By: Todd David Peterson, Professor of Law and Carville Dickinson Benson Research Professor, The George Washington University Law School

This blog provides an overview of the George Washington University Law School (GW Law) Inns of Court and Foundations of Practice programs, which form the voluntary half of our 1L professional identity curriculum.[1]  First, I will provide some history on the programs, and then I will briefly describe the linked PDF[2] of the materials, which we provided to our Inn advisors this year.  The Inn advisors’ material contains everything you might need to know about the program in general and how professional identity formation (PIF) is infused into the program.

The Inns of Court program, recipient of the 2018 E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award presented by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Professionalism, began in 2012 with five day-section Inns and one evening section Inn.  In 2023 we added an Inn for LL.M students (which will not be covered in this post), and this year we added a sixth day-section Inn to reduce the size of the largest Inns.  Each Inn corresponds to a teaching section, so the members of an Inn will have all their 1L classes with the others in their Inn.  Each Inn has a set of advisors from virtually every part of the law school, including doctrinal faculty, Fundamentals of Lawyering faculty, clinical faculty, and representatives from the Dean of Students office, the Career Development Office, and the library.  In addition, each Inn has 5-6 upper-level student advisors.  The Inns meet once a week with all the advisors in attendance and participating as coaches in the interactive parts of the program.

The Foundations of Practice program began in 2016 to encourage participation in the Inns programs and other activities that are related to PIF and the development of important legal skills.  This program provides a list of activities that are important to students’ professional development.   Students who complete the Foundations requirements by the end of their 1L year receive the Dean’s Professional Development Award. Although this program is voluntary, at this point, a little over half of the 1L class typically earns the Dean’s Award.

We provide the materials in the PDF to all of our Inn advisors to prepare them to participate in the Inns program and assist our students with the weekly Inns sessions.  Here are the individual components of the PDF:

(1) The first document is a two-page description of the Inns of Court program, which goes into a little more detail than my description above.

(2) The second document is a brief description of the learning objectives we have for the students who participate in the Inns program.  This goes to all 1L students in addition to the Inn advisors.

(3) The third document is a description of the seals for each Inn of Court.  GW Law is a very large law school, with over 500 students in the 1L class.  The Inns program is designed, in part, to give them a smaller community within the law school.  We designed the Inn seals to further that sense of identity and connection to their Inn’s community.  We build on that by giving the students tee shirts, tote bags and other items with their Inn’s seal on them.  Our students show a surprisingly strong connection to their Inn’s namesake and their Inn identity.

(4) The fourth document is a letter from the Dean that goes out to all 1L students at the beginning of the school year.  In addition to informing the students about the Dean’s Award and encouraging them to participate, the letter also sets forth the specific requirements for the Dean’s Award.  Students then log their completion of the program elements in an online app called FoundationsTrax, which also gives them a dashboard that shows what they have completed and what remains to be done to receive the Dean’s Award.

(5) The fifth document is a chart listing all our Inn advisors for this school year, along with their institutional role.  Our goal, as noted above, is for each Inn to have advisors from all parts of the law school.

(6) The sixth document is a memorandum from me to all Inn advisors, which explains the concepts that form the core of the Inns program — professional identity formation and self-direction — and offers tips on how Inn advisors can support students with respect to these concepts.  The attachments to the memo include Neil Hamilton’s (Co-Director of the Holloran Center at the University of St. Thomas School of Law) chart of the four stages of self-directed learning and a list of the questions that form our online self-directedness assessment, which students can use to determine how far along the development curve they are.

(7) The seventh document is a memorandum we provide to our upper-level student Inn advisors on how to be meaningful contributors to the Inns program.  This document includes ideas about how to contribute to the individual sessions we have during the fall semester.

(8) The eighth document is a brief description of our fall Inns of Court sessions.  At some point, I will do additional blog posts that go into these sessions in more detail.

(9) The ninth document is a memo for Inn advisors drafted by the former Director of the Fundamentals of Lawyering program about how to lead small group discussions.

(10) The tenth and final document is a description of the Inns Professional Development Advisory Council, which is made up of professional development experts at law firms, the government and public interest groups.  The composition of the Council has changed over time as the members cycle on and off.  This group advises the Inns leadership on how we can improve the Inns program and what new session topics would benefit our students.  The members also lead some of the programs during the year.

If you have any questions or comments about our Inns program or this post, then please feel free to contact me at tpeter@law.gwu.edu.

[1] The other half of our 1L professional identity formation curriculum is a mandatory 1L course titled Fundamentals of Lawyering.  This course was created in 2019 by adding a credit to each semester of the 1L legal research and writing class.  The additional credit hours were used to focus on professional identity formation and create a client-centered environment in which to teach research and writing skills.
[2] Please note that you must click once on the link and then on the thumbnail to open the full PDF.