Law School Lays Off 12

Harvard Law School laid off 12 staff members last week as part of its effort to reduce the size of its workforce by about 10 percent, acting Dean Howell E. Jackson announced in an e-mail to the Law School community last Tuesday.

Because the Law School's share of endowment payout for fiscal years 2010 and 2011 may fall by as much as $19 million from this past year's payout, administrators have come to view layoffs as a "painful" but necessary cost-cutting measure taken only after an "exhaustive look at all other possibilities," Jackson wrote. Staff attrition and redeployment, along with the University's voluntary early retirement incentive program, already helped to achieve most of the necessary downsizing.

"Nothing I say here will bring much comfort to those who will be impacted the most, but I can tell you that every one of these decisions has been extremely tough to make," he wrote.

While its expenditures have been relatively conservative in past years, the Law School remains dependent on endowment revenue for 37 percent of its operating budget. A payout decline of $19 million would represent over 10 percent of the School's current budget, and earlier this spring, the Law School's departments were each directed to cut costs by about 10 percent.

Like other University employees who have been recently laid off, workers at the Law School received a transition package that includes an extension of their health insurance for 12 months and access to job search services. They will continue to be paid for 60 days after receiving notification of the termination of their employment.

The layoffs were spread across departments and included management staff, but Law School officials declined to specify the exact financial impact of the cuts.

After the staff reductions conclude, the remaining workforce for fiscal year 2010 should number about 500 employees—a size similar to that in 2005, when the University's endowment was roughly the same size as it is today, following the 30 percent decline projected for the past fiscal year.

This past spring, 25 of 72 eligible Law School employees accepted buyouts from the University. Administrators further reduced the personnel budget by eliminating some vacant positions and visiting faculty appointments, freezing faculty and non-union staff salaries, and slashing faculty allowances. Professors and senior administrators have also pledged several hundred thousand dollars in donations to help offset the budget gap.

To cope with a shortage of visiting faculty members in the fall, current professors will teach more core courses, and some will take on a heavier teaching load than required.

But even with these cost-cutting measures, the threat of layoffs had loomed since April, when Jackson said at a town hall meeting that further staff reductions would likely be needed to bring the School's costs in line with its new financial realities.

“These are material changes that will affect our budgets in future years,” Jackson said in an interview in May. “We will need to reduce our staff levels in order to live within our new means.”

As a temporary replacement for former Law School Dean Elena Kagan, who stepped down after being confirmed as U.S. Solicitor General, Jackson took an unusually active role in shaping the Law School during his brief three month deanship. Kagan departed in March without making any budgetary announcements to the Law School community, and due to the tight budget approval timeline, the decision fell to Jackson to move forward with involuntary workforce cuts.

In an e-mail, Jackson said that although Martha Minow, the newly appointed Law School dean who assumes her position July 1, was not involved in the decision-making process, he expects her to ease smoothly into her new role.

"We have a very strong senior administrative staff at the Law School," he wrote, "and I am sure they will do a terrific job supporting the new dean."

—Staff writer Athena Y. Jiang can be reached at ajiang@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION: An earlier online version of the July 1 article "Law School Lays Off 12" gave an incorrect middle initial for the acting dean of the Law School. His name is Howell E. Jackson, not Howell L. Jackson.