Law School Plan Cuts Class Sizes, Adds 'Colleges'

In an effort to address quality-of-life concerns voiced by its students, Harvard Law School (HLS) will slash lecture sizes and establish a House-like system of "law colleges" beginning next fall.

The plan calls for cutting the size of introductory courses from about 140 to 80 students and establishing a system of seven non-residential colleges to enhance students' advising and social life. It was approved by a unanimous faculty vote Sept. 22.

"That shows it's not just the students who want this. It's also the faculty," said Michael A. Armini, spokesperson for HLS.

The cost of the changes is estimated at about $20 million over the next several years, Armini said.

Under the planned college system, the roughly 550 students in each HLS class will be grouped into seven units who will socialize together and take introductory classes as a group. Currently, entering students are broken up into four sections of about 140 students.

Students responded positively to the planned restructuring of the student body.

"It's always been frustrating to me that the law school doesn't take more inspiration from the College," said Hanna L. Stotland '99.

While halving class size is a radical step, particularly by Harvard standards, many students said that HLS needs to make further changes to improve their quality of life.

Many other law schools grade classes on a pass/fail basis, particularly in the first year, but HLS continues to use a letter grading system. Students say that letter grades cause increased pressure and competition.

The faculty recently rejected one pass/fail grading proposal but is considering another in which professors would have the option of giving six different grades: three gradations of honors, pass, low pass and fail.

A vote on the proposal "could be as soon as this Friday," Armini said.

Another proposed system would be based on a forced curve requiring that a certain percentage of students receive a given grade.

"Right now there's a lot of variation between professors, and that's not fair," Stotland said.

A spring 1999 McKinsey & Co. study commissioned by HLS suggested a series of improvements--mainly in the areas of class size and grading policy--although law school officials say that the current changes were in the planning stages even before the study was conducted.

The current changes are the beginning of a long-term strategic plan being drawn up. Other reforms being considered are loan forgiveness and requirements for pro bono work.

Just as HLS's grading policies are different from many law schools', so is the new "law college" format. Gottlieb Professor of Law Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the Institutional Life Committee at HLS, emphasized that the system is not modeled on other schools'.

"This does not look like anything at Yale," she said. "We will be the first law school in the country to try something quite like this."

In addition to offering classes for students as a group, each college will host speakers, provide advising and hold social events and intramural sports competitions.

"The plan right now is to provide a physical space for each college--a space where students can have lunch, drop off their books, receive a phone call, hang out," Warren said.

But Professor of Law Joseph W. Singer, chair of the HLS Infrastructure and Resources Committee, said no decision has been made on where that space might be--or how it would be allocated. The law school is already cramped, he said, and the new colleges do not take precedence over other space needs.

"There's no space that I imagine we could give them right now," Singer said. "The colleges would work better with space allocated to them."