Scott Westfahl

Scott Westfahl is a professor of practice and director of executive education at Harvard Law School, where he teaches leadership, design thinking and innovation, and teams and networks in the J.D. curriculum. He leads Harvard Law School Executive Education, which delivers intensive, business-school–style leadership programs for law firm, in-house, and government lawyers from around the world.

Westfahl also works with Harvard faculty to design and teach custom programs for law firms, legal departments, and public-sector organizations. His teaching and writing focus on leadership and teams, innovation and design thinking, professional development, diversity and inclusion, and talent-driven strategy and organizational alignment.

He serves as a strategic adviser to the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity and is a founding and advisory board member of The Purple Campaign to prevent workplace harassment.

Before joining Harvard Law School, Westfahl was director of professional development at Goodwin Procter LLP from 2004 to 2013, overseeing lawyer and staff development firmwide. In 2008, he was named one of Law Firm Inc.’s “Innovators of the Year” for creating iStaff, a lawyer assignment system linking work opportunities to professional development. Earlier in his career, he led professional development for McKinsey & Co.’s Washington office and practiced business and regulatory law at Foley & Lardner in Washington, D.C.

Westfahl is the author of "You Get What You Measure: Lawyer Development Frameworks and Effective Performance Evaluations" and co-author of “The Leadership Imperative: A Collaborative Approach to Professional Development in the Global Age of More for Less,” published in the Stanford Law Review.