And as recruiters have dwindled on campus, some students have even had difficulty finding jobs, something previously unheard of at the Law School.

“This is obviously a turbulent time for legal markets across the board from large multinational law firms to public interest jobs, and also government jobs,” Minow said.

As a result a movement has emerged at Harvard to reform the legal services industry at nearly every level—from the way associates are recruited to the way law firms bill and interact with their clients.

For the Law School, that could mean radical changes to the recruiting process, with some proposing a system that would match students and firms by evaluating both of their preferences.

Minow declined to take a position on the reform movement but emphasized the work of a committee headed by Law School Professor David B. Wilkins ’77, which is tasked with considering reform proposals and producing a report on their findings. In conjunction with those conclusions, Minow said, Harvard Law will “take a leadership role in the profession.”

A CONFLICTED HISTORY

In the midst of Harvard Law School’s darkest days, then-Dean Robert C. Clark used to regularly pace the school’s corridors to rally his faculty around controversial decisions, a lobbying effort driven by intense ideological and methodological divides at the School.

For years, the Law School had been known as “Beirut on the Charles,” a moniker referring to the vicious academic infighting that made many liken its acrimonious atmosphere to the brutal civil war in Lebanon.

So after faculty hiring meetings Clark would walk around the school meeting with faculty to build support for and acquiesce to hiring decisions.

“My problem was a faculty at war and hostile alumni,” Clark said.

During the worst periods of tension at the Law School, faculty refused to approve hiring decisions because they feared that allowing the school to hire someone with an opposing methodology or ideology would limit opportunities to hire academics with their own outlook. This log-jam resulted in a shrinking faculty at one point in the school’s history.

Clark began a period of faculty growth but contended with ideological and methodological divides that permeated the school throughout his tenure.

With the rapid expansion of the faculty under Kagan’s tenure some of these barriers began to disappear. As the number of appointments increased, faculty no longer feared that positions would not be available for professors with similar methodologies and ideologies.

“When the opportunity to make appointments is scarce, then members with strong ideological commitments are likely to think that with every appointment we make who doesn’t employ my preferred methodology I’m afraid that it will be at the expense of someone who practices my methodology,” said Professor Richard H. Fallon.

But rapid growth cannot be sustained forever, and with budgetary concerns weighing heavily on administrative decisions, Law School officials have said that the faculty expansion under Kagan has to end.