Law school students say that they are happier, that their class experience is better and that they feel more a part of a community as the result of a broad-based restructuring of the school’s first-year program.

The increased student satisfaction represents a marked contrast from the not-so-distant past. In 1999 an outside consultant reported widespread dissatisfaction with Harvard Law School (HLS), particularly students’ experience during their first year at the school.

The McKinsey & Co. survey—sponsored by HLS as part of its long-range planning—highlighted large class sizes and poor faculty-student interaction as major sources of student complaint.

Recommendations for remedying the problems were spelled out in the school’s Strategic Plan that emerged from the planning exercise.

This fall, HLS took the first major steps towards implementing the plan, making changes to the school’s first-year program.

First-year sections—the groups in which students take all their introductory classes—were cut from 140 students to 80.

The smaller sections were envisioned as “law colleges” with faculty and resources assigned to each.

And curricular changes were introduced to combat common complaints about particular classes and lack of feedback on written work.

Faculty say that the success of the changes exceeded their expectations.

Students say that on the whole, their first-year experience is tangibly better than that of their predecessors.

Cutting Classes

According to professors, the most radical of this fall’s changes was the slashing of introductory class size brought about by the expansion—from four to seven—of the number of first-year sections.

Faculty say they hoped through the change to counter the feeling that the first-year program was impersonal, and to some intimidating.

According to Story Professor of Law Daniel J. Meltzer ’72, faculty hoped that reducing the class size would allow students to know their classmates and professors better. Hopefully, this would both improve students’ comfort level and their educational experience.

Maya P. Alperowicz, a first-year student who serves as a representative on the Law School Council, says that the big cuts in the section size did address many of previous first-years’ concerns.