But, he added, the prolonged duration of the review comes as no surprise.

"Various people told us it might take close to forever," Nesson said.

While Berkowitz's grievance remains in the hands of the Docket Committee, Nesson has also introduced it to a class of Harvard Law School students he's teaching this semester. The Berkowitz case has been raised in Nesson's advanced civil procedure course, although Nesson said "it has not been a subject of continuing, week-to-week focus."

A potential conflict of interest emerged a few weeks ago when Nesson's co-instructor for the course, attorney Jerome Facher of the Boston firm Hale & Dorr, announced to the class that one of his partners had been approached by the University to handle litigation surrounding the Berkowitz case.

In what Facher calls "an interesting coincidence," he learned "about three weeks ago" that Harvard had asked Joan Lukey of Hale & Dorr to represent the University in the event of a court fight.

While no one from the University was available to confirm the engagement of Lukey, who was not present at this week's meetings, she served as Harvard's counsel in the Clare Dalton tenure case, which ended in a $260,000 settlement in 1992. Dalton, a former HLS professor, sued Harvard in the late 1980s claiming gender discrimination.