Halle Hara

Professor Halle Hara is a Senior Lecturer and Externship Director at the Moritz College of Law. Professor Hara is an established innovator in law teaching, bringing new ideas and methods to lawyering skills instruction. Hara successfully revamped a law school academic success program from start to finish, implementing an updated approach to academic success using learning science and educational psychology and focusing on student self-regulation and autonomy. Hara has published several articles about her novel approach in The Learning Curve, a publication of the AALS Section of Academic Support, and has been invited to present her methods at numerous conferences hosted by the Association of Academic Support Professionals (AASE), the New England Consortium of Academic Support Professionals (NECASP), and the Southwest Consortium of Academic Support Professionals (SWCASP).

Professor Hara has continued her innovation at the Moritz College of Law, where she has revamped instruction for the Externship Program. Hara’s continued focus on student self-regulation and autonomy meets students where they are through an online asynchronous curriculum delivered with feedback and individualized coaching to identify and build upon students’ unique professional goals and their individual strengths and weaknesses. Hara’s externship courses cover a wide range of practical topics relevant to the current legal landscape, with a particular interest and focus on professional identity formation.

One creative way Hara reaches busy law students is by maintaining The Law School Playbook, a website, podcast, and YouTube page which provides instruction on academic and lawyering skills. Professor Hara has extensive law school teaching experience at several institutions that includes instruction in the following contexts: Summer Academic Success Program; 1L Orientation; 2L Orientation; 1L Fall Academic Success; 1L Spring Academic Success; 2L Fall Academic Success; Legal Analysis Research and Writing I–III; Appellate Advocacy; Legal Drafting; Judging and the Nature of Justice; MLS Legal Analysis Workshop; Public Sector Externships; Judicial Externships; General Externships; and Independent Studies.

Before teaching, Professor Hara worked as a career and term law clerk in the federal judiciary to four different judges over a collective fifteen years. Hara's work experience also includes large firm general business litigation practice at Jones Day and Thompson Hine LLP, both in Cleveland, Ohio.

Professor Hara's community service includes serving as a long-time mentor to new lawyers through the Ohio Supreme Court Lawyer-to-Lawyer Mentoring Program. She has been honored by the Ohio Supreme Court for her service as a mentor and has served on the Program's Curriculum Subcommittee. Professor Hara is also a Commissioner on the Ohio Supreme Court's Commission on Professionalism, focusing her efforts on the biennial conference named the Student to Lawyer (S2L) Symposium, which engages various stakeholders to explore a topic relevant to law students and practicing lawyers.

Professor Hara is a proud alum of Moritz College of Law, where she served as the Executive Editor of The Ohio State Law Journal and earned many honors and awards. Hara's accomplishments include graduating with Academic Honors and earning The Ohio State Law Journal Past Editor's Award, The Ohio State University Board of Trustees Student Recognition Award, the Law Alumni Special Recognition Award, "Best Oralist" in the Appellate Advocacy Competition, and scoring in the top 5% of all applicants on the July 1998 Ohio Bar Examination.