 Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Program on the Legal Profession
Harvard Law School
1575 Massachusetts Avenue
Hauser Hall #312
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: +1 (617) 495-0958
Fax: +1 (617) 496-8489
E-mail: dwilkins@law.harvard.edu
Professor David Wilkins is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Faculty Director of the Center on Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry. He is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Faculty Associate of the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics.
Professor Wilkins has published over 50 articles on the legal profession in leading scholarly journals and the popular press. He co-authored (with HLS colleague Andrew Kaufman) one of the leading casebooks in the field. His current scholarly projects on the profession include the After the JD study and the Center’s Corporate Purchasing Project. He also instructs at the Center’s Executive Education courses.
His other research projects include empirical research on the development of “ethical infrastructure” in large law firms based on a series of focus groups with leading practitioners and regulators and over 200 in-depth interviews conducted in connection with a forthcoming book on the development of the black corporate bar, which will be published by Oxford University Press.
Professor Wilkins teaches several courses on lawyers and other related professionals, including the country's only four credit course on the Legal Profession. He also teaches a seminar on The Future(s) of the Large Law Firm, as well as an introductory lecture for all first year students on the legal profession and careers. He is also heavily involved in curricular reform at HLS and the creation of a new course for first-year students entitled Problem Solving. Professor Wilkins is a frequent speaker at academic conferences, law firms, other professional service providers, and bar organizations, both within the United States and around the world. He is the Order of the Coif Distinguished visitor for 2008 and is a member of Harvard University's Task Force on Professional Schools.
AB, Harvard College, 1977
JD, Harvard Law School, 1980
The Black Bar: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and the Future of Race and the American Legal Profession, Forthcoming from Oxford University Press
Partner, Shmartner! EEOC v. Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, 120 Harv. L. Rev. 1264 (2007)
Valuing Diversity: Some Cautionary Lessons from the American Experience, in Managing the Modern Law Firm (Laura Empson, ed. 2007)
Bridging the Diversity Gap: Five Lessons from the American Experience, 2007 DIVERSITY LEAGUE TABLES: ETHNICITY AND GENDER IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION (Black Solicitors Network 2007)
Urban Law Graduates in Large Law Firms, Forthcoming in Southwestern Law Review (2007)
Legal Profession, Fall 2007
Future(s) of the Large Law Firm, Spring 2008
Legal Ethics Panel,
Fordham Law School, (6/08)
Yale Legal Theory Workshop, Yale Law School, (5/08)
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Urban Law School Graduates, Amherst College, (4/08)
Current Legal Problems Lecture, University College, London, (3/08)
Toward a Joint Venture Model of the Attorney/Client Relationship Between Corporations and their Outside Counsel, Nichols Lecture,
Stetson University (3/08)
After the J.D.: Preliminary Evidence from a Ten-Year Longitudinal Study of Lawyer Careers,
Yale Law School, (2/08) watch video
The Profession in Crisis, 4th Biennial Worldwide Meeting of the Harvard Law School Alumni Association, June 2007
‘Affirmative Action’ in Law Firms: The Next Debate, National Conference for the Minority Lawyer, Boston, MA, June 2007
Diversity in the Legal Profession: A Conversation with Professor Wilkins, Legal Defense and Education Fund Annual Celebration of Brown v. Board of Education, May 2007
Archive (pre-2006) |
