Hubert Yu Zhang

Hometown: Paris, France
HLS Class: LL.M. class of 2008

Prior Education: Licence 2005, Maîtrise 2006, DESS 2007, University of Paris – Panthéon-Assas, Paris, France

Career goals: Practice law in France and in China; be involved in and contribute to the development of the Chinese legal system; promote legal and cultural interactions and exchanges between China and France.

Born in China, raised in France and having lived in Singapore, I was naturally seduced by the cosmopolitan nature of Harvard Law School’s LL.M. program. HLS brings the world to you with its amazing student body comprising more than 60 different nationalities. Students are not only from different cultures, they also have different interests and career goals, which is a great source of inspiration. Undoubtedly, the prestige of HLS and its incredibly varied curriculum also played a major role in my choice to join HLS.

In my opinion, HLS managed a tour de force by offering so much diversity within a reasonable size of class. If the size were too big, the risk would be high that students would break into small groups for the whole year. That is not the case at HLS where all LL.M. students know each other through innumerable events organized either by the school or by the students themselves. Some friendships built at HLS will surely last for a lifetime.

I really enjoyed the well-known Negotiation Workshop experience. It is very different from any law course I have ever taken. Instead of teaching you legal theories, it actually teaches you or, better yet, helps you understand your own weaknesses as a negotiator and then enables you to improve your negotiating skills by working through fictional cases. Indeed, it is immensely important for a lawyer to be able to understand the dynamics of a negotiation and to employ them to one’s benefit. For the first time, I was taught what really is at the heart of a lawyer’s day-to-day work.

The method of teaching in the U.S. is completely different from that in France. The American approach puts more emphasis on personal preparation for each class and dynamic discussion between the professor and the students during the class. This method makes students more responsible and forces them to really discover and familiarize themselves with a topic on their own before debating about it in class. In this way, not only is the professor more efficient in addressing all the interesting issues, but students are also more involved in the teaching and learning process, and thus more active and responsible.

Beyond the classroom, I have also enjoyed living in Cambridge, which is less hectic than New York but thoroughly cosmopolitan; the dynamic city of Boston is only a few metro stops away, and Cape Cod, an ideal place to visit during the warmer months, is also easily accessible. For the winter months, many ski resorts are close by, and even New York City is not that far away.

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