Since the announcement of his appointment in April, Lee has gone on a listening tour across the University, and by the time he formally joins the Corporation, he says he will have spoken to at least 40 deans, administrators, and faculty.

To hear him tell it, Lee will bring an openness to the Corporation which in recent years has been caricatured as a shadowy, secretive body.

Corporation meetings have always been closed to the public, and the minutes of their meetings are not released.

But in recent years under the leadership of James R. Houghton ’58, who will step down as Senior Fellow this June, the Corporation has shifted towards greater transparency and worked more regularly with the Board of Overseers, the relatively powerless second-tier governing body elected by alumni.

“For the first time in a long time, we have somebody who really lives in Boston,” Houghton says. “Having someone close who can come in on fairly short notice is a very good idea.”

A HARVARD MAN

This year, the Law School launched a course on problem solving, taught in part by Lee, who stepped in to offer a dose of practical perspective.

Displaying a photo of the Star Wars character Yoda, he told his students that one of the most important roles for an attorney is that of “wise counsel.”

On the last day of class, one of his students came to class in a Yoda costume, answering questions in a pitch-perfect impersonation of the diminutive green Jedi Master.

A photo of a beaming Lee with his arm around Yoda now hangs on his office wall.

But behind the affable, charismatic teacher is a man of immense discipline.

Lee says he rises early every morning to run four or five miles. Saturdays are for longer runs during which he can think about “the three biggest mistakes I’ve made during the course of the week,” Lee says.

“It started—I think—when I lost a case and I was feeling sorry for myself and I went out and took a run and thought I ought to think about something different,” he recalls.

In his intensity and work ethic—and perhaps most importantly his devotion to his family—Lee seems almost puritan, though Lee by no means wears the black hat and austere look of America’s earliest settlers.

Walking into a surprisingly modest office for the head of a multinational firm, Lee removes a robotic vacuum cleaner—the disc-like type that buzzes around on the floor and bumps into things—to make room for his visitors.