HLS 2003-2008 - The Years in Review

On the eve of stepping down as Dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan '86 sent alumni the following overview of major developments and initiatives at the school during the years of her deanship (2003-2009).

Reforming Our Curriculum

How should a law school go about teaching students to think like lawyers? What should we be teaching students and at what stage of their legal education will it be most helpful for them to learn it?

About five years ago, with these questions in mind, HLS embarked on a major curriculum review aimed at determining what changes might help us educate our students most effectively for the complex global challenges of this new millennium. Our starting point was a curriculum that was already the finest in the world, with an array of courses unrivaled anywhere. But for all the many strengths of the case-based curriculum introduced by HLS Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell in 1872—the blueprint for legal education throughout the United States—we were increasingly of the view that the strong could be made stronger, that there was more we could do to prepare our students for the 21st century.

During our intensive curriculum review, we concluded that while Langdell’s case method still works quite well in honing certain forms of legal analysis, it’s not so good at others. In particular, we wanted to do more to help students learn to solve—not just identify—problems; to prepare them to operate effectively in a context where statutes and regulation, not just cases, play an increasingly important role; and to ensure that they could navigate a world where a global perspective is intrinsic to a great deal of human activity and legal work.

What students learn during their 1L year goes far in shaping their sense of what law is, and for this reason, we focused much of our attention on this critical first year. Ultimately, we decided to supplement the standard 1L curriculum with three new courses—one focusing on the statutory and regulatory aspects of law, one looking at law in a comparative or international framework, and one where students work in teams to resolve the sorts of complex problems that lawyers so often confront. We made way for these new offerings by slightly paring (not eliminating) the traditional 1L subjects.

To date, two classes of HLS students have enrolled in the new 1L curriculum, and the feedback is everything we might have hoped for. Through intensive work with statutes and regulations from the start of law school, students are developing a rich understanding of the institutional frameworks and modes of the regulatory state—and they and their professors are finding fertile connections between these materials and the rest of the first-year program. The courses in international and comparative law are opening up new questions and possibilities, illuminating the choices made by different societies along with challenges arising from globalization, and helping every student to locate American law in the larger map of laws, politics, and histories across the world—a critically important endeavor.

Turning to the upper-level curriculum, we found an array of offerings unmatched anywhere, but alongside this cornucopia of courses, seminars, clinics, and reading groups, we found that we were offering too little in the way of guidance for students seeking to construct a coherent program. To address this issue, we came up with five suggested paths through the curriculum—clusters of courses, clinics, cross-registration options, and internship opportunities—aimed at guiding students in course selection while more generally showing how law school can foster development of depth and breadth in various fields. Each program of study has an associated group of faculty members, basic and advanced courses, and clinical and research opportunities, and significantly, each also incorporates important interdisciplinary dimensions, reminding students to see the world broadly and from multiple perspectives. Our initial programs of study are Law and Government; Law and Business; International and Comparative Law; Law, Science and Technology; and Law and Social Reform.

Another key development in the upper-level curriculum is the explosive growth in our clinical programs—our “clinical renaissance,” so to speak. In recent years, student participation in clinical programs has more than doubled, with roughly two-thirds of HLS students completing significant clinical work at some point during law school. Taken together, our clinics address a vast and fast-growing range of subjects—from international human rights to immigration to environmental law to intellectual property—and provide students with the opportunity to participate not only in litigation but also in transactional and public policy work. Confronting real legal problems in a real world setting is one of the best possible ways to foster the resourcefulness and creativity our students will need throughout their careers, and I’m thrilled with the myriad opportunities that this law school now offers.

As I prepare to leave HLS, I am confident that our curriculum provides students with unmatched opportunities to cultivate their extraordinary talents, and I look forward to watching these reforms bear fruit in their future lives and careers.

Building Our Faculty

Building our faculty ranks was a key priority when I arrived as dean, and with the addition of 43 faculty members in the past five years—for a total count of 101—we now lay claim to what is the strongest, deepest, and most wide-ranging law faculty in the world.

Along with reducing the student-faculty ratio—a critically important goal—new appointments have enabled us to build on areas of traditional strength such as constitutional law, international law, and corporate law even as we’ve extended our leadership into areas of growing importance, including cyberlaw, environmental law, and clinical legal education.

As you probably know, some of our appointments have garnered significant attention both in the media and in the academy, notably our hiring of Cass Sunstein, the most prolific and often-cited legal scholar of our time—he’s been referred to as a “one-man think tank”—and our recent appointment of Lawrence Lessig, another renowned legal polymath, who will also serve as faculty director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University. But while the attention given to such high-profile appointments is quite understandable, I want to stress that all of our recently hired faculty members are superb teachers and scholars whose contributions place them in the very first ranks of their fields.
Each year, I’ve updated you on our latest hires, and I’d now like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the profoundly gifted faculty members who have joined us just this past year, since my last letter:

Professor Anne Alstott, an expert on taxation as well as on a wide range of public policy issues involving families and children, arrived at HLS after ten years on the faculty of Yale Law School. Professor Alstott is in the very first rank of interdisciplinary legal experts on taxation and social welfare policy, and her scholarship is among the most creative, thoughtful, and influential in her field.

Assistant Professor Glenn Cohen ’03, a specialist in bioethics whose interests include end-of-life decision-making, pediatric research ethics, and pre-embryo disposition agreements, joined our faculty after serving as a fellow at our Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics.

Professor John Goldberg, an expert in tort law and theory, came to us from a professorship at Vanderbilt University Law School. Professor Goldberg is one of the most original and thoughtful scholars writing today about our tort and compensation systems, combining philosophical sophistication with deep understanding of legal doctrine.

Assistant Clinical Professor Wendy Jacobs’81returned to HLS last year as director of our new Environmental Law and Policy Clinic following 17 years as a partner at the Boston law firm of Foley Hoag. Her promotion to the clinical faculty reflects HLS’s commitment to our environmental clinical program, as well her own great talents.

Professor Mike Klarman, an outstanding scholar of constitutional law and history with a particular focus on race, came to HLS from the University of Virginia School of Law. The author of several books—including the Bancroft Prize-winning From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial EqualityKlarman abounds with insights into some of the most important moments in American constitutional history.

Clinical Professor Phil Malonehas served as director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society’s Cyberlaw Clinic since 2004 and became a clinical professor last year. Before arriving at Harvard, he spent more than two decades with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, an experience capped by his role as lead career counsel in the government’s antitrust case against Microsoft from 1996 to 2002.

Professor of Practice Ashish Nanda, an expert in law firms and other professional service organizations, spent 14 years at Harvard Business School, where he taught courses in both the MBA and executive education Programs. He now serves as Professor of Practice, Research Director of Harvard Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession, and Faculty Director of the Law School’s principal executive education courses.

Assistant Professor Ben Roin’05, whose scholarship focuses on patent law and biotechnology, joined our faculty after serving as a fellow at our Petrie-Flom Center for Health Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. (If that sounds familiar, it’s because this is the same route taken by new faculty member Glenn Cohen.)

Assistant ProfessorBen Sachscame to HLS from Yale Law School, where he held the position of Joseph Goldstein Fellow and Lecturer on Law. A Yale Law graduate, he was the recipient of a Skadden Fellowship, serving as a staff attorney at the Workplace Justice Project before becoming assistant general counsel of the Service Employees International Union.

ProfessorHenry Smith, a leading expert in property, intellectual property, natural resources, and taxation, arrived at HLS in January following six years on the faculty at Yale Law School, where he held a joint appointment as the Fred A. Johnston Professor of Property and Environmental Law and as professor of cognitive science. Along with a property law casebook, he is the author of numerous articles making exciting interdisciplinary contributions that address some of the most important legal questions of the day.

Professor Cass Sunstein ’78, a preeminent scholar in fields as varied as administrative law and policy, constitutional law and theory, behavioral economics and law, and environmental law, comes to us from the University of Chicago.He is the author or co-author of hundreds of articles and more than 15 books, including the recently published and critically acclaimed Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. (As you may have heard, Professor Sunstein is joining the Obama administration, where as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, he will oversee all governmental regulations. This is widely regarded as one of the most crucial posts in the new administration. Cass will take a leave of absence from the faculty during this period of public service, and all of us will eagerly await his return.)

Professor Jonathan Zittrain ’95, an important voice on the legal and policy issues surrounding the Internet and co-founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, returned to HLS (where he also began his academic career) from Oxford University, where he was the inaugural holder of a chair in Internet Governance and Regulation. Professor Zittrain recently published The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It. In addition to his role as Professor of Law, he serves as a faculty co-director of the Berkman Center.

And while Lawrence Lessigwill not arrive at HLS until this summer and so is not, technically speaking, a member of this cohort, I’d like briefly to acknowledge the peerless talents and expertise he will bring to our community. A prolific and wide-ranging writer, with expertise in constitutional law, cyberlaw, and intellectual property, Professor Lessig is the author of five books, including most recently Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, which makes the case for a new vision of copyright law that encourages both creativity and collaboration. As mentioned above, along with his faculty post at HLS, Larry will head up Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, where he will launch a major research project examining what happens when public institutions depend on money from sources that may be affected by the work of those institutions. Larry is one of the most brilliant and important legal scholars of our time, and Harvard will be fortunate to have him.

I’d also like to highlight one additional recent appointment that I expect to have a far-reaching impact on HLS: The appointment of John Palfrey —previously a clinical professor of law and executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society—as vice dean of library and information resources and a tenured professor of law. Many of you are familiar with John’s cutting-edge work in the areas of Internet law, intellectual property, and new technologies as well as his leadership at the Berkman Center, where he remains as a faculty co-director. John’s profound grasp of how digital technologies can facilitate scholarship and teaching, along with his commitment to making information and knowledge accessible, make him the perfect person for his new role, and I know his leadership will mean great things for this greatest of all law libraries as we embark on building a “Digital HLS.”

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Our faculty is one of the most extraordinary things about this extraordinary institution, and each year this becomes more and more true. I can’t imagine a more impressive group of scholars, teachers, and colleagues, and I am grateful every day for their many contributions to HLS and the world.

Our Commitment to Public Service

Passion, talent, and dedication—not student loan debt—should determine our students’ first jobs, and last spring we took another major step toward making public service an affordable option. Our new Public Service Initiative (PSI) will subsidize third-year law school tuition for all students with a demonstrated commitment to public service work who pledge to spend five years doing such work after graduation. While this is an expensive program, it will be money well spent, and I’m proud that HLS has made this unprecedented commitment.

Even before the new Initiative, HLS led the nation’s law schools in terms of resources and support for public service, and PSI will supplement—not replace—our Low-Income Protection Plan (LIPP) loan repayment program, which we are committed to maintaining as the most generous in the nation. Meanwhile, our summer public interest funding continues to support all students performing public service work, both in the United States and abroad: This past summer, almost 400 HLS students took advantage of it. Further reflecting student commitment to public service is the fact that 94 percent of the members of the Class of 2008 exceeded our 40-hour pro bono requirement, with students averaging—amazingly enough—500 hours of pro bono work, more than 10 times what they were required to do. And of course, our clinical programs—discussed above in the curriculum section—provide thousands of hours of free legal services to those who would not otherwise be able to afford them.

Harvard Law School’s preeminence in public service is further illustrated by the unmatched success of our students in winning Skadden Fellowships. In 2008—for the second straight year—six HLS students and recent graduates received these prestigious grants to support their work in public service. Even more significantly, this marked the seventh consecutive year that HLS graduates have received more of these fellowships than the graduates of any other law school, a record that reflects both the passion and the abilities of our amazing students.

As many of you know, public service took center stage at HLS last spring at our first-ever Celebration of Public Interest, which was, incidentally, the first public interest reunion held by any law school. This historic gathering underscored the fact that the opportunity to give back is one of the greatest gifts we can give our students. As I conclude my time as dean, there is nothing of which I’m more proud than the steps we’ve taken to ensure that our graduates have a chance to use their talents, energies, and imagination to make the world a better place, and I’m terrifically grateful to all of you who support and share this vision.

Transforming Our Campus

Shortly after becoming dean, I took a look at our law school’s physical plant and came away with the not-so-comfortable realization that HLS was really two campuses—one for faculty, which was awfully nice, and one for students, which was, let’s say, not so nice. That didn’t seem right, and during the last five years much of my focus has been both on fixing this disparity and on enhancing our campus in ways that reflect our mission.

By far the largest effort on this front is our so-called Northwest Corner complex, a 250,000-square-foot facility that will change both the face of our campus and the student experience, bringing a new coherence to our physical space while also supporting the full range of student activities. The facility has a scheduled completion date of 2011, and to date, everything is on track.

To my mind, bricks and mortar are far more than bricks and mortar; they are also the physical expression of an institution’s goals and priorities, in our case a vision of legal education that puts students first. In line with this vision, each of the Northwest Corner complex’s three wings targets a distinct aspect of the student experience. Its academic wing will feature a raft of smaller, more flexible classrooms, reflecting our commitment to offering smaller courses and more innovative, and often group-based, ways of teaching. Its clinical wing will provide sufficient space and resources for our fast-growing clinical programs, reflecting the integral role they play in law school education. And a wing dedicated entirely to student activities, which will have some of the finest space in the new complex, will provide workrooms, conference rooms, dining facilities, a lounge, and much, much more.

The building will also reflect—in concrete form—our commitment to combining the best of our traditions with cutting-edge innovation. While the building’s facade will incorporate certain architectural features reminiscent of some of the law school’s venerable older structures, including Austin and Langdell halls, it will also feature distinctive modern design elements and state-of-the-art technology. Like the law school itself, the Northwest Corner structure will be rooted in the past while also looking towards the future.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned in my letter, our students are already benefitting from a number of improvements that have made the HLS campus far more user-friendly and supportive of student life, both in and beyond the classroom. The Hemenway Gymnasium—which many of you probably recall as a dark, airless pit—has had a wholesale facelift and is now, to my mind, the nicest gym in Cambridge, a brightly lit, airy space that offers state-of-the-art equipment and classes ranging from weight training to yoga. The Harkness Commons has also had a makeover and now features lots of comfortable chairs and couches, some gathered around a cozy fireplace, and an outdoor terrace for eating when weather permits. Other noteworthy improvements during the past five years include two new dormitories in the form of a pair of renovated Victorian houses that were moved down Mass Ave (a story in itself) to make way for Northwest Corner construction and Pound Hall classroom renovations.
All in all, I’d say the HLS campus has never looked better—even with that large construction site on the northwest corner of our campus, which stands as a sign of our commitment to future generations. HLS is much more than our campus, but at the same time, our campus is integral to everything we seek to do, and I’m proud of the message our campus sends about who we are and where we’re going.

Our Students’ HLS Experience

All of the efforts I’ve touched on—curriculum reform, faculty hiring, public service programs, and campus expansion and improvements—have been undertaken with a single purpose: To make the HLS student experience the very best it can be. As I’ve said repeatedly throughout my years as dean, students are the heart of Harvard Law School. They are—and will always be—the reason we do what we do here.

Much of the satisfaction I’ve taken from teaching and supporting our students stems from an awareness of the ripple effect these actions are likely to have. Those of us who touch the lives of HLS students help not only these students but also the hundreds, thousands, or even millions their future work will touch. We owe it not only to today’s students but also to the world to ensure that our future graduates have every opportunity to fulfill their vast potential.

I will miss many things about HLS, but top among them is the opportunity to spend time with students. I’m enormously grateful to have gotten to know so many of them—and for the questions, inspiration, energy, and vision they bring to this law school. HLS would not be the world’s best law school without the world’s best law students, and it’s been a true privilege to help them realize their own capacities for greatness.

Looking Ahead

Again, I want to thank all of you who have helped to make Harvard Law School the place it is today. During my almost six years as dean, I have relied on your generosity, insights, and suggestions more than I can say, and I have no doubt that my successor will find them as valuable as I have. We have a solid foundation to build on, but HLS will continue to need your help as it evolves to meet emerging needs. Please join me in pledging your ongoing support to this most remarkable of law schools.