About the author

Hi, I’m Dan Ray. I’m currently a student at Harvard Law School in beautiful Cambridge, Massachusetts. My professional interests lie in the fields of international and information law, with special attention to the areas where they intersect.

I write this blog, Electric Counterpoint, to give my take on the issues that interest me. Sometimes those are law-related; sometimes not. At any rate, I hope you enjoy it. There’s more about the site itself here.

Contact info

If you’d like to get in touch with me, please use email — my address is danray@gmail.com. If it’s an urgent issue (and I’m trusting in your discretion here), you can reach me by phone by clicking here. Of course, this blog’s comment section is always open, and if you’re just looking to network, you’ll find a list of the sites where I maintain profiles in the left column of this page.

A brief bio

I grew up in small-town Michigan for my first eighteen years, before moving to Ann Arbor to attend the University of Michigan. While there, I had the opportunity to study at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, and intern at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. I wrote my senior honors thesis on the creation of informal international agreements. Now, I’m at Harvard Law School, with the intent to focus on international or technology law.

If it can be called a hobby at all, my most consuming one has got to be music. I enjoy playing it (though I’ll admit that calling me a guitar hack is putting it politely) and listening to almost all of it. I listen to so much, in fact, that compiling a top ten list of favorite bands would be more work than I’m feeling up to right now. Fortunately, there’s last.fm for that. I also enjoy reading, travel, typography, and the occasional camping trip.

After law school, I hope to practice in an area of the law that involves at least a little interaction with the world outside the United States. Litigation and IP are also long-time interests. Working abroad for at least some period is a significant career goal.

What’s “Electric Counterpoint?”

I’ve been asked at least a few times about the origins of my site’s title. Primarily, I use it because it’s a pair of words that fit together nicely. But “Electric Counterpoint” itself is a Steve Reich composition. Written for electric guitar and prepared tape recorder in 1987, it’s absolutely beautiful — I’d say it’s my favorite classical work of the twentieth century (”Trois Gymnopédies” having been written a few years too early, and anyway even I recognize that that’s too pretentious a name for a website). Reich’s original recording is on Different Trains, Electric Counterpoint. Incidentally, if you’d like an accessible introduction to minimalism or modern composition, you could do worse than Steve Reich. It worked for me.