Scott Westfahl is a Professor of Practice and the Director of Executive Education at Harvard Law School (HLS). Within the school’s J.D. curriculum, Westfahl focuses his Executive Education teaching and writing on leadership and teams, design thinking and innovation, the motivation and development of professionals, fostering diversity and inclusion in legal organizations, and strategy and organizational alignment from a talent development perspective. He is a strategic advisor to the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity, and a founding and advisory board member of The Purple Campaign to prevent workplace harassment.
Westfahl joined HLS from the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP, where he served from 2004 to 2013 as the firm’s Director of Professional Development. Prior to his work at Goodwin Procter, Westfahl spent 6 years leading professional development for the Washington D.C. office of McKinsey & Company, and spent 10 years practicing business and regulatory law with Foley & Lardner’s Washington D.C. office. In 2008, Westfahl was chosen as one of five “Innovators of the Year” by the magazine Law Firm, Inc. for his development of a cutting-edge lawyer assignment system and database called iStaff, which effectively ties lawyer work assignments to their professional development needs.
Westfahl frequently lectures and comments upon leadership, talent development and design thinking, and innovation within professional services firms. He is the author of the book, You Get What You Measure: Lawyer Development Frameworks and Effective Performance Evaluations. He is also the co-author of The Leadership Imperative: A Collaborative Approach to Professional Development in the Global Age of More for Less, a groundbreaking proposal for a new, collaborative model of lawyer professional development, appearing in the Stanford Law Review.