When she graduated from Harvard College in 2000, Katerina Linos had ambitious academic plans: she knew she wanted to pursue a doctorate in government and a concurrent degree from Harvard Law School (HLS).

But at the time, Linos was something of an oddity at Harvard: “Many faculty were ambivalent—or simply new to the possibilities of combining these degrees,” she says.

And she met stiff resistance when—as a first-year law student—she tried to enroll in the third semester of a Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) government Ph.D. seminar. “I had to make my case to two deans before the registrar agreed to do this,” Linos says.

For years, a small handful of students have earned law degrees and doctorates from Harvard, but without any formal arrangement or a reduction in total courseload.

But as scholars with interdisciplinary training gain more prominence in the legal world, the University is set to launch a new joint program that could let Ph.D. candidates such as Linos count a full semester of Ph.D. coursework toward their Law School graduation requirement—in the process saving nearly $16,000 on Law School tuition.

When the program begins in September, Linos will be among the first to take advantage of the opportunity.

“Increasingly, the most important work in legal academia is being done by scholars with research training as well as law training,” University President Lawrence H. Summers said in an interview earlier this month.

And after years of planning, HLS has finally formalized joint degree arrangements with the economics and government departments, while also laying the groundwork for an innovative cooperative effort that will allow law students to graduate with a doctorate in health policy.

Progress between the Law School and several other FAS departments is moving at a slightly slower pace, according to Rise Shepsle, who is the graduate student affairs officer at FAS. “The history department has expressed strong interest and will complete the process for participation in the near future,” she wrote in an e-mail.

Law School Dean Elena Kagan said last week that talks with the philosophy department “are a little behind,” but she added that “we are very confident that there will be a program with the philosophy department of that kind.”

Meanwhile, Kagan said that the Law School is taking preliminary steps toward establishing a joint-degree program with Harvard’s Graduate School of Design—and perhaps with MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning as well. But she said that the process is “still in the talking stages,” and she doesn’t expect the schools to finalize arrangements by next year—“unless we’re superhuman.”

The joint degree program between the Law School and FAS has been in the works since even before Kagan became dean of the school two years ago. “I have been the lucky recipient of a lot of planning that was done under” former HLS Dean Robert C. Clark, Kagan said.

While Clark holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, Kagan—like the vast majority of Law School professors—does not have a doctorate. Of the Law School’s 81 senior faculty, assistant and adjunct professors, 13 have Ph.D.s and one has a medical doctorate, according to the school’s website.

Kagan emphasized that “a Ph.D. is in no sense a prerequisite for us. And I don’t think it should be.” But she added that “there’s no doubt that law schools have been strengthened by having people on our faculties who have deep knowledge of another discipline.”

Specifically, Kagan said that scholars with J.D.s as well as Ph.D.s had sparked the growth of the law and economics discipline, which examines how rules affect behavior and assesses laws in terms of their economic efficiency.