In early 2022, EY Law and the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession surveyed 1,000 General Counsel and Chief Legal Officers from businesses representing 12 industries across 20 countries to take a closer look at the role of the law department in sustainability. Key findings reveal that law departments are facing a broad set of pressures from stakeholders on sustainability matters that are challenging them in new ways, further complicated by often ambiguous guidance from regulators and competing goals within the business itself. Read the report for critical answers and actions law department leaders can take.
In 2021, EY Law and the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession interviewed more than 2,000 General Counsel and leaders from procurement, commercial contracting and business development located in 22 countries. These interviews took place in early 2021 and covered a wide range of topics relating to contract creation and management, law department operations and legal entity management. When put together with the EY CEO Imperative study, conducted during this same period, these surveys provide an expansive and up-to-date 360 degree view of legal and contracting teams and their pivotal roles in achieving business success in the post-COVID-19 economy.
Read the Reports:
(Download the reports here, here, and here.)
For the past 20 years, the Center has been engaged in a series of projects aimed at understanding the nature of professional careers, with a particular focus on gender, race, and other diversity-related issues. This research, which includes a series of large scale surveys, has resulted in several widely cited reports, The Women and Men of Harvard Law School and The State of Black Alumni.
This project is a joint collaboration between leading thinkers from multiple sides of the legal profession: Professor David B. Wilkins (Harvard Law School), Mr. Benjamin Heineman, Jr. (CLP Distinguished Senior Fellow and former General Counsel of General Electric) and Mr. William Lee (Partner, WilmerHale). The essay lays out their vision of lawyers as professionals and citizens in the 21st century. In the coming months, we will solicit comments from leading legal professionals about the ideas expressed in this essay to be published on this website.
This Report marks the culmination of the Center on the Legal Profession’s Corporate Purchasing Project—more than four years of scholarly research dedicated to examination of the ways in which S&P 500 legal departments hire and manage outside counsel, drawing from six academic papers. How are relationships between clients and service providers in the corporate legal market evolving, and why? Answering this critically important question requires both the availability of unbiased quantitative information about how large corporations make law firm hiring and assessment decisions and a robust qualitative and theoretical framework to evaluate broader variations and trends. This novel empirical data is drawn from surveys and interviews of 166 chief legal officers (“CLOs”) of S&P 500 companies—one-third of all such large publicly traded companies.
“Implementing Smart Collaboration” Paper Series
This white paper series lays out a research-based, practical approach for law firms to turn their collaboration strategy into a living, breathing part of daily life. Given most firms’ culture of high autonomy and decentralization, leaders need to drive it both from the top-down and bottom-up. Implementing Smart Collaboration requires a clear-eyed view of the current state of collaboration, and then targeted approaches to strategy implementation.
Download Part I – Building the Case for Change
Download Part 2 – Optimizing Individuals’ and Leaders’ Collaborative Behaviors
Download Part 3 – Identifying and Prioritizing Client Opportunities
Download The Power of Collaboration for In-House Lawyers, CLP Distinguished Research Fellow Heidi Gardner, PhD
Redefining Leadership in the Age of the SDGs Accelerating and Scaling Up Delivery Through Innovation and Inclusion
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