The Center has several major research and curricular initiatives underway. The Corporate Purchasing project explores the ways in which legal departments assess, purchase, and manage outside legal services. This research seeks to develop fair and unbiased information about how large corporations make these important decisions in order to help general counsel learn from one another and to educate law students and legal professionals about these issues.

   After the JD is a longitudinal study that tracks the professional development of more than 4,500 lawyers during the first ten years after law school. In collaboration with other organizations, such as the American Bar Foundation, Center researchers seek to understand how legal careers are launched, the environmental and skill-related factors that help lawyers succeed, and the ways in which characteristics such as race, ethnicity and gender affect a lawyer's professional experiences.

   Through interviews with law students, venture capitalists, lawyers at leading firms, and corporate counsel in the United States and abroad, the Center's research on the off-shoring of legal services seeks to understand the types of legal work that are sent abroad, the areas of law that have the most off-shoring potential, the regulatory and political barriers to off-shoring, and the supply of expertise and talent in the overseas marketplace.

   The Center has developed and launched several important curricular innovations for law students, including a lecture for all first-year law students at Harvard Law School on career decision-making; a new course taught by Center faculty on professional service firms; and a pilot funding program to encourage and facilitate empirical student research on the legal profession.

   The Center seeks to build strong bridges between the academic realm and the community of practicing lawyers and other professional service providers through its Executive Education programs. In May 2007, the Center offered Leadership in Law Firms, the first-ever course taught exclusively for managing partners and other law firm leaders. The program brought 43 high-level leaders from some of the world's largest and most prestigious law firms to Harvard Law School for five intensive days of substantive discussion, case analysis, and management training. The course was a resounding success and will be offered again in May 2008 and October 2008. Center faculty are in the process of designing the course Leadership in Corporate Counsel Offices, the Center's inaugural executive education offering for in-house lawyers.