Students Applaud HLS Restructuring

Law school students say that they are happier, that their class experience is better and that they feel more a part of a community as the result of a broad-based restructuring of the school’s first-year program.

The increased student satisfaction represents a marked contrast from the not-so-distant past. In 1999 an outside consultant reported widespread dissatisfaction with Harvard Law School (HLS), particularly students’ experience during their first year at the school.

The McKinsey & Co. survey—sponsored by HLS as part of its long-range planning—highlighted large class sizes and poor faculty-student interaction as major sources of student complaint.

Recommendations for remedying the problems were spelled out in the school’s Strategic Plan that emerged from the planning exercise.

This fall, HLS took the first major steps towards implementing the plan, making changes to the school’s first-year program.

First-year sections—the groups in which students take all their introductory classes—were cut from 140 students to 80.

The smaller sections were envisioned as “law colleges” with faculty and resources assigned to each.

And curricular changes were introduced to combat common complaints about particular classes and lack of feedback on written work.

Faculty say that the success of the changes exceeded their expectations.

Students say that on the whole, their first-year experience is tangibly better than that of their predecessors.

Cutting Classes

According to professors, the most radical of this fall’s changes was the slashing of introductory class size brought about by the expansion—from four to seven—of the number of first-year sections.

Faculty say they hoped through the change to counter the feeling that the first-year program was impersonal, and to some intimidating.

According to Story Professor of Law Daniel J. Meltzer ’72, faculty hoped that reducing the class size would allow students to know their classmates and professors better. Hopefully, this would both improve students’ comfort level and their educational experience.

Maya P. Alperowicz, a first-year student who serves as a representative on the Law School Council, says that the big cuts in the section size did address many of previous first-years’ concerns.

“I think making the section sizes smaller has definitely changed the experience a lot,” Alperowicz says. “It has really made for greater contact between faculty and students.”

Even students who do not actively seek out professors are getting to know their professors better, Alperowicz says.

And the smaller classes have made for more closely knit sections and “a greater feel of community” she says.

Alperowicz says that she’s only heard positive comments from other students about the section size changes.

According to Dean of the J.D. Program Todd D. Rakoff ’67, the desirability of cutting class sizes was obvious to the faculty who planned this year’s changes.

There was considerable discussion, however, over how much to reduce section size, he says.

On the one hand were practical limitations.

It was relatively easy to increase the number of sections by three Meltzer says, by reassigning professors who usually teach upper-level classes.

But any further decreases in section size would demand greater resources, Rakoff says.

On the other hand, there were also pedagogical issues.

“A lot of people thought that the ideal class size was not the smallest we could afford,” Rakoff said.

According to a survey conducted in the fall by the Law School Council, first-years felt that a size of 80 students seemed ideal.

Alperowicz and others echo the faculty’s reasoning—that a size of 80 is small enough that it’s not too impersonal, but big enough to avoid hearing from the same two students all of the time.

David E. Altschuler, another first-year representative on the Law School Council, adds an additional concern.

“From some students’ perspective being called on all of the time wouldn’t be the most desirable thing,” he says. “There’s some safety in numbers.”

Building Community

In cutting section sizes, the law faculty wasn’t only interested in improving the school’s academic environment, but also hoped to improve the school’s social atmosphere—eliminating the school’s reputation for a backbiting hyper-competitive culture.

Professors who serve as section leaders not only have a more manageable number of students, but were given money to arrange social events and extracurricular activities for the section.

Activities held this year varied from group karaoke to a Mexican dinner feast.

Students say that the seven section leaders have taken different attitudes in leading these “law colleges,” but that in all cases the efforts have brought at least some improvement.

And professors say they hope this year’s changes can be improved upon.

“They have worked, but we’re still not sure how to make them work best,” Rakoff says.

Altschuler says that he’s sure the sections always served as a base for forming friendships, but that with the smaller sections and the emphasis on their social aspect, they’ve probably fulfilled this role even more this year.

And while the law school likely can never create communities on the scope of the undergraduate Houses, Altschuler says he supports even the school’s more limited efforts at community building through the sections.

Both he and Alperowicz suggested that second-year students could serve as mentors for their former sections, thus maintaining continuity and providing first-years an added resource.

In any case, students say that the first-year culture was nothing like what they had been led to fear by the school’s brutal reputation, as immortalized by Scott Turow’s One L.

Alperowicz says she is very pleased with her experience.

“I think [the first year] probably always got a worse rap than it deserved, but I also think that the changes they’ve made this year have made the experience better,” she says.

Persistent Problems

Not all of this year’s changes have been met with universal acclaim. The biggest curricular change—a revamped introductory legal writing and research course—has students calling for further reform.

In response to past criticisms, professors rewrote the course, renamed it the First-Year Lawyering Program and brought in visiting lecturers to teach. In the past, while professors did lecture once a week, most of the instruction and all of the evaluation was done by older law students.

Altschuler says students have had significant problems with the new class.

The class lacks structure, and despite the visiting lecturers—who are all active lawyers—a real world connection, he says.

“Among law schools across the country no one can seem to get this right,” Altschuler says. “I don’t think the way [HLS constructed the new class] makes any sense.”

Alperowicz calls the changes to the class “a drastic improvement” over previous years, but agrees that the class requires further revision.

According to Rakoff, he and other faculty involved in the class expected from the outset that the class would require further tweaking.

“[The class] was a new group of faculty and an entirely new curriculum,” Rakoff says. “We’ll continue to rewrite the course, but this was a good first step.”

“The course was more ambitious [than its predecessor]—it took more student time,” Meltzer says. “The complaints may have gotten a little louder because the course took more time.”

Only the First Step

Rakoff says that no major changes to the first-year program are on deck for next year.

Class size will remain roughly the same. While he and others will discuss further the possibility of expanding on the idea of law colleges—with common spaces for example—no concrete plans have been made for next year and beyond. And while the First Year Lawyering program will continue to evolve there will be no total overhaul next fall.

But the changes to the first-year program are only the first in the series of improvements pledged by the Strategic Plan adopted by the school’s faculty last academic year.

Other changes include increasing the faculty size, improving loan forgiveness for graduates who go into lower paying jobs-—often public interest—and requiring students to do pro-bono service while at HLS.

The school has already begun work in all three areas. Last spring the school expanded its loan forgiveness program to include jobs outside the legal profession. Two new professors were hired last week. And Rakoff says he hopes to have the pro-bono requirement in place for the class entering next fall.

The Strategic Plan—which carries a hefty price tag to be funded by a capital campaign—also outlines a need for extensive physical expansion of the school.

According to both law school and University officials, the school’s plan was discussed by the Harvard Corporation at its Feb. 25 meeting. The Corporation must approve the plan and give the green light for any capital campaign.

But school faculty say that amount of work left doesn’t diminish the importance of changes made so far.

“We chose [the first-year program] to go after first because we thought these would have the biggest impact,” Rakoff says.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.