Mariano Batalla is a former Visiting Scholar at the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. He has over ten years of law firm management experience as a partner at Alta, one of the largest law firms in Central America, where he draws on his business training and expertise to represent large-scale clients on cross-border mergers and acquisitions and in establishing and restructuring business operations in Central America. At CLP and under the umbrella of the GLEE project, he studied the changing nature of corporate law firms in Latin America. Read more about his research on the GLEE project page.
He is an active member of the Law Firm Management Committee of the International Bar Association, with over twenty keynote presentations on law firm management issues in ten different countries.
He is a contributing author of Leadership for Lawyers: Essential Leadership for Lawyers: Essential Leadership Strategies for Law Firm Success (Globe Law and Business) which explores the crucial elements of law firm leadership. He is a Visiting Professor of Service Design and Entrepreneurship at INCAE Business School, Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at University of Costa Rica and a former instructor of innovation and entrepreneurship at Harvard University. In 2016, Mariano was recognized by Costa Rica’s leading financial newspaper El Financiero, as one of 40 under 40 business leaders and is a frequently quoted by major news sources, including La Nación, El Financiero and La República.
He received his law degree summa cum laude from the University of Costa Rica. He undertook his graduate studies in business and professional service firms at Harvard University and the Fletcher School at Tufts University; he also holds a Certificate in Advanced Negotiation from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
Meghan Dawe is a Resident Research Fellow at the Center on the Legal Profession. Her research investigates the reproduction of inequality in the legal profession by examining how gender, race, and class shape the professional opportunities, attainments, and rewards of lawyers in the United States and Canada. She is particularly interested in the role of social capital as a mechanism that both facilitates and constrains lawyers’ careers.
Her published research on the legal profession includes:
Meghan has an MA and PhD in sociology from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the Center, she was a Research Social Scientist at the American Bar Foundation. She was involved with several ABF research projects on the legal profession and co-authored The Making of Lawyer Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession with Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Joyce S. Sterling, David B. Wilkins, and Ethan Michelson (under contract with University of Chicago Press). Meghan is Project Manager for the ABF’s After the JD study of lawyer careers.
Bryon Fong is the executive and research director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. At the Center, he manages the Center’s institutional research activities, including its flagship Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies project, research into innovation in the legal profession, and ongoing work examining lawyer career paths. He is also the managing editor of the Center’s digital magazine, The Practice. Since 2016, he has served as a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School teaching The Legal Profession Seminar with Professor David B. Wilkins.
His publications on the legal profession include: Re-gearing the Corporate Legal Ecosystem in a Re-geared World: Evidence from the Project on Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies, with David B. Wilkins and David M. Trubek (Forthcoming); Report on Operationalizing Innovation: The Emerging Role of Innovation Professionals in Companies and Law Firms, with David B. Wilkins (Forthcoming); Intersectionality and the Careers of Black Women Lawyers, with David B. Wilkins, in Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience (Harvard Business School Press, 2018); The Women and Men of Harvard Law School: Preliminary Results from the HLS Career Study, with David B. Wilkins and Ronit Dinovitzer; Mapping India’s Corporate Law Firms, with David B. Wilkins and Ashish Nanda in The Indian Legal Profession in the Age of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2017); and The Harvard Law School Report on the State of Black Alumni II: 2000-2016 (with David B. Wilkins).
Bryon earned his B.A. from Georgetown University and his MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Katri Nousiainen is a former visiting research fellow at the Center on the Legal Profession (in residence, academic year 2021-2022), and a PhD Candidate in Commercial Law at the Hanken School of Economics. At CLP, she is conducting empirical research on the impact of legal design and ethics in commercial contracts using the lens of law and economics. She is interested in the intersection between technology, law, economics, and legal design. Her prospective work intends to scientifically measure the total impact of legal design, and to find, for example, metrics to assess efficiency and quality in legal products, services, and processes.
Nousiainen gives expert legal lectures on various practice areas of Commercial Law, Legal Design and Law & Technology. She is an invited keynote speaker at conferences and seminars across Europe and LATAM. In addition to her work at CLP, she is also conducting research at the University of Cambridge Law (UK). She holds a European Master in Law and Economics (EMLE) LL.M, a Master Universitario di primo livello, a Master d’Analyse Economique du Droit et des Institutions, and a BA in Law.
Toshanna Santos is the executive assistant to Professor David B. Wilkins and a Center on the Legal Profession team member.
Prior to joining CLP, Toshanna was the executive aide to Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins. She has also taught English Language Arts and Morality at Yap Catholic High School in the Federated States of Micronesia. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and Africana Studies from College of the Holy Cross. She is passionate about restorative justice, empowering young men and women in her community to pursue their personal and professional goals, and traveling.
Dana Walters is Associate Editor of The Practice, the Center on the Legal Profession’s digital magazine. She also assists in Center-wide communications efforts.
Prior to joining CLP, Dana worked for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, where she led communications strategy. She has also worked at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society and the Atlantic Media Company. She holds an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in English and American Literatures from Middlebury College.
Professor David B. Wilkins is the Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, and Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. He is also a Senior Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. Professor Wilkins has written over 80 articles on the legal profession in leading scholarly journals and the popular press, and is the co-author or editor of five books, including one of the leading casebooks in the field.
His current scholarly projects include Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies, The State of Black Alumni at Harvard Law School, Disruptive Innovation in the Market for Legal Services, After the J.D., and the Reemergence of the Big Four Accountancy Networks in the Market for Legal Services. Professor Wilkins teaches several courses on lawyers, including The Legal Profession, and Challenges of a General Counsel. In 2007, he co-founded Harvard Law School’s Executive Education Program, where he teaches in several courses including Leadership in Law Firms and Leadership in Corporate Counsel.
Professor Wilkins has given over 50 endowed lectures at universities around the world and is a frequent speaker at professional conferences and law firm and corporate retreats. He holds honorary degrees from Roger Williams University (2017) and Stockholm University in Sweden (2012), and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Harvard Law School Alumni Award (2016); the Aptissimi Award for Academic Excellence from ESADE UNIVERSITY in Spain (2014); the Distinguished Visiting Mentor Award from Australia National University (2012), the American Bar Foundation Scholar of the Year Award (2010), the J. Clay Smith Award from Howard University School of Law (2009), and the Order of the Coif Distinguished Scholar Award (2008). In 2012, Professor Wilkins was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2014 he was selected as a Corresponding Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Doctors.
Education
AB, Harvard College, 1977
JD, Harvard Law School, 1980
Research and Scholarship
Rethinking the Public-Private Distinction in Legal Ethics: The Case of “Substitute” Attorneys General, 2010 Mich. St. L. Rev. 423 (2010), available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1789124.
PROBLEMS IN PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR A CHANGING PROFESSION, Carolina Academic Press (with Andrew Kaufman).
Preliminary Report, After the JD: Wave II (with Terry Adams, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Robert Nelson, Gabriele Plickert, Joyce Sterling, Gita Wilder, and Rebecca Sandefur).
Team of Rivals? Toward a New Model of the Corporate Attorney/Client Relationship, in CURRENT LEGAL PROBLEMS 2009, Oxford University Press 2009, available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1517342.
Valuing diversity: Some Cautionary Lessons from the American Experience, in MANAGING THE MODERN LAW FIRM: NEW CHALLENGES, NEW PERSPECTIVES, Laura Empson, ed., Oxford University Press (2007).
Why Are There So Few Black Lawyers in Corporate Law Firms?: An Institutional Analysis, 84 Cal. L. Rev. 493 (1996) (with G. Mitu Gulati).
Who Should Regulate Lawyers?, 105 Harv. L. Rev. 801 (1992).
Presentations
20th Anniversary Celebration of the Conseil National des Barreaux of France
December 1, 2012
Paris, France
Watch video of this speech (scroll 2/3 down the page to view Professor Wilkins’ speech)
Hiring Teams, Firms and Lawyers: Evidence of the Evolving Relationship in the Corporate Legal Market
Keynote Address
University of Wisconsin Law School Symposium
November 18-19, 2011
Madison, Wisconsin
Watch video of this speech
Courses
Seminar: Globalization, Lawyers and Emerging Economies
Legal Profession
Problem Solving Workshop
Seminar: Challenges of a General Counsel
See DBW Archives here.
