SUPER MARIO GOES TO HARVARD
It is not often that one hears about a renowned law professor playing Super Mario video games. And it really isn’t often that something like that prompts a change in coursework at Harvard Law School.
It turns out Super Mario was the impetus, though, for CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion, a new class on Harvard’s schedule this fall.
Professor Charles Nesson, the man famously referred to as Billion Dollar Charlie in the national bestselling book “A Civil Action,” said his first encounter with Super Mario gave him the idea for the course.
“I thought having a character you can control on a computer screen to teach others how to solve puzzles would be a great tool for teachers,” Nesson said.
Held in both the real Harvard Law School and the virtual world of Second Life, an online community where players can create digital alter egos and interact, the course teaches students how to use virtual universes like that, plus Web sites, blogs and wikis, to make persuasive arguments.
“Instead of speaking just within a courtroom, lawyers now have the opportunity and the responsibility to bring advocacy in the new integrated media,” Nesson, founder of the law school’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said from his office at Harvard. “I believe this is the future we are moving into, and the integrated information network is the rhetorical environment of the future.
“Learning how to think in that environment, express oneself in that environment, and understand that environment will be the key to effective self-expression in the future,” he added.
The program is open to second- and third-year law students, plus those from the university’s extension program.
Students in the Harvard extension school and the public can also participate through Second Life, where they can create their own avatars (computer-graphic characters), join in virtual discussions, watch streaming videos of Nesson’s classroom lectures and respond to the instructors’ blogs.
“There’s definitely a learning curve in getting used to the new environment,” Nesson said. “You’re moving in a strange land and typing instead of talking.”
Nesson’s digital persona � buffed, significantly younger and with gorgeous, thick, blond hair � does not appear to be struggling at all in his new environment. Both the real professor and his avatar appear in a video promoting the class on YouTube.com.
� Xenia P. Kobylarz
BIG FIRM GOES TO HARVARD, TOO
At Harvard Business School students are analyzing the historically Quaker law firm Duane Morris to see just how a rapidly growing firm can maintain a distinct culture.
“We have never had a vote in our firm, and arrive at decisions to this day by what we call our Quaker consensus,” said firm Chairman Sheldon Bonovitz.
That philosophy is expected to be part of a case study based on Duane Morris’ experience that will be taught at Harvard this fall.
The business school has also been interested in analyzing how the firm has hung on to its culture in light of its recent growth, Bonovitz said.
The firm is one of the fastest growing in the country, doubling its size in the past five years to about 600 attorneys. In January, Duane Morris merged with the former San Francisco-based Hancock Rothert & Bunshoft, adding upward of 60 attorneys in San Francisco plus offices in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Lake Tahoe � and further challenging its approach to integration.
To gather information on the firm’s approach, the school interviewed partners about the firm’s culture and integration efforts.
“What was most impressive was our cultural entrepreneurism and our view of the firm as an institution, not an amalgamation of small offices,” Bonovitz explained.
Harvard has also published case studies on law firms such as Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in 1995 and Hale and Dorr in 2005.
� Kellie Schmitt
