Nathan Cleveland is the executive assistant to Professor David Wilkins as well as the program and communications coordinator for the Center on the Legal Profession. His responsibilities include managing the Center’s websites, managing the communications strategy for the Center, social media coordination and event planning, design, and marketing. He graduated with a BA in Political Science & Government from Tufts University and a Master’s Degree in Sustainability and Environmental Management from Harvard University. He also serves as the Chair of the Energy & Sustainability Committee for the Town of Stoughton and the Team Lead for the Harvard Law School Green Team.
Before joining the staff at Harvard Law School in 2010 he served as a college advisor through Tufts University’s College Advising Corps program as well as an assistant coach to the Tufts University Men’s Track & Field team.
Derek Davis is the executive director of the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession (CLP). Prior to joining HLS, Derek worked as a business attorney for more than twenty-three years in a legal practice focused on corporate and public policy related matters involving privately held companies, public corporations, and non-profit organizations and institutions of higher education. As executive director of CLP, Derek works collaboratively with a talented team of professionals, research fellows and faculty to examine the structures, norms and dynamics of the global legal profession.
Prior to joining HLS, Derek was a shareholder in the Business/Public Finance Department at Greenberg Traurig LLP in Boston. Derek also practiced at the Boston law firms of Foley Hoag LLP, Goldstein & Manello LLP, Peabody & Arnold LLP, and Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP. His legal experience covers a broad spectrum of corporate transactional matters including venture capital financings, private placements of securities, mergers and acquisitions, and public project finance. Derek also has extensive experience representing non-profit and tax-exempt institutions on matters relating to education law, public law and corporate governance.
Derek served as been a member of the Board of Overseers of Boston University from 2004 until 2014, where he served on various committees, including the athletics committee. Derek has served as the chair of the Board of Trustees of Cambridge College, a private, non-profit institution dedicated to providing academically excellent, time-efficient, and cost-effective higher education for a diverse population of working adults.
As an active member of the Greater Boston community Derek has also served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the USS Constitution Museum, the Corporation of the Perkins School for the Blind, the Corporation of Milton Hospital, and the Board of Directors of Greater Boston Legal Services.
Education
JD, Boston University School of Law, 1989
BA in History (magna cum laude), Boston University, 1986
Catherine Flynn is the Assistant Director of Finance and Administration at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession where she manages initiatives in support of the Center. Her responsibilities include business management, coordination of CLP events, and oversight of center communications.
Prior to joining the CLP team, Catherine served as the Director of Finance and Planning at Blue Moose of Boulder in Boulder, CO, where she oversaw financial reporting, administration, and human resources for the company. Before her experience at Blue Moose, Catherine spent four years in Minneapolis, MN with Target Corporation, where she implemented processes to help improve the supply chain while working in merchandise planning for the pet care and entertainment teams.
Catherine holds a B.A. in finance from the University of Notre Dame. During her time at Notre Dame, she served as Senior Class Vice President and worked as the student assistant for the General Counsel.
Bryon Fong is the 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 and ongoing research to 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: 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); 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).
Tim Shea is a research associate at the Center on the Legal Profession, where he writes for the Center’s bi-monthly digital publication, The Practice, and contributes to other academic initiatives. Prior to joining CLP, Tim worked at the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs supporting academic programs for students and scholars to and from the Middle East and North Africa region.
Tim graduated with BAs in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Commonwealth Honors College. During his time in Amherst, Tim worked for the UMass Donahue Institute’s Civic Initiative and was Team Leader for its Pakistani Young Leaders Exchange Program.
Professor Wilkins is the Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, the Lester Kissel Professor of Law, and the 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 faculty associate of the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. Professor Wilkins has written extensively on the legal profession in leading scholarly journals and the popular press and is the co-author (along with his Harvard Law School colleague Andrew Kaufman) of one of the leading casebooks in the field.
His current scholarly projects on the profession include: After the JD, a ten-year nationwide longitudinal study of lawyers’ careers, the Harvard Law School Career Study, a quantitative and qualitative examination of how corporations purchase legal services, an empirical project on the development of “ethical infrastructure” in large law firms based on a series of focus groups with leading practitioners and regulators, an examination of the practice of “offshoring” legal work to India, and over 200 in-depth interviews in connection with a forthcoming Oxford University Press book on the development of the black corporate bar.
Professor Wilkins teaches several courses on lawyers and other related professionals, including the country’s first four credit Legal Profession course, and seminars on Legal Education for the Twenty-First Century: Global Perspectives on Preparing Lawyers for Global Careers, Cause Lawyers, and The Future(s) of the Large Law Firm. He is also one of seven Harvard Law School faculty members who will teach the school’s new required course for all first-year students entitled Problem Solving. Professor Wilkins is a principal faculty member in the Law School’s Executive Education program, where he teaches courses on Leadership in Law Firms and Leadership in Corporate Counsel. He has also served on several Law School and University committees, including the University-wide Task Force on Professional Schools.
Professor Wilkins is a frequent speaker at academic institutions and conferences, bar organizations, and law firms and other professional service organizations in the United States and around the world. He has received numerous honors and awards, including being selected as the 2009 Commencement Speaker at the University of Iowa College of Law and the 2008 Distinguished Scholar by the Order of the Coif. In 2012, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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
Seminar: Legal Education for the Twenty-First Century: Global Perspectives on Preparing Lawyers for Global Careers
See DBW Archives here.