Business

The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision allowed unlimited political expenditures by corporations and unions, which have been used to help fund campaign commercials that have flooded the airwaves during this election season. In recent writings, several Harvard Law faculty members have explored how Citizens United affects a spectrum of stakeholders, including shareholders, corporations, unions and voters.

At the airport in New York one day last year, Alex Dimitrief ’85 was on a call regarding a problem that his company, faced in China. When his plane landed in London, he took a call on a different matter in Vietnam. And late that night, when he arrived in Lagos, he fielded yet another call, dealing with an issue back in the U.S. “It was an incredibly complicated day,” recalls Dimitrief, vice president and general counsel of GE Energy. And it illustrates the emerging role of today’s global general counsel.

By her 2L year, Regina Fitzpatrick ’08 was dead set on working for the U.N. on a peacekeeping mission. She’d come to HLS with a master’s in human rights after a stint with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The U.N.’s “legitimacy and access to hot spots,” she says, made it her goal. She is now working in Juba, South Sudan, living her dream.

For students interested in the confluence of business and law, there is one group on campus that has taken the lead in connecting them with business figures for career advice. The Harvard Association for Law and Business has grown from an organization of 50 to one of more than 700 members—drawn by a robust weekly speaker series as well as other events that promote networking and mentoring, among other benefits.

On Feb. 9, following 17 months of intense negotiations, numerous late-night conference calls and not a few fractious meetings where all seemed hopeless, five of the nation's biggest mortgage lenders agreed to a historic $25 billion settlement that will provide financial relief to more than a million homeowners who were victims of improper foreclosures or other mortgage servicing abuses.

On May 22, the City of Cambridge awarded Harvard Law School a 2012 GoGreen Award for Recycling and Waste Reduction for a Large Institution. Starting in 1998, the annual GoGreen Awards have recognized the environmental sustainability initiatives of Cambridge businesses and organizations in the areas of transportation, waste reduction/recycling, energy, storm water management, climate protection, and initiatives by community organizations.

Where can you pick up a lunch with Larry Summers, a fashion-forward shopping spree with a Harvard Law School professor or a Justice David Souter bobblehead? The HLS annual Public Interest Auction, of course.

The World Trade Organization has appointed Harvard Law School alumnus and former HLS Visiting Professor of Law Seung Wha Chang LL.M. ’92 S.J.D. ’94 to serve on its seven-member Appellate Body. Chang will settle international trade disputes alongside distinguished trade experts from the U.S., the E.U., China, India, Mexico and South Africa.

Harvard Law School alumnus Richard A. Meserve ‘75, president of the Carnegie Institution for Science and former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was elected president of Harvard’s Board of Overseers for the 2012-2013 academic year. Lucy Fisher, president of the independent film production company Red Wagon Entertainment will serve as vice-chair of the committee.

Exactly how far does an agent need to go to keep a professional athlete happy? Just ask Jeff Schwartz, who represents Boston Celtics all-star player Paul Pierce. “[Paul] sometimes calls me at 4 in the morning, just to see if I’ll answer my phone, which I don’t do anymore,” Schwartz recently told Harvard Law School students. “First thing in the morning, I call him back and he says, ‘too late, I’m dead.’ ” Harvard Law School students enjoyed this and other behind-the-scenes tidbits from the world of professional athlete representation in a recent two-hour Q&A hosted by HLS Lecturer Peter Carfagna ’79 for his class, “Sports and the Law: Representing the Professional Athlete.”

An article by Harvard Law School S.J.D. candidate Andrew Tuch has been voted by the nation’s corporate and securities law professors as one of the top ten corporate and securities law papers of 2011. The article, “Multiple Gatekeepers,” was originally published in the Virginia Law Review.

Harvard Law School’s (HLS) alumni reunion this past weekend reconnected friends from near and far in the School’s newest addition, the 250,000-square-foot Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center, Clinical Wing Building on the campus’ northwest corner.

A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether Congress has the power to mandate individuals to have private insurance coverage isn’t expected until the end of June. But Georgetown University Law Center professor and libertarian legal theorist Randy Barnett ’77 is already claiming victory of sorts for his argument that the mandate is unconstitutional.

In the April 19 edition of The New York Times’ DealBook, Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk defends the of work of his Shareholder Rights Project (SRP) at HLS in light of a recent memo criticizing the project. The SRP is a clinical program that assists public pension funds and charitable organizations in improving corporate governance at publicly traded companies.

If the countless headlines in recent years are an indication, we live in an age dominated by a corporate playbook that considers success at the expense of others a standard part of doing business. But increasingly, observers fear that same philosophy is too often becoming the norm in other professions. Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin explored the trend’s impact on the legal profession in his recent New York Times column “Conflicted, and Often Getting a Pass,” said Harvard’s Professor Howard Gardner during a Mar. 21 discussion at Harvard Law School.

"The Alternative to Shareholder Class Actions," an op-ed by Harvard Law School Professor Hal Scott and Leslie N. Silverman, appeared in the Apr. 1 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

“I took the view that what we ought to be talking about and thinking about was universal suffrage,” stated Michael Young in a lecture at Harvard Law School titled, “The Secret Talks That Led to the Fall of Apartheid.”  As a British businessman in the 1980s, Young initiated and led unprecedented talks between the African National Congress and the South African government that led to the end of apartheid in South Africa.

In early March at Harvard Law School,  Lesley Rosenthal ’89, author of the new book "Good Counsel: Meeting the Legal Needs of Nonprofits," discussed the career path that has led her to be vice president, general counsel and secretary of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

When the second wave of feminism swept the country in the early 1970s, a woman had never served on the United States Supreme Court. There had never been a woman Secretary of State. If there were any women attorneys general, CEOs, or law school deans, they were rarer than water vapor on the moon. Today, there’s nothing to hold women back. Right? Not so fast. That’s the message delivered by keynote speaker Nancy Gertner to the 300-plus attendees of the National Association of Women Judges’ (NAWJ) conference held at Harvard Law School in mid-March.

In a talk sponsored by the HLS Tea Party, Harvard Professor Richard Freeman, faculty co-director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, and Professor Richard Epstein of New York University School of Law, discussed the challenges facing unions today. The talk, “The Future of Unions in America,” was held at Harvard Law School on Feb. 13.