Accelerated Leadership Program

Why ALP?

The Accelerated Leadership Program is an intensive, four-day program designed to advance the development of partners across four key dimensions of leadership: client, practice, people & team, and personal leadership.

The program offers participants perspective, concepts, tools, and skills to help them be successful as emerging leaders in their law firms. The program aims to prepare you to:

• be able to identify and apply personal leadership strategies to better balance your responsibilities as an emerging leader with elevated responsibility within your firm.
• build team leadership skills required for your evolving leadership role, learning to influence and motivate your team more effectively.
• be a better client leader by effectively negotiating with, collaborating with, and managing clients to ensure opportunities for growth and long-term success for your business relationships.

The Learning Model

Case studies, lectures, classroom discussions, hands-on exercises, and small group discussions focused on law firms and other professional service firms will afford participants the opportunity to discuss the determinants of sustained firm success and effective leadership in such organizations.

The sessions will help participants work through possible approaches to the issues that confront partners with leadership responsibilities in law firms. Participants will reflect on, and discuss effective leadership in the face of real life challenges in professional service settings.

Participants in the program will develop a practical understanding of critical business and leadership frameworks and how they can be applied effectively in a challenging market.

Key Concepts:

• Client leadership – How to deepen and broaden client relationships and communicate more effectively with clients about value, pricing and collaboration;
• Practice leadership – How to analyze and develop business unit strategy, build and drive internal collaboration, and develop a keen awareness of the critical levers for building a thriving practice;
• People & Team leadership – How to develop, motivate and manage people and teams more effectively, and understand and apply research-based recommendations for achieving organizational and team buy-in; and
• Personal leadership – How to have more impact as a leader by building self-awareness and a deeper understanding of how to work across differences more effectively.

Who should attend?

The Accelerated Leadership Program is tailored for partners with 12-19 years of professional experience (on average) and who are seeking to advance more successfully to the next level of leadership, including client, practice, team or personal leadership or, preferably, all of the above. Participants in this program should be positioned as a partner in their firm at the time of attendance and should manage or oversee other lawyers and/or professionals in their current role. Those anticipating promotion to partner within their firm should apply after the promotion has been finalized.

Participants in previous cohorts of the programs have included practice leaders, office managing partners, team managers, heads and co-heads of practice groups, partners-in-charge, and firm-wide committee members. Class size is small and we encourage diversity of participants—from different geographies and from different types of law firms.  

Click here to read testimonials from our participants.

Visit the Admissions page for information on the process.

About the Faculty

Our core faculty are members of the Harvard Law School faculty – distinguished academicians, educators, researchers, authors, and practitioners in their respective fields. Representing various disciplines, they are close to practice through relationships with law firm leaders and General Counsel and through personal involvement as consultants for top firms around the world.

Program Teaching Team

Heidi Gardner – Program Chair

Kevin Doolan

Michele DeStefano

Carrie Fletcher

Rebecca Newton

Scott Westfahl

Learn more about the faculty by visiting our Faculty page and using the drop down menu (“Search By Faculty Type”) to select the program of interest.