Law School Online. “It represented the completion of the inaugural cohort of individual learners to go through our Zero-L course.”
Explaining the law school’s decision to expand access to anyone who might be interested, Plunkett said it was the logical next step after having proved its worth for incoming law students at Harvard and beyond.
“Because it was such a huge success in welcoming students through their law school, we wanted to open it up to individual learners throughout the world who may be about to start law school themselves, or maybe just want to learn a little more,” she said. “Our celebration welcomed more than 100 leaners from throughout the world. That’s not the full number who went through the run of the course, but we were thrilled at the turnout.”
Zero-L, she noted, remains available to participants for a year afterwards to be used as a reference tool.
“The hope is that [Zero-L] really gives you an opportunity to feel what it’s like to be in an HLS classroom … Maybe it inspires you, if you’ve been on the fence to start thinking about law school. And to really get excited about the law, which is the goal of this program.”
Professor I. Glenn Cohen ’03, deputy dean and faculty co-director of Harvard Law School Online
June’s Zoom celebration featured remarks from John Goldberg, interim dean of Harvard Law School and the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, and deputy deans and faculty directors of Harvard Law School Online, Professors John Coates and I. Glenn Cohen ’03. Said Plunkett, “The gathering offered the students an opportunity to take those newly acquired skills out for a spin in real time with a Harvard University faculty member.”
In his remarks, Goldberg underlined the significance of Zero-L becoming available to individuals. “We’re really excited to have taken the next step … and we’re hoping that this will enable thousands more who haven’t enrolled in law school, or don’t plan to, to get the benefit of this incredible resource.”
Goldberg, who taught a section on tort law for Zero-L, noted that law and lawyers have always played “a huge role” in American history. Nearly 250 years after its founding, he said, “law remains at the center of our political culture. We see it in everything from momentous Supreme Court decisions to ordinary consumer transactions.” That, he believes, is why it is important for these and future Zero-L students gain a working knowledge of the law. “This is why I’m so happy to see you all here,” he said.
Kevin Dale Martin came to Zero-L through a lifelong interest in law stemming from his personal experience in the foster care system.
“There has not traditionally been a name for people who were about to start law school, coming into law school, thinking about applying or interested in law,” Coates, who teaches and writes about contracts, law and economic, and corporate and regulatory law, said in his remarks. He explained that Harvard Law School “came up with Zero-L as the idea to capture” these important phases and added that, as “we’ve become more global over time, we thought it useful to provide the contents of this course to learners like you around the world.”
Cohen, who focuses on health law and policy, led a virtual interactive classroom exercise focused on a real case and encouraged the learners to examine it from every angle. He chose Doe vs. United Services Life Insurance, a 1988 case in which the plaintiff alleged he was given a higher life insurance premium because he was (incorrectly) presumed to be gay, during a time of social stigma amid the AIDS epidemic. Through Zoom chat and interactive polling, students were invited to identify and consider the main issue of the case (whether the plaintiff should have the right to proceed pseudonymously), what the court drew on to reach its conclusion, and what implications permitting pseudonymity has for cause lawyering and other forms of litigation.
“The hope is that this really gives you an opportunity to feel what it’s like to be in an HLS classroom,” Cohen said. “Maybe it inspires you, if you’ve been on the fence to start thinking about law school. And to really get excited about the law, which is the goal of this program.”
One of the program participants, Eileen Harvey, said the Zero-L course benefitted her work in textbook publishing.
“I’ve been doing a lot of contract work and felt I needed to have a better understanding of the basics,” she said. “It’s given me more than I expected in understanding the levels of law, from reading a brief to understanding [contract] terms. I do publishing contracts, vendor contracts and translation agreements, so this has focused my mind on what I might want to include and exclude. … It showed me how contract law is different from real estate law, and how that is different from criminal law and civil procedure.”
Another participant, Kevin Dale Martin, came to Zero-L through a lifelong interest in law.
“My interest sparked early in my life, stemming from my personal experience as an African American foster youth under the guardianship of Children and Youth Services provided by the state. This unique perspective exposed me to the complexities of the legal system from a very young age, highlighting its power to protect,” he said. “My Zero-L experience was immensely valuable. It laid a strong foundation for my legal education and future career in law. It demystified many aspects of the law school journey, making the future transition to the study of law smoother and less daunting.”
