Business

Just two months after landing a major victory in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on behalf of homeowners fighting eviction, the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau (HLAB) was back before the high court last week seeking more protections for people with homes in foreclosure. The court’s decision, expected to come down in several months, could lead to greater accountability for lenders trying to foreclose.

Professor John Palfrey ’01 was a keynote speaker at the Open World Forum, held September 22-24, in Paris, France. The Open World Forum brings together 160 experts from around the world to discuss technological, economic and social initiatives.

According to attorney and author Grover E. Cleveland, young lawyers should be reassured by assignments that require all-nighters. “If a senior lawyer left work on your desk and went to sleep, that means that you’ve successfully earned her trust,” he said. Cleveland offered this and other nuggets of wisdom at “Swimming Lessons for Baby Sharks: Thriving in the First Two Years of Law Practice,” an event jointly sponsored by the Harvard Law School Program on the Legal Profession and Office of Career Services on October 4.

In the first lecture of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics series, Paul Thacker, an investigative journalist and former U.S. Senate Finance Committee staffer, said that big pharmaceutical dollars not only own physicians but also many prominent medical school faculty who are paid to lobby for drugs.

The only way we can keep Americans fully employed and maintain our global lead is by constantly improving their productivity and skills, writes Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, in an op-ed in today's Washington Post. In his op-ed,  "On jobs, Obama needs to be a radical," published on the eve on the president's address to the nation, Wadhwa writes that American companies must be provided with the incentives to invest in their workers as they used to.

Cautionary tales and words of wisdom from HLS student entrepreneurs

In a recent op-ed for the Boston Globe, Professor Charles Fried, a life-long Republican, writes that before he can give Senator Scott Brown his support in the next election, Fried needs to know what kind of Republican Brown is. 

In the latest victory for the HLS Clinical Programs’ anti-foreclosure work, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on Aug. 4 against lenders in a case argued by Harvard Legal Aid Bureau student Jennifer Tarr ’11.

The Committee on Disclosure of Corporate Political Spending, co-chaired by Harvard Law School Professor Lucian A. Bebchuk LL.M. ’80 S.J.D. ’84 and Robert J. Jackson, Jr. ’05, associate professor at Columbia Law School, submitted a rulemaking petition to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The petition urges the commission to develop rules to require public companies to disclose to shareholders the use of corporate resources for political activities.

In his August 7 op-ed, the latest in a series for Bloomberg View, HLS Professor Noah Feldman discusses the perception of U.S. democracy in light of the government’s recent debt crisis.

In its recent annual meeting held in San Diego, the Western Economic Association International elected Harvard Law School Professor Lucian Bebchuk to be its president-elect during 2011-2012.

The op-ed, “Immigration and the death of the recovery,” by Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate for the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, appeared June 29 in the Washington Post. According to Wadhwa, the United States economy will suffer unless we make it easier for foreign nationals who have studied in the U.S. to stay in the country to start their careers.  

This fall, Professor John Goldberg, a tort law specialist at Harvard Law School, unexpectedly found himself engaged in a research project that could impact the lives of thousands of Americans. And it needed to be completed in a matter of weeks.

Since the financial crisis hit, HLS Professor Hal Scott and the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, an independent research organization which he directs, have been working double time making recommendations on financial regulatory reform through white papers, major reports and testimony before Congress.

The new CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck, Kenneth Frazier ’78 is driven by high hopes for the company and what it can do

In his June 20 opinion piece in Project Syndicate, “How capitalist is America?,” Harvard Law School Professor Mark Roe '75 looks into the question of ‘how capitalist’ the United States is, and explores the idea of U.S. capitalism not only within a global context, but within a corporate one, as well. The article is the latest in a monthly series for the publication, titled The Rules of the Game.

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard helped shape the agenda of Rethink Music, a recent conference that brought together legal, business, and academic experts to discuss new business models for creating and distributing music.

Mihir A. Desai, who currently serves as the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, the Senior Associate Dean for Planning and University Affairs, and the Chair of Doctoral Programs at Harvard Business School, has accepted a joint appointment to the faculty of Harvard Law School as a tenured Professor of Law.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has proposed changes to its rules governing markups, commissions and fees, partly in response to a study by Harvard Law School Professor Allen Ferrell. The study, published April 7, is titled “The Law and Finance of Broker-Dealer Mark-Ups.”

In an article published in the April 20 Opinion section of The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Law School Professor Hal S. Scott takes a look at the overregulation of private offerings by the Securities and Exchange Commission, following a recent statement by SEC Chair Mary Schapiro that the agency is investigating ways to reduce regulatory burdens on small-business capital formation. According to Scott, this should prompt a review of the regulation of offerings in both private and public markets.