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Individual Course

Financial Analysis and Valuation for Lawyers

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Course Length

6 weeks

3–4 hours a week

Featuring faculty from:

Harvard Law School LogoHarvard Law School

Certificate Price:

$ 1,600

Enroll by Aug 6, 2026

Enroll Now

Certificate Price:

$ 1,600

Enroll by Aug 6, 2026

Enroll Now

Taught by Harvard Law School faculty, this Harvard Online course helps attorneys navigate financial situations to increase profitability and minimize risk.

Google pays $2 billion for Fitbit, which has yet to turn a profit. How did Google come up with that price? Bayer agrees to pay more than $10 billion to settle claims that its weedkiller, Roundup, caused cancer. Why not $15 billion or $5 billion?

Lawyers negotiate deals and manage lawsuits involving billions of dollars each year. To do that, you need more than legal expertise. You need a fundamental understanding of the finances behind a deal or dispute, including how to read and analyze financial statements or use financial concepts to value a business, patent, or marital estate. You need more than law knowledge to advise a client on any significant transaction—and to help a client even assess whether it's best to pursue a claim or to settle.

Successful attorneys cannot rely solely on CFOs, accounting teams, or outside experts. You need to independently understand the financial opportunities your client faces and discuss them using the language of accounting. Through examples of valuations, disputes, and presentations from real-world practitioners, this online law certificate program, Financial Analysis and Valuation for Lawyers, will teach you how to interpret and use financial data, make a business case for a deal or lawsuit, and understand when and how experts can support—or undermine—your work.

Self-Guided

Harvard Online

Industries:

  • Legal Services
  • Financial Services
  • Real Estate
  • Consulting
  • Omran D.
  • Adam G.
  • Astrid C.

Global Learning Community

  • Learn from real case studies
  • Do it on your own time
  • Earn a Certificate of Course Completion
  • Be part of the Harvard Community
Data Science for Business values

Syllabus

Financial Analysis and Valuation for Lawyers is designed to help you navigate your organization or client’s financial goals while increasing profitability and minimizing risks. Through examples of business valuations and presentations from real-world practitioners, you’ll learn how to interpret financial data, make a business case, and know what types of experts can help support your argument. Learning requirements: There are no prerequisites to enrolling in this course. In order to earn a Certificate of Course Completion from Harvard Online, participants must thoughtfully complete all 6 modules, including satisfactory completion of the associated quizzes, by stated deadlines.

Download Full Syllabus

Faculty

Industry Experts

Your Instructor

Bala G. Dharan

Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Visiting Professor and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Law School

Bala G. Dharan is the Robert B. and Candice J. Haas Visiting Professor and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Law School, and Visiting Professor of Accounting at MIT Sloan School of Management. He's also a Managing Director at Berkeley Research Group, LLC, where he provides business and litigation services consulting. Dr. Dharan has extensive consulting experience in financial accounting and disclosures issues, finance, valuation, investment analysis, corporate governance, and forensic analysis and investigation.

Your Instructor

John Coates

John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School

John Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School, where he also serves as the Vice Dean for Finance and Strategic Initiatives, and Research Director of the Center on the Legal Profession. Before joining Harvard, he was a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, specializing in financial institutions and M&A. He has testified before Congress and provided consulting services to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Treasury, the New York Stock Exchange, and participants in the financial markets, including hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity funds. For the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Professor Coates served as Acting Director for the Division of Corporation Finance, General Counsel, and Chair of the Investor-as-Owner Subcommittee of the Investor Advisory Committee. He also served as an independent consultant for the SEC in one of the first “Fair Fund” distributions and is currently serving as a DOJ-appointed independent monitor for one of the Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions.

Industry Expert

Ken Feinberg

Attorney

Ken Feinberg is an attorney and one of the nation's leading experts in mediation and alternative dispute resolution. Learn how to value compensation funds based on his work on high-profile tragedies, including the BP Gulf oil spill, the Virginia Tech and Boston Marathon bombings, and the September 11th Victim Fund.

Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.

Industry Expert

Leo Strine

Of Counsel in the Corporate Department, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz

Leo Strine is Of Counsel in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and prior to joining the firm was also the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. Learn how lawyers can effectively use financial knowledge in the courtroom to argue a case.

Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.

Industry Expert

Matt Schaefer

Founder of SchaeferLaw, LLC

Matt Schaefer has extensive experience with state and local tax law, appellate practice, and contract law. Learn how experts can help you build a case with compelling estimates for monetary damages.

Thanks to this course which helped me understand business and finance from the scope of a lawyer. Now I feel more confident at reading and analysing numbers that regularly come up in corporate transactions.

Omran D.

Financial Analysis and Valuation for Lawyers Learner

Amazing experience, highly recommended for all lawyers including transactional and in-house counsel like myself, and litigators as well, to further develop a proper focus on increasing profitability while minimizing risks.

Adam G.

Chief Strategy Officer & General Counsel

Through the Harvard Online community of learners, I have met and networked with people from all over the world and have learned so much from them.

Astrid C.

When choosing between the many available options for online learning, I chose the Harvard Online community because of the wealth of diversity between students and the outstanding faculty teaching the courses.

Robert D.

I work in the Financial Services space. Part of my job is to review and comment on research that the Research team are about to put out. I also engage other teams whose work is tied to valuation practices. It became a necessity that I understand the details of what they do, and the course truly helped with this.

Uche N. O.

Legal/Compliance/Risk Officer

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Past Participant Discounts

Learners who have enrolled in at least one qualifying Harvard Online program can receive a 30% discount, automatically applied to the Program Fee upon time of payment.

Learners who have earned a verified certificate for a HarvardX course hosted on the edX platform are eligible to receive a 30% discount using a discount code. Please check your email for a code or contact us.

Nonprofit, Government, Military, and Education Discounts

Eligibility is determined by a prospective learner’s email address, ending in .org, .gov, .mil, or .edu. Interested learners can apply below for the discount and, if eligible, will receive a promo code to enter when completing payment information to enroll in a Harvard Online program.

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FAQs

We offer 30% discounts to past participants of select Harvard Online courses. We also offer discounts on select courses to learners who work in nonprofits, government, military, or education, or are U.S. veterans. You can find more information about current discounts and eligibility on our course policies and discounts page.

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Once you've earned your Certificate of Course Completion, list it on your resume along with the date of completion:

Harvard Online

Certificate in Financial Analysis and Valuation for Lawyers

[Cohort Start Month and Year]

List your certificate on your LinkedIn profile under "Education" as follows:

School: Harvard Online

Dates Attended: [The year you participated in the program]

Degree: Other; Certificate in Financial Analysis and Valuation for Lawyers

Field of Study: Leave blank

Grade: Complete

Activities and Societies: Leave blank

For the program description on LinkedIn, please use the following:

Financial Analysis and Valuation for Lawyers is an online course designed to help you navigate your organization or client’s financial goals while increasing profitability and minimizing risks. Through examples of business valuations and presentations from real-world practitioners, this course helps legal professionals interpret financial data, make a business case, and know what types of experts can help support your argument.

You are expected to complete all coursework in a thoughtful and timely way. This includes completing the modules and fully answering the questions in each module between the course start and end dates so that the cohort can move through the course at a similar pace and benefit from social learning opportunities. ⁠In addition to completing modules and assignments, you are expected to provide feedback on other learners’ reflections and contribute to discussions on the platform.

⁠You can set your own daily or weekly routine and adjust it as needed, but to receive your certificate you must complete all modules and assignments by the stated course end date. Learners who do not complete the course requirements will not receive a certificate and will not be eligible to retake the course. No letter grades are assigned for this course; your participation is evaluated on a complete or incomplete basis.

For detailed information about technology and bandwidth requirements, please see our full Harvard Online FAQs.

There is no application required for this course. You can enroll directly through Harvard Online if you are at least 18 years old, proficient in English, and committed to learning and engaging with fellow participants throughout the program.

A finance or accounting background is not necessary, and you do not need to be a practicing lawyer to benefit from the course. Most of the material does not require legal training, though some examples use legal settings to motivate or situate financial concepts. The course is particularly well‑suited for lawyers and other legal professionals, as well as professionals who work with legal and financial information and want to understand financial statements and valuation more deeply.

Upon successful completion of this program, you will receive a digital Certificate of Course Completion from Harvard Online. Our team reviews all participant coursework after the final deadline in your course, and, once eligibility is confirmed, your Certified Electronic Credential will be delivered to your email address.

You will have access to the materials in every prior module as you progress through the program. Access to course materials and the course platform ends 60 days after the final deadline in the program.

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