Harvard Law School is pleased to announce that The Lee and Li Foundation, based in Taiwan, has made a generous gift to establish The Lee and Li Foundation Fund for the Public Interest at Harvard Law School. The Fund is intended first to provide financial aid for deserving students and scholars, especially from Taiwan, with a demonstrated commitment to public interest work and, secondly, to support work of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and other public interest activity at the Law School pertinent to Taiwan and mainland China.
“Strong and meaningful ties connect Harvard Law School with Taiwan and mainland China through our faculty’s scholarship, our curriculum and library, our students, and our accomplished alumni. I am so moved by the Lee and Li Foundation’s recognition of the value of these ties and by the Foundation’s inspiring commitment to the public good. With the Foundation’s generous support, we will be able to expand the opportunities available to students and scholars to learn and advance the public good. We are very grateful to the Foundation,” said Martha Minow, Morgan and Helen Chu Dean and Professor at Harvard Law School. Minow and Professor William P. Alford ’77, Henry L. Stimson Professor and Vice Dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies, traveled to Taipei, Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul last year as part of a sixteen-day visit to Asia, meeting with alumni of the Law School, as well as other leaders of the legal, academic and political worlds.
Alford, who is also Director of East Asian Legal Studies and Chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, said: “Taiwan is an extraordinarily vibrant polity. Having first studied there four decades ago and maintained ties since, I know how important public interest work has been in Taiwan’s blossoming and what a large role publicly minded lawyers at Lee and Li, many of them Harvard Law School graduates, have played in that process. I am thrilled that the firm’s foundation has further affirmed its long-standing commitment to the public good with this gift intended both to help the next generation of students and scholars, and to advance the work of our Disability Project and other public interest activity at the Law School concerning Taiwan and mainland China.”
The Lee and Li Foundation was founded in 1999 by Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law, which, with more than 290 attorneys, patent agents, and other professionals, is Taiwan’s largest law firm. The firm, which has been widely recognized both for its legal work and its commitment to the public interest, has a diverse practice in intellectual property, foreign investment, banking and capital market law, technology law, public construction, government procurement, domestic and transnational litigation and alternative dispute resolution, and mergers and acquisitions, among other fields.
“There has never been any doubt in our mind that giving back is the right thing to do. ‘We care. We serve. We excel’ is more than the firm’s motto; it’s a reflection of how we at Lee and Li conduct ourselves. Lee and Li has thrived on a virtuous circle of receiving and giving, and will turn a robust 50 next year. It is an embodiment of doing well by doing good and proof that doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive,” said Dr. C.V. Chen, a trustee of The Lee and Li Foundation and the Chairman and Managing Partner of Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law. Chen, who earned his Doctorate in Juridical Science (S.J.D.) from Harvard Law School, has long been a civic leader, chairing the Red Cross Society of Taiwan, the Republic of China (2000-2012), serving as President of the Chinese Society of International Law (2004-2007), teaching at National Cheng-chi University, Soochow University Graduate School of Law, and Guanghua School of Management of Peking University, advising government, and regularly writing for a broad public audience.
The Lee and Li Foundation fosters learning by providing scholarship funds to law students and by sponsoring and promoting seminars, symposia, speeches, and books on legal issues. One example is the Lee and Li Collegiate Moot Court Competition which, since 2003, has included a moot court competition in Beijing among 40 PRC law schools to complement that held on Taiwan as well as an annual “friendly dialog between the competition winners from both sides of the Taiwan Straits.”