The changes came after surveys reported persisting complaints that the 1L experience was cold and isolating.

Many of the strategic plan’s initiatives are contingent on new funds from the upcoming capital campaign, but observers both at Harvard and beyond are already calling the changes a major success.

“These are real changes that have happened,” said Dean of the J.D. Program Todd D. Rakoff ’67.

“My prediction is that the reduction in class size is going to be extremely important,” said Dean of Columbia Law School David W. Leebron.

Going Forward

Colleagues praised Clark’s talents as a leader and said they enjoyed working with him over the last 13 years.

“He’s an absolutely straightforward person...never duplicitous,” Rakoff said. “You always knew where you stood with him.”

“He’s been a wise and prudent dean,” said former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy R. Knowles. “We nearly always agreed on what was ultimately important for Harvard as a University.”

In a statement, University President Lawrence H. Summers thanked the longest serving of the current deans, calling Clark “a valued counselor and a trusted friend.”

Summers said he would be appointing a faculty committee to advise him in the search for Clark’s successor. All of the deans in recent memory have come from within HLS—a tradition which professors said they hoped would continue.

According to Dershowitz, Fried and others, no individual issues stand out for the next dean as they did at the beginning of Clark’s tenure.

The new dean will devote significant time early on to the forthcoming capital campaign, and will also be responsible for carrying out the strategic plan’s initiatives.

While the faculty is no longer divided along ideological lines, questions about relationships with the practice of law, internationalization and the rigor of HLS’ curriculum remain.

Recent flare-ups—primarily over military recruiting on campus and calls for a speech code—are, according to Dean of Yale Law School Tony Kronman, the current incarnation of what are perennial issues.

And according to Fried, the next dean is likely going to lie closer to the faculty’s overall sentiment when it comes to the key issue of University expansion in Allston.