Read about HLS Beyond in Harvard Law Today

Centered on our law students while inclusive of the broader university community, HLS Beyond will support learners in developing the skills required of today’s leaders – particularly those not otherwise covered in the classroom. As a supplement to HLS’s core professional training, the program will support students through a variety of formats in developing new legal, technological, and life skills like numeracy, public speaking, technological literacy, and project management. They also include new areas of inquiry that might not (yet) warrant their own presence in the formal curriculum, such as primers on how blockchain works (or doesn’t work), or the successful pursuit of FOIA requests.

While Harvard Law School boasts an enormous course catalog, certain essential topics nonetheless go unaddressed in the curriculum because they don’t fit elegantly into conventional course formats. The HLS Library’s HLS Beyond program has been developed to fill this gap, while additionally offering an environment in which people new to teaching can try it out — and receive honest critique.

Structured as a series of modules, discussion groups, lectures, and peer learning and advising, HLS Beyond will consider student needs holistically and practically, with a focus on growth-centered learning and professional skills for today’s leaders. The library’s commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and learning provides the framework and space for exploration, and HLS Beyond will situate library space as a site of continuous learning and growth for HLS and the Harvard community as a whole.

HLS Beyond invites HLS students and other members of the Harvard community to take an interdisciplinary journey through a practical and thought-provoking program to find greater success in their careers and lives. Tackling concepts and practical skills at the forefront of law, technology, and politics, HLS Beyond is a challenge and a provocation to support professionals and academics alike with training, modules, lectures, discussion, and peer advising.