Biz Prof To Join The Law School

The newest member of the Harvard Law School faculty aims to bridge the gap between the study of law and the practice of law.

Professor Ashish Nanda, a former Harvard Business School associate professor, is an expert on how professional firms are managed and was formerly an adjunct professor at the Law School.

“Ashish Nanda is known far and wide for his deep understanding of law and other professional service firms,” said Law School Dean Elena Kagan in a press release on Tuesday. “He is the perfect person to lead our executive education programs and to conduct research on, and teach our students about, important aspects of the legal profession.”

Nanda teaches courses that do not pertain to just theory of law, reflecting the Law School’s attempt to better prepare students for the legal profession.

“I am a student of the professions,” he said. “I look at how professional service organizations including law firms, consulting firms, and investment banks, and study what makes them succeed.”

Nanda is also research director of the Law School’s Program on the Legal Profession, which conducts research on the structures and norms of the legal profession.

At the Law School, Nanda currently teaches a professional services course, which uses business school-style case study methods to teach students how to run professional service firms.

Additionally, Nanda said he plans on teaching a new week-long leadership course for in-house counsel lawyers next year.

His leadership course will be an extension of last year’s week-long course called “Leadership in Law Firms,” in which lawyers who run law firms were given classes to improve their managerial skills.

Through teaching, Nanda said he hopes to ready students for the more practical aspects of the jobs that they may hold in the future.

“An exposure to how professional service organizations work and how one can succeed in them hopefully will prepare Harvard Law School students better for the world that they are joining upon graduation,” Nanda said.