David B. Wilkins is IIT Chicago-Kent’s Order of the Coif Distinguished Visitor
Harvard Law professor David B. Wilkins, recently named Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Order of the Coif Distinguished Visitor for 2008, will deliver the 2008 Order of the Coif Lecture – “From Agents to Partners: Towards a New Model of the Corporate Attorney-Client Relationship” – at 3 pm. October 15 in the Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Courtroom, Chicago-Kent College of Law, 565 West Adams Street (between Clinton and Jefferson streets) in Chicago. The lecture is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested. A reception will follow the lecture.
David B. Wilkins is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and the director of both the Program on the Legal Profession and the Program on Lawyers and the Professional Services Industry at Harvard Law School. Professor Wilkins is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a faculty associate of the Harvard University Center in Ethics and the Professions.
A Chicago native, Professor Wilkins is a graduate of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. His father, attorney Julian Wilkins, headed Wilkins, Wilkins & Wilkins, one of the city’s most prominent law firms, until his death in 1984.
A member of the Harvard Law School faculty since 1986, Professor Wilkins has written extensively on the legal profession, with an emphasis on the experiences of African-American lawyers in corporate law firms. He is the author of The Black Bar: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and the Future of Race and the American Legal Profession (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), Problems in Professional Responsibility for a Changing Profession (Carolina Press 4th ed. 2002) (along with Andrew Kaufman), and more than 40 articles on legal ethics, law firms, and the legal profession in books, law reviews, and the legal and popular press.
Currently, Professor Wilkins is working on a project titled, “After the JD,” a nationwide longitudinal study of lawyers' careers, and an empirical investigation into how corporations purchase legal services.
A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Professor Wilkins served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall of the Supreme Court and Judge Wilfred Feinberg of the United States Court of Appeals. Prior to joining Harvard's faculty, Professor Wilkins was an associate at the law firm of Nussbaum Owen & Webster in Washington, D.C.
IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law is the law school of Illinois Institute of Technology, a private, Ph.D.-granting institution with programs in engineering, psychology, architecture, business, design and law. The Order of the Coif is a national legal honor society that recognizes superior scholarship and promotes the ethical standards of the legal profession. IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law was unanimously elected to membership in the Order of the Coif in 1989. The law school faculty selects members from the top 10 percent of each graduating class. Professor Howard C. Eglit is president of the IIT Chicago-Kent chapter.
For more information, or to R.S.V. P for the lecture, please contact Insa Blanke at (312) 906-5003 or iblanke@kentlaw.edu.
Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting university with more than 7,300 students in engineering, sciences, architecture, psychology, design, humanities, business and law. IIT's interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum is designed to advance knowledge through research and scholarship, to cultivate invention improving the human condition, and to prepare students from throughout the world for a life of professional achievement, service to society, and individual fulfillment. Visit www.iit.edu.
