Officials at Harvard Law School (HLS) formally launched a historic $400 million fundraising campaign earlier this month, intending to address issues ranging from student space and facilities to underserved areas of expertise in the faculty.

“Setting the Standard: The Harvard Law School Campaign,” which is the largest fund drive the school has ever conducted, has already raised more than $170 million in a low-profile “quiet phase” that lasted two years.

Administrators largely credited the new campaign’s early success to the comprehensive strategic plan which outgoing HLS Dean Robert C. Clark and law school faculty worked on as early as 1998, and which has been widely promoted to potential donors.

“A lot of donors are relieved to know there is a plan here and we’re not just raising money for the sake of raising money,” said Michael A. Armini, a spokesperson for the school. “This is the way it should be done.”

The plan, which fills 76 single-spaced pages, breaks down the desired $400 million into specific needs—not all of which are clearly related to each other.

“This plan is so comprehensive that there’s nothing that’s not covered,” he said.

But incoming HLS Dean Elena Kagan stressed the plan’s attention to improving student life at the law school as an overarching theme.

“Altogether enhancing the student experience is one of our prime objects, done in physical ways, academic ways and social ways,” she said.

This broad objective includes $100 million to build new classrooms, dormitories, gyms and student spaces—accomodations for which HLS students have long clamored.

But plans for new construction projects are complicated by the Law School’s potential move across the Charles River to Allston, which is still being debated in the upper reaches of Harvard’s administration.

“That’s the one area that’s difficult to predict,” Armini said.

But neither he nor Kagan thought the Allston question would pose a serious obstacle to securing donors for new buildings.

“We hope that we can raise funds regardless by talking about what the buildings will be for, what purposes we want to achieve,” Kagan said. “As we have more knowledge about the Allston decision, it will enable us to put more specifics on what we’re telling people about the new facilities.”

And despite this murkiness about the Law School’s long-term building plans, Armini said there is plenty to be done with HLS’ physical facilities in the nearer future.

“Whether we’re in Cambridge or Allston, the current campus is in need of major improvements,” he said.