In his final report to the board of trustees in 1916 Dean Martin P. Burks recommended that the Washington and Lee School of Law experiment with the Harvard case method of instruction. He further suggested that the best way of doing this would be to employ a Harvard Law School graduate. That same year, following the resignation of Professor Schermerhorn, E. Merrick Dodd, who held both A.B. and LL.B. degrees from Harvard, was appointed an associate professor.

Dodd was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1888. After receiving his undergraduate (1910) and law (1913) degrees from Harvard, he practiced law in Boston until joining the W&L faculty. In his one year at W&L he taught Corporations, Corporate Finance, Bailments and Carriers, Insurance, International Law, and Municipal Corporations using only casebooks. Dodd resigned at the end of the academic year to join the World War I effort working with the War Industries Board.

Dodd resumed the practice of law in Boston after the war. In 1922 he returned to the teaching of law and remained in that career until his death. He was successively on the law faculties of the University of Nebraska, the University of Chicago, and, after 1928, Harvard University. He wrote numerous and highly regarded law review articles on corporations and corporate finance. Dodd and his wife died in an automobile accident in 1951.