Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession

In 2018, we documented in #ThePractice how globalization reshaped India’s legal profession. Read more in #ThePractice archive: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/the-...

What happens after a client files a complaint against a lawyer? In 2025, Massachusetts bar counsel processed 3,773 complaints and referred about 5 percent for formal investigation. We look inside two state systems in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/afte...

Could a law firm change who applies just by rewriting its job ad? Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio tested small "nudges" in recruiting. One raised female applicants from 63.8% to 83%. Read more in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/nudg...

Women have been more than half of J.D. graduates since 2016. So who’s leading the deals? Over a decade of deal teams, only one in five team leaders was a woman, find Tracey E. George, Mitu Gulati, and Albert H. Yoon in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/law-...

When a law firm collapses, should clients follow their lawyers or stay with the firm? General counsel at Anheuser-Busch InBev and Monsanto weigh in, in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/navi...

Can lawyers and companies do good while doing well? A few recommendations we document in #ThePractice: counsel on what the law should be, treat ethics as a long-term investment, and build a culture of integrity. clp.law.harvard.edu/article/doin...

In 2021, Bridgewater Associates’ Tracey Yurko described building “the virtual law firm” from law firms and PwC. Five years on, with AI reshaping legal work, does that model still hold? From the #ThePractice archive: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/deve...

What is the role of a lawyer in a declining democracy? It depends on how they view their role, says Professor Kathryn Hendley in #ThePractice. clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hu...

Who records a community’s history when no one else will? Julieanna Richardson of The HistoryMakers tells #ThePractice that “nearly a century of African American achievements and struggles had gone undocumented.” clp.law.harvard.edu/article/amer...

Join us TODAY at 12:20 pm in-person at Harvard Law School in WCC 1015 for a conversation with Jingzhou Tao on "Recent Changes in Foreign and Chinese Legal Practice in China." Lunch provided!

When a law firm fails, is debt usually what sinks it? Not according to Dan DiPietro, then of Citi Private Bank, who traces failing firms to “some disconnect between leadership and the partners.” From the #ThePractice archive: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/bank...

How might AI reshape the structure of the legal profession—and whom will it serve? The latest issue of #ThePractice takes up that question and more. Subscribe to #ThePractice for free: clp.law.harvard.edu/subscribe/

How might AI reshape the legal profession? Our new issue of #ThePractice asks what structure and rules it needs, how it could better serve people who struggle to get legal help, and what history can teach us: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/intr...

For the newest @hlsclp.bsky.social The Practice Magazine issue, CIC's Themba Mahleka and @natekedwards.bsky.social discuss why #AIGovernance needs to be a multistate, multilateral solution when it comes to the use of AI in the access to justice ecosystem. Read🔻 clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hu...

Tech leaders have compared AI to electricity, fire, and the printing press. We asked historians what those analogies miss. Read more in our issue on the AI restructuring: clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hu...

When clients can do more legal work themselves, what are they paying law firms for? Read more in an excerpt from Bjarne P. Tellmann's book "Law in the Era of AI": clp.law.harvard.edu/article/law-...

Will AI become a bridge to justice—or a substitute for it? Gerald Abila of BarefootLaw built an AI lawyer named Winnie, then kept her behind the scenes. We ask in #ThePractice what governing AI for access to justice would take: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/a-br...

Thirty years after "The Future of Law," Richard Susskind on why AI could finally transform legal work—not just automate it—and why its real prize is closing the justice gap. #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/rede...

Our new issue of #ThePractice, The AI Restructuring, asks how AI is remaking the legal profession—from the billable hour and the shape of law firms to who can get legal help at all: clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hu...

Henry Moniz, then global head of legal/regulatory compliance at Viacom and now Meta's chief compliance officer, told #ThePractice in 2016 how compliance moved from "You can do this but can't do that" to "How can we do this?" clp.law.harvard.edu/article/the-...

What if the crises of 2020 were a sign that the system itself needs rethinking? Harvard Professor Rebecca M. Henderson argues that the pandemic, the economic collapse, and demands for racial justice exposed structural problems that markets alone can't solve. clp.law.harvard.edu/article/capi...

What does it take to practice law where there are no templates? Michelle Hanlon (University of Mississippi Center for Air and Space Law) and Paul Weber (Blue Origin) describe building space law as it moves from theory into daily practice. clp.law.harvard.edu/article/cosm...

"Strategy is about saying no more than it's about saying yes," Lorie Almon of Seyfarth Shaw told #ThePractice before becoming chair. clp.law.harvard.edu/article/prep...

What happens to a county when the last lawyer in it retires? Professor Lisa Pruitt (UC Davis) has spent nearly two decades on that question. "If you don't have any lawyers, your courthouse isn't going to function." Read more in our issue on legal deserts: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/conf...

If the bar exam is the gate into the profession, what exactly is it measuring? What might an alternative entryway into the profession, like supervised practice, look like? Read more in our issue on rethinking licensure: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/prac...

Can a lawyer win for their client and set the movement back? Read more in our issue on global disability cause lawyering: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/glob...

Who actually regulates lawyers—the courts or the bar? Leslie C. Levin (UConn Law) takes up that question through the case of malpractice insurance, which only two states require lawyers to carry. Read more in our issue on legal regulation: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/the-...

When the financial crisis hit Portugal, most law firms cut costs and staff. Vieira de Almeida rebuilt. The takeaway? How a firm arrives at its strategic vision can matter as much as the vision itself. Read about an HLS case study in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/inno...

Whose name comes first on a deal—and what does the order tell you? "Deal leadership teams have a hierarchy," write George, Gulati & Yoon in #ThePractice. Across 10,000+ deals, women are still likelier to sit lower in it than at the top. clp.law.harvard.edu/article/law-...

What happens to the rule of law when the people dismantling it are lawyers? Read more in our issue on lawyers between democracy and authoritarianism: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/why-...

Is a single ESG score telling anyone anything useful? Gillian Tett — now Provost of King's College, Cambridge, then of the Financial Times — told #ThePractice the E, the S, and the G pull against each other more often than they align. clp.law.harvard.edu/article/corp...

What does it mean for a practice group when its busiest stretches are the ones where democracy is most strained? Election law is booming, and the lawyers in it are candid that the volume might not be good news. #ThePractice clp.law.harvard.edu/article/firm...

From #ThePractice archive: Asian Americans are the largest minority group in major American law firms. They are also the least likely to become equity partners. What explains the gap? Read more in our issue on Asian Americans in the law: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/a-po...

When is a client's crisis also the lawyer's crisis—and who has a playbook for it? Read more in our issue on crisis lawyering: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/cris...

If AI can replace so much of what lawyers do, how can lawyers make themselves irreplaceable? Read more in our issue on adding value in the age of AI: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/how-...

In 2010, 75 percent of Americans rated a college education "very important." By 2025, Gallup put that number at 35 percent. What changed — the degree, or what we ask it to do? Read more in our issue on adding value in the age of AI: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/valu...

The AI question legal departments cannot skip: is your data in order? Mark Smolik of DHL Supply Chain Americas got there years before the tools arrived. #ThePractice clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hu...

A lot of DEI infrastructure came down this year. Much of it never measured whether frontline workers earn a living wage. Professor Zeynep Ton on why "DEI should include economic justice," in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/inve...

"There is something very wrong with the core backbone and culture of an institution if it's looking to one individual to be the living embodiment of the conscience of the institution," says Sonya Branch of the Bank of England in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/chec...

"I like the underdog. I like the people who have been told, 'No, you're not eligible.'" Immigration lawyer Flavia Santos Lloyd on how she built her firm, in #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/buil...

The professions once traded market insulation for public goods. What happens when that bargain goes? In #ThePractice archive: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/the-...

Is the way law school is financed quietly choosing students' careers for them? Read more in our issue on student debt: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/reth...

Judging a candidate's "character and fitness"? Former NY Court of Appeals judge Jonathan Lippman tells #ThePractice to look past the single offense and "look at the whole human being." clp.law.harvard.edu/article/a-ma...

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tells #ThePractice she expected CDC meetings full of epidemiologists—and often found herself across the table from counsel instead. Read more: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/unse...

Can a law firm serve the underdog and answer to public shareholders at the same time? In 2007, Slater & Gordon became the world's first publicly held law firm, and it's still an open question if they managed to deliver. In #ThePractice: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/ethi...

When should a general counsel say "slow down"—or "stop"? Ben W. Heineman Jr., who served as General Electric's general counsel from 1987 to 2003 and is a giant in the GC field, argues that the modern GC has to be both partner and guardian to the business. clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hu...

What if the place people first find a lawyer isn't a law office, but a doctor's office? That's the premise of a medical-legal partnership. For a pediatrician, the lawyer is just a referral—like a cardiologist. Read more in our issue on lawyers in health care: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/part...

Has AI changed how people think about higher education? CEW Director Jeff Strohl sits down with @hlsclp.bsky.social to discuss how college degrees still hold value in today's changing labor market. clp.law.harvard.edu/knowledge-hu... #AI #AcademicSky #LawSchool

What does it take to train the next generation of immigration and refugee lawyers? A look back at how one immigration clinic approaches the work when the law itself is often the obstacle. Read more in our issue on immigration lawyering: clp.law.harvard.edu/article/cult...

Why do so many students arrive at law school set on public-interest work, then sign with a large firm by the end of their first summer? John Bliss spent five years interviewing students and found the usual explanation—debt and salary—doesn't hold up. clp.law.harvard.edu/article/drif...