Dean Martha Minow announced today that Scott Westfahl ’88 will be the new director of Executive Education at Harvard Law School.
Westfahl, who has served since 2004 as the director of Professional Development at the law firm of Goodwin Procter LLP, will succeed Professor of Practice Ashish Nanda as director of Exec Ed at HLS. Earlier this week, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), in India, announced that Nanda will be the IIMA’s new director beginning in September.
At Goodwin Procter, Westfahl has been responsible for all aspects of the professional development of the firm’s attorneys and staff, focusing on organizational and leadership development, feedback, mentoring, career progression, diversity, professional skills training, attorney and staff integration and transitions and alumni.
Annually since 2010, Westfahl has also teamed with HLS Professor David Wilkins ’80 to teach an 80-student section of the law school’s innovative Problem Solving Workshop for first-year law students. In 2008, Westfahl was chosen as one of Law Firm, Inc. magazine’s five “Innovators of the Year” for his development of a cutting edge attorney assignment system and database called iStaff, which effectively ties attorney work assignments to their professional development needs.
Said Dean Minow: “I’m delighted that Scott will be taking the helm of our executive education program at this very important moment for the legal profession. His imaginative and deep experiences helping lawyers build teams and networks draw on his own experiences in practicing law; his knowledge of the changing dynamics in the delivery of professional legal services brings global understanding of the challenges that today’s lawyer’s must navigate. Scott has been a popular presence whenever he has returned to campus, and his devotion to the entire span of legal education helps students and lawyers not only succeed but also thrive. We are wonderfully fortunate to have the benefit of his terrific teaching and leadership.”
Westfahl said: “I am very excited to be joining the HLS Executive Education team at this critical moment, when lawyers in both private practice and the public sector are facing enormous uncertainty and challenges and are urgently seeking new ideas, tools and networks to help them succeed.”
John C. Coates, professor at HLS and chair of the faculty board of the Executive Education Program at the school, said: “I am delighted that Scott Westfahl will be joining HLS to lead Executive Education going forward. His deep experience in developing and educating legal professionals — inside a law firm, both as lawyer and as development professional in law firms and at McKinsey — make him uniquely well suited to deepen and broaden the Law School’s executive education programs. We are lucky to bring him on board as we enter the eighth year of HLS’s ongoing commitment to world class executive education for leaders of law firms and in-house legal departments alike.”
From 2009 to 2011, Westfahl served as the chair of the Professional Development Consortium, a 450-member professional association for law firm professional development and training leaders across North America and the U.K. He is a frequent guest lecturer and is the author of the book “You Get What You Measure: Lawyer Development Frameworks and Effective Performance Evaluations” (NALP, 2008).
Prior to coming to Goodwin Procter, Westfahl spent six years leading professional development for the Washington, D.C. office of McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s leading management consulting companies. He is also an experienced business and federal regulatory attorney, having practiced law with Foley & Lardner’s Washington, D.C. office from 1988 to 1998. Westfahl earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988, and graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1985.