Officials at Harvard Law School (HLS) formally launched a historic $400 million fundraising campaign earlier this month, intending to address issues ranging from student space and facilities to underserved areas of expertise in the faculty.

“Setting the Standard: The Harvard Law School Campaign,” which is the largest fund drive the school has ever conducted, has already raised more than $170 million in a low-profile “quiet phase” that lasted two years.

Administrators largely credited the new campaign’s early success to the comprehensive strategic plan which outgoing HLS Dean Robert C. Clark and law school faculty worked on as early as 1998, and which has been widely promoted to potential donors.

“A lot of donors are relieved to know there is a plan here and we’re not just raising money for the sake of raising money,” said Michael A. Armini, a spokesperson for the school. “This is the way it should be done.”

The plan, which fills 76 single-spaced pages, breaks down the desired $400 million into specific needs—not all of which are clearly related to each other.

“This plan is so comprehensive that there’s nothing that’s not covered,” he said.

But incoming HLS Dean Elena Kagan stressed the plan’s attention to improving student life at the law school as an overarching theme.

“Altogether enhancing the student experience is one of our prime objects, done in physical ways, academic ways and social ways,” she said.

This broad objective includes $100 million to build new classrooms, dormitories, gyms and student spaces—accomodations for which HLS students have long clamored.

But plans for new construction projects are complicated by the Law School’s potential move across the Charles River to Allston, which is still being debated in the upper reaches of Harvard’s administration.

“That’s the one area that’s difficult to predict,” Armini said.

But neither he nor Kagan thought the Allston question would pose a serious obstacle to securing donors for new buildings.

“We hope that we can raise funds regardless by talking about what the buildings will be for, what purposes we want to achieve,” Kagan said. “As we have more knowledge about the Allston decision, it will enable us to put more specifics on what we’re telling people about the new facilities.”

And despite this murkiness about the Law School’s long-term building plans, Armini said there is plenty to be done with HLS’ physical facilities in the nearer future.

“Whether we’re in Cambridge or Allston, the current campus is in need of major improvements,” he said.

The push to improve student life is also a major underpinning of the $75 million which HLS wants in order to hire new professors. By further decreasing the student-faculty ratio, officials said, they hope to make it easier for law students to work closely with their professors.

Some of this goal has already been achieved, Kagan said, in the recent redivision of HLS’ four 140-student sections into seven sections of 80 students each—but she said it has not been entirely paid for yet.

“Rather than four professors, you need seven professors in each course to cover the first-year curriculum,” she said. “The campaign is to fund what we’ve already put in place.”

HLS also seeks money to hire professors in cutting-edge areas currently missing from or underrepresented in its faculty.

One such field, Kagan said, is international law and the issues associated with it.

“There’s a great understanding that legal problems are becoming more global, that legal solutions need to become more global,” she said.

Another area in which HLS hopes to hire new faculty is environmental law, said Kagan.

“For various kinds of reasons it’s been hard to hire in that area, but I think everyone recognizes that we have to keep trying, because we do have a gap there,” she said.

Armini said the Law School’s attention to environmental law is unrelated to a petition which 350 HLS students signed in April, in which they called the school’s program in that area “sub-standard.”

Kagan also mentioned a perceived need to rebuild connections between the professional practice of law and its study within the ivory tower.

“In recent years the links between the legal profession and the legal academy have become strained,” she said. With the new campaign, Kagan said she hopes HLS will be able to strengthen those bonds.

Other specialties for new professors would be determined by the wishes of individual donors, Armini said. But Kagan said most of the money from the campaign is not currently earmarked for professorships in specific academic fields.

“There’s a range of professorships that this money could go for,” she said.

The third major stated goal of the fundraising campaign is to improve HLS’s financial aid program. The Law School hopes to bring in $62 million for this purpose.

In addition to increasing basic financial aid for its students, Kagan said HLS hopes to increase its Low-Income Protection Plan—a debt-forgiveness program for HLS graduates who choose to avoid the more glamorous avenues of employment.

“We want people to think about lower-paying careers in public service even if they’ve had to incur debt,” she said.

The campaign comes as instability in the national economy has shrunk the law school’s endowment to $840 million.

But Armini said the souring market had not played a significant role in the decision to kick off the new campaign.

“It’s important when you launch a campaign not to worry too much about the economy,” he said. “The important part is to have a good plan in place and a mission that people believe in, and usually you can be successful.”

—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.