$31.4 million gift from Morgan and Helen Chu powers law school’s record $135 million year
Morgan Chu likes to say that Harvard Law School admitted him by mistake.
He dropped out of high school at 15.
Fifty years after he graduated magna cum laude, he and his wife, Helen, have given the school $31.4 million, the largest gift in its history.
“I am grateful to the law school for mistakenly admitting me, where I had a world-class education—and a lot of fun,” he said.
“Helen and I wanted to say ‘Thank You.'”
Their thank-you will endow six new professorships across the school.
It is the largest single gift in Harvard Law School’s best fundraising year ever.
In its 2026 fiscal year, the school raised $135 million, more than $50 million above either of the two years before it.
Those years brought in roughly $84 million and $73 million.
The figures and the Chu gift were shared with the school’s Dean’s Advisory Council and Leadership Council at a private joint meeting.
The gift is large, but the story behind it explains it better than the number does.
Chu grew up in New York City, the son of Chinese immigrants from the World War II era.
At age 10, his first jobs were mowing lawns and delivering newspapers.
After leaving high school, he went to UCLA and stayed to earn a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a Ph.D. That is also where he met Helen Wong, who was born in Hong Kong and came to Los Angeles as a child.
As students in the late 1960s, they joined the campus movement that led to some of the country’s first ethnic studies programs and helped found UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center.
They have supported the center ever since.
From UCLA, Chu went to Yale for a master’s in law and then to Harvard Law School.
There he edited the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and, by his own account, persuaded the school to grant his J.D. after two years of classes.
He clerked for Judge Charles M. Merrill on the Ninth Circuit and joined the Los Angeles firm Irell & Manella as an associate in 1977. He made partner five years later.
He went on to become one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country.
Chu was lead counsel in the first trial over the validity of a computer software patent.
He won a $120 million verdict for Stac Electronics against Microsoft and a verdict of more than $500 million for City of Hope against Genentech, and he led the team behind a $2.3 billion patent judgment against Intel.
In all, he has won more than $9 billion for clients. Chambers once called him “beyond a doubt the most gifted trial lawyer in the USA.”
He served the maximum two terms as Irell’s co-managing partner, which made him one of the first Asian Americans to lead a major American law firm, and he still chairs its litigation group.
The people who know him tend to talk about his attention more than his trophies.
“I joined the faculty in 2007 and have had many fun opportunities to talk to and interact with loyal alums,” said University Professor Noah Feldman.
“He’s one of the people who it’s always the most fun to see and chat with because he’s so engaged and focused and tuned in.”
Feldman called Chu “incredibly loyal and very impressive” and described the gift as “a very fitting marker of his deep commitment over the years to the law school.”
That commitment goes back decades.
Chu served as president of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, one of the university’s two governing boards.
He and Helen have funded professorships, academic prizes, need-based scholarships, the annual fund, and student programs at the Law School.
More than a decade ago they permanently endowed the dean’s chair, so whoever leads the school holds the title of Morgan and Helen Chu Dean.
Today that is John C.P. Goldberg.
A courtyard on campus also carries their names.
“Great law schools depend on great teachers, scholars, and students,” Goldberg said.
“This remarkable gift will help ensure Harvard Law School continues to attract and support the most talented faculty, whose teaching and scholarship will advance our understanding of the law and guide the next generation of Harvard lawyers and leaders.”
Steven Oliveira, the school’s dean for development and alumni relations, said the couple’s “contributions and partnership have enriched Harvard Law School in countless ways” and that the new chairs invest in “faculty who will prepare students to lead in a rapidly changing world.”
Helen Chu has shaped that partnership in her own way.
She taught elementary school for many years, mostly kindergarten and first grade, and now spends much of her time dancing ballet.
The couple’s giving reaches well beyond Cambridge. They have given $10 million for ethnic studies at UCLA, which awarded Morgan its highest honor, the UCLA Medal.
They gave $1 million to Public Counsel, the large pro bono law firm where he is the longest-serving board member.
And they have long supported City of Hope, the cancer center whose board he chairs.
Chu also spent six years on pro bono work to overturn the conviction of a man on death row and won.
Harvard Law’s momentum began early in the fiscal year.
The school had its fastest start on record, raising at least $61 million in the first six months.
By midyear, its fundraising officials thought $100 million was possible by the end of June, and the year finished well past that.
Some inside the school had worried that Harvard’s long dispute with Washington might make donors hesitant.
Instead, alumni gave more.
Gifts went to the Opportunity Fund, a tuition-free program for students with the greatest financial need, as well as to financial aid, the flexible Annual Fund, professorships, and faculty initiatives.
The Law School’s results match a strong year across the university. Harvard reported a record $684 million in current-use gifts and more than $1.5 billion in total fundraising, enough to turn an operating deficit into a surplus.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences raised about $800 million, well above its target, and the university is now considering new campaigns for scientific research.
Still, the gift that set the record at Harvard Law came from a couple who met as students in Los Angeles, helped open their university to new fields of study, and have spent more than half a century giving back to the schools that shaped them.
Six new professors will now teach under their names.
For Chu, it is a long way from the 15-year-old who left high school, and in his telling, a debt repaid with gratitude and a good deal of fun.