This year Harvard Law School appointed five new clinical professors, who will teach a range of courses and provide leadership of important clinical programs. Three of the new hires – Robert Bordone’97, David Grossman ’88, and Brian Price – began teaching this academic year, while two others – Alex Whiting and Ronald Sullivan ’94 – will begin teaching in the fall.
“Our clinical programs are exploding both in the number of students participating and in the variety of offerings,” said Dean Elena Kagan ’86. “Clinical work enables our students to expereince the crucial links between theory and practice, while also providing important public service. I am delighted to welcome these exceptional teachers and lawyers to our faculty.”
A leading expert in dispute resolution, Bordone serves as director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. He also teaches a seminar on Negotiation and Dispute Resolution, reading groups on Dispute System Design and Mobilization and Organization, and the Negotiation Workshop. Bordone is the author of several scholarly articles and a book titled “Handbook of Dispute Resolution.”
Grossman is the director of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, which is the oldest student-run legal services office in the country. He is teaching Introduction to Advocacy: Skills and Ethics in Clinical Practice, Housing Law and Policy, and Introduction to Advocacy: Civil – The Lawyering Process. In the past, he has worked as a staff attorney and clinical instructor in the housing unit of the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center beginning in 1995.
In addition to his clinical teaching appointment, Price serves as director of the Hale and Dorr Legal Services Center, the law school’s largest legal clinical center. He has also been a senior clinical instructor in the center’s Community Enterprise Project since 1997. This year he taught Transactional Practice in both the fall and spring semesters.
Sullivan will serve as faculty director of the HLS Criminal Justice Institute. Currently an associate clinical professor and supervising attorney of the Criminal Justice Clinic at Yale Law School, Sullivan previously spent a year in Kenya helping to draft the new constitution and was the director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia.
Whiting will join the HLS faculty as an assistant clinical professor and will lead the clinical offerings on domestic and international prosecution. He will teach Government Lawyer and the War Crimes Prosecution Workshop. Whiting is currently a senior trial attorney in the prosecutor’s office for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague and is a former assistant U.S. attorney in Boston.
HLS students are seeking out opportunities to get hands-on legal experience in record numbers, with about 75 percent of students participating in a clinical experience prior to graduation. These appointments further strengthen Harvard Law’s commitment to clinical education, which gives students an important opportunity to see how theory is put into practice prior to graduating and joining the legal profession.
Through the many clinical programs at HLS, students often perform important public service by providing pro bono legal services to communities and individuals. A recent graduating class performed more than 240,000 hours of pro bono service.