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Janet Stearns

The Case of the Mortified Toe: Some Reflections on Tom Sawyer, Rescheduling Exams, and Professional Identity

By: Janet Stearns, Dean of Students, University of Miami School of Law

Many life lessons are addressed by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Mark Twain.[1]

Chapter 6 begins with Tom waking up “miserable” on a Monday morning. “Monday mornings always found him so—because it began another week’s slow suffering in school….Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was sick; then he could stay home from school.”  Tom ”canvassed his system” in a search for possible ailments that might keep him home. He finally comes upon his toe and a loose tooth.  Tom starts groaning so much that his brother goes running for his Aunt Polly to report that Tom is “dying.”  When Aunt Polly enters Tom’s room, Tom reports “my sore toe’s mortified.”  After a good laugh, followed by Aunt Polly pulling the loose tooth, Tom is sent off to school for the day.

Fast forward to my teenage years, when I was attending summer camp in New Rochelle, New York.  The camp was focused on arts (which I enjoyed), but we went swimming several times a week (which I hated.)  The only way to get out of swimming was with a parent’s note.  Once I requested such a note from my dad.  My recollection (but the evidence is long gone) is that my dad handwrote out a note to the camp director which went something like this:

Please excuse Janet from swimming today. She has a mortified toe.

The note worked, and I didn’t have to go to swimming, and in retrospect, everyone likely had a good laugh at my expense.  The key point, though, is this: at that moment, swimming was not an essential part of that camp experience or my professional life.  In my childhood, I could relate to Tom Sawyer’s desire to avoid uncomfortable, difficult things.

I reveal this family secret for purposes of explaining some of the mindset, and insight, that I bring to my role as dean of students.  I want to discuss and highlight some of the challenges that we are all facing in response to a wide range of requests around examinations and other interim assessments.  We as law school administrators must bring a professional identity lens to evaluating these requests and consider the lessons that we are teaching with our responses.

Examination Policy

Our Law School Handbook, and our faculty, have delegated to me as dean of students the duty to exercise discretion in evaluating situations that arise during the examination period and deciding when, and how much, exams will be postponed.  Our Handbook references as possible reasons for rescheduling “personal illness requiring the care of a physician, pregnancy or childbirth, death or serious illness in the student’s immediate family or household, or because of religious prohibitions certified by an appropriate religious professional.”[2]  Between December 5 and 19, 2022 out of a student body of 1,300 students, we rescheduled about 170 exams that were delayed for a range of medical or family issues.  Note that these are distinct from testing accommodations granted to students under the ADA for recognized disabilities, and relate instead to injuries, accidents, illnesses, and other short-term situations not covered by the ADA.

Here is some sampling and paraphrasing of situations that I have received during this recent testing period, and some of my approaches.

Please excuse me from testing as I have COVID, mono, flu, pink-eye (and typically note from medical professional)

For a range of medical and particularly contagious diseases, we do not expect students to be on campus for in-class exams.  The protocols on these issues have become only clearer in the aftermath of the pandemic.  If exams are take-home exams, and the student is sufficiently healthy, we will permit remote testing.  We will typically postpone in-class exams until the student is cleared by a medical professional.

Please excuse me from testing as I am in emergency room (for kidney stones, appendicitis, surgery, broken bones).

Students who find themselves in the hospital or emergency room do not need to test until released and healthy enough to do so.  This would cover both in-class and remote exams.  In some cases, depending on the severity of the hospitalization, a student may not be able to test at all during the testing period and then need to make up a course in a subsequent semester.

Please excuse me from testing as my parent/spouse/partner/grandparent or pet has died or is imminently about to die.

I typically work with students in these situations to try to evaluate the best path forward for testing and completing the semester.  This will depend on the ability of the student to compartmentalize and focus on the task at hand, proximity of family to support, and customs around celebrating the life of the deceased love one.  Some will want a few days immediately for bereavement and others will wish to complete testing and then be free to travel.

We are receiving an increasing number of requests relating to pet illnesses. As we know, we have many students with significant emotion around beloved furry family members.  We have tried to show some compassion to students around the death of a pet while recognizing that this is an expansion of the definition of “immediate family or household.” This is also an issue where legal employers may vary as to how much “bereavement” time would be granted for pets as opposed to family members.

Please excuse me from testing as I am going through medication changes that are impacting my sleep or ability to focus on the exam; or I am unable to access my prescribed medications due to market unavailability.

We are aware that we have a significant number of our law students who are prescribed medications for a range of emotional and learning issues including depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorders, and, thus, they take (for example) antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.[3]  In general, these medications require some period of weeks if not longer to adjust to changes in dosage.  In the Fall of 2022, there were significant disruptions in the supply chain for Adderall, a commonly used stimulant to treat ADHD.[4]  It was therefore not surprising that students were coming forward and asking for exam accommodations.

The issues of adding medications, changing medications, or withdrawing from medications are real.  That said, these are issues that are not easily addressed with a short-term exam accommodation, any more than they could be addressed in a workplace with paid days off.  We were counseling students to evaluate their own ability to move forward with testing or to consider dropping classes or postponing the submission of papers where possible.  We are still struggling to evaluate reasonable accommodations for this category of situation.

Please excuse law student from testing as he/she/they are suffering from generalized anxiety and need additional time to prepare.

A significant group of today’s law students are experiencing anxiety.  According to the 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being, 39.8% of law students had a diagnosis of anxiety during their lifetime, 22.5% of whom were diagnosed after starting law school.[5]  This anxiety is real, and it is manifesting in an array of emotional and physical impacts on our students.

And yet, I do not know how we address this pervasive issue of anxiety in the context of a policy to reschedule exams for personal illness.  I have thought long and hard on this and I don’t have a fair way to evaluate how much anxiety triggers an exam postponement, or how many days would be sufficient for the medical situation to resolve.  In my experience, I will distinguish this type of request from that of a student who is suffering from an acute anxiety attack in advance of, or during, an examination.  We typically treat those as medical emergencies and work with the student to evaluate if they will be well enough to return to testing or if they need to be treated for the medical emergency.  But for cases of generalized anxiety, we need to articulate an approach, based on our lens of professional identity preparation, about expectations in our legal community.  And once articulated, we must communicate this clearly to our students throughout their law school experience.

When does a situation merit our throwing a student a compassionate lifeline, and when do we need to clarify that we cannot grant these requests and provide reasons for the life lessons that we are trying to teach?  I welcome thoughts and reactions from our community as we continue to navigate these issues.  You can reach me at jstearns@law.miami.edu.

Janet Stearns is Dean of Students at the University of Miami School of Law and Chair of the ABA COLAP Law School Committee.

[1] MARK TWAIN, THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER 43-45 (Signet Classic Edition, 2002).

[2] Miami Law Student Handbook 2022-2023, https://student.law.miami.edu/policies/student-conduct/handbook/index.html, at page 12.

[3] Jaffe, Organ, and Bender, It’s Okay Not to Be Okay: The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being, 60 University of Louisville Law Review (2022) at 461.

[4] FDA Announces Shortage of Adderall, https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-announces-shortage-adderall (October 12, 2022).

[5] Jaffe, Organ, and Bender, It’s Okay Not to Be Okay: The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being, 60 University of Louisville Law Review (2022), supra note 3 at 464.

February 23, 2023 by
Patrick Longan

Professional Identity, Fast and Slow

By: Pat Longan, William Augustus Bootle Chair in Ethics and Professionalism, Director of the Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism, Mercer University School of Law

At Mercer University School of Law, we use virtue ethics to teach professional identity. We have drawn on the dozens of professionalism codes and creeds adopted by courts and bar associations over the last thirty-five years and distilled from them the virtues that a lawyer needs. Those virtues are excellence, fidelity to the client, fidelity to the law, public spiritedness, civility, and practical wisdom. Our students learn of the roots of this approach in Aristotelian ethics. We are convinced that this is the best approach to professional identity. Indeed, I have written elsewhere that professional identity is virtue ethics by another name.

There is sometimes a problem in getting this message across. Some lawyers and some law students recoil at the mention of “virtue.” To them, it sounds preachy. Then when we utter the word “Aristotle,” their eyes begin to roll at these academics who are revealing how detached they are from the everyday world of lawyering. (You don’t want to know what they say and do if you use the word “Aristotelian.”) With these audiences, we need another way to convey the key insights of virtue ethics for the professional identities of lawyers without using what they will hear as off-putting academic mumbo-jumbo.

My answer is to make an analogy to the Nobel Prize-winning work of Daniel Kahneman (done in collaboration with Amos Tversky, who died before he could share in the Nobel). Professor Kahneman popularized their work in Thinking, Fast and Slow, which was published in 2011 and has sold more than 2.6 million copies.

Kahneman explains two ways in which people make decisions. Some come from “System 1,” which “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.” System 1 engages in “thinking fast.” Other decisions come from “System 2,” which “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it …. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.” System 2 controls “thinking slow.”

For lawyers, the analogy to “thinking fast” is the cultivation of habits and dispositions. Take habits first. Part of a lawyer’s professional identity is excellence. An excellent lawyer shows up on time and meets all deadlines. In the busy life of a practicing attorney, this does not happen because the lawyer sits back and reflects deeply on the need to be punctual for meetings and court appearances. It does not happen because the lawyer takes the time to contemplate each filing deadline and ponder over the importance of meeting it. These parts of excellence emerge when the lawyer cultivates the right habits.

Of course—just between us—much of virtue ethics is about the cultivation of good habits. But habit formation also fits into the more digestible “thinking fast” framework.

As professors, we have enormous power to help our students cultivate the right habits. In our mandatory professional identity course at Mercer, punctuality is rigidly enforced. Students may not enter any class late without advance permission, no matter the reason. When they show up late and miss class, they must explain why and are required to come up with a plan to prevent tardiness in the future. For some, it is simply a matter of setting another alarm. For others, it is starting a long commute much earlier in case of traffic. Regardless of the details, they are developing the habit of punctuality, one of the habits that supports excellence.

We do something similar with the habit of meeting deadlines. The students know that by 8 a.m. every Monday they must complete a writing assignment on Mercer’s learning management system. The assignment closes automatically at 8 a.m. Any students who are late with the assignment must contact me, and I require them to come up with a plan to avoid late submissions in the future. They are cultivating a habit of attentiveness to deadlines, another habit that supports excellence.

In other situations, a lawyer must deal immediately with a problem—they must be ready to “think fast”—and something more than habit is needed. For example, a lawyer may unexpectedly encounter discourtesy or a lack of cooperation from opposing counsel. The lawyer must be prepared to respond appropriately to incivility in the moment. There is no time to reflect on a “Lawyer’s Creed” or an “Aspirational Statement on Professionalism.” The natural tendency (especially for someone like me who grew up with three older brothers) is to return fire. Incivility begets incivility, and the atmosphere quickly becomes toxic. Litigation slows down. It becomes more expensive for the clients and more unpleasant for clients and lawyers alike.

Virtue ethics would say that the lawyer who is the target of the discourtesy should deploy the virtue of civility and break the cycle. How do you prepare students and lawyers to do that when there is no time to think when a fellow lawyer is snide in a deposition, and when these students and lawyers are the ones who roll their eyes at the notion that Aristotle has anything to say about it?

The answer is to introduce the concept of a “disposition,” in the sense of one’s natural inclination to act in a particular way in response to a particular situation. Again, the terminology sometimes can get in the way because lawyers and students think that, by “disposition,” we mean a mood or characteristic attitude, as in “he has a grumpy disposition.” Students understand the concept better if you describe a disposition as a “default setting.” A lawyer whose default setting is not to be surprised or angered at another’s incivility, and who is therefore disposed not to respond in kind to discourtesy, is much more likely to defuse rather than escalate a conflict with an uncivil adversary. There is time before the fact to reflect and decide on what your disposition should be. Having the right disposition then enables the lawyer to do the right thing in the moment when there is no time to ponder. The lawyer is “thinking fast.”

Cultivating such a disposition or default setting in students requires some work. We first have to expose them to the toxin of incivility by having them watch or listen to examples. For many, their natural response to this surprising prospect is fight or flight. With time and effort, we can help them understand the inevitability of encountering these situations, the harm that flows from them, and some strategies for dealing with them. We must “think slow” with them at first. But the ultimate goal is to send them out into the world prepared to encounter others’ incivility and become naturally disposed not to respond in kind. Their professional identity will include an internal commitment to maintaining civility even in difficult and infuriating moments, because they have the right “default setting” or “disposition.”

Lawyers must also, of course, be able to “think slow.” An essential component of professional identity is the cultivation of the “master virtue” of practical wisdom, which enables lawyers to chart or recommend a course of action in uncertain circumstances when multiple goals are in conflict. Again, terminology can get in the way. Lawyers and law students may tune out to the mention of a “master virtue” or “practical wisdom” (don’t ask what they do if you use the word “phronesis”). But the need for practical wisdom translates easily into the need for good judgment, and no lawyer or law student will roll their eyes at the proposition that lawyers need good judgment.

Teaching judgment is harder than teaching punctuality. We use small group (25 to 30 students) weekly meetings in which we discuss a series of “practical wisdom” exercises and put the students in role to exercise judgment about what to do and how to do it. (These exercises are available at https://law.mercer.edu/academics/centers/clep/education.cfm). All of them present circumstances where there is time to “think slow,” work through different possibilities, and contemplate what might follow from each option. We train them to ask and answer the question, “what if I do this?” as part of the exercise of good judgment.

For example, one problem requires the students to decide (in the role of a junior non-equity partner in a large law firm) what, if anything, to do when they suspect a senior partner
of overbilling a client. The junior partner might choose to do nothing, talk to the partner, or report her suspicions within the firm. For each possibility (and any others the students generate), their preparation for the discussion includes how to go about implementing the decision, as well as the anticipated consequences of each decision, and a plan for dealing with those possible consequences.

For a lawyer to have the right kind of professional identity, the lawyer must cultivate the right virtues. Aristotle and his virtue ethics are powerful tools for helping law students get started on the right path. For skeptical students and lawyers, the concept of professional identity as “thinking fast and slow” may be more relatable. The need to cultivate the rights habits and dispositions, and to learn to exercise good judgment, are things we all should be able to agree on, regardless of the terminology.

Please feel free to contact me at longan_p@law.mercer.edu if you any questions or comments.

Patrick Longan is the William Augustus Bootle Chair in Ethics and Professionalism in the Practice of Law at Mercer University School of Law
and is Director of the Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism

February 21, 2023 by
Megan Bess

Helping Students Gain Better Context in their Real-World Lawyering Experiences

By: Megan Bess, Director of the Externship Program and Assistant Professor of Law, University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

A few years ago, I set out to create my first externship course syllabus in my new role directing my school’s externship program. One of my goals to was to empower students to put their work in context and see how it fits in with the structure and goals of their externship organizations. I have found that without the coaxing to do so, students did not consistently seek out information about their organizations outside of the knowledge required to complete the work assigned by their supervising attorneys.  Students are eager to make themselves useful to their immediate supervisors and colleagues. But an important opportunity for reflection that aids professional identity formation is missed without considering the larger context of how a student’s role and work contribute to the greater purpose of an organization and how that work serves and/or advances the legal profession.

As I was drafting the syllabus, a long-time adjunct showed me an assignment he developed for his government externship class. It prompted students to identify how decisions are made at the organization. At first glance, this seems simple enough to do. But there can be many layers to decision-making. This requires first identifying who the clients are. It also entails determining  how decision-making is shared by clients and attorneys in the organization’s particular setting. He also asked students to describe any checks on the decision-making process. I immediately adapted a version of his reflective assignment for my externship section. I have tweaked it many times since then, but I remain impressed by the depth of investigation and reflection required for students to complete the assignment.

We have adjusted this slightly for students working in different settings. For example, when students extern with courts and/or judges, we ask them to identify the source of the court’s authority and the types of decisions made by the court or judge. We ask them to analyze the decision-making steps and any checks on decisions. When students extern for an organization’s in-house counsel, we help students reflect on how the goals of protecting the organization from liability and ensuring financial stability impact decision-making. Students with public interest organizations delve into decisions about the factors that determine which clients to take on and how to prioritize the use of organizational resources.

While this assignment was created for an externship setting, it has potential to aid in professional identity formation any time a law student works in a real-world legal setting. As part of their efforts to better incorporate professional identity formation, many schools have or are developing programs or guides to help prepare students for real-world lawyering experiences. These could include a suggestion that as part of a student’s onboarding, they investigate how decisions are made at the organization in which they will work. We can also help our students debrief and make sense of the work they have already done if we ask them these questions after they have engaged in a real-world legal experience.

To do this properly, students will need to understand the structure and mission of their organization and how attorneys support this mission. They will also need to identify the client or clients and which decisions attorneys can make and which are reserved for clients. I encourage students to identify examples to help illustrate this process and identify points of tension or confusion in the relationship between attorney and client. The process can be quite complicated, especially in large organizations. Such reflection requires students to think beyond their work and their role to understand the challenges inherent to the attorney’s role in the organization. In my experience, law students ultimately discover that the role of the attorney is not nearly as straightforward as it first seems. This firsthand knowledge of the challenges attorneys face is an invaluable part of their professional identity formation journey.

If you have questions or comments, please reach out to me at mbess@uic.edu.

Megan Bess is the Director of the Externship Program and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.

 

 

February 16, 2023 by
Aric Short

The Power of Pivoting (Part II of II)

By: Aric Short, Professor of Law & Director of the Professionalism and Leadership Program, Texas A&M University School of Law

In Part I, we talked about three important competencies that help us accomplish difficult tasks: grit, resilience, and strategic pivoting. Putting those competencies into action can make an enormous difference, in particular, for students struggling to rebound from disappointing Fall grades. But the long-term benefit in professional identity formation can be even more powerful given the challenges and setbacks that lawyers frequently face. As essential sub-parts of being self-directed, these competencies better position students for later professional success.

Effectively pivoting can be especially hard for law students for various reasons as discussed in Part I. So in this post, we’re going to cover a number of specific, practical steps to begin strategically pivoting to achieve greater academic success. And for students who may feel bewildered or even despondent about their Fall grades, I want to add a personal plug: I know this process works. Having worked with hundreds of 1Ls, I’ve personally seen students make dramatic gains in the Spring following this general approach.

Step 1: Practice self-compassion. Let’s not sugar-coat it: In the face of disappointment, whether it’s about grades, a relationship, or something at work, we can feel bad about ourselves. Our feeling isn’t just that the goal wasn’t achieved; it’s that we failed. It’s about us. For law students already struggling with imposter syndrome, lower-than-expected grades can serve as fuel for their inner-critic: “See, I told you that everyone else is smarter. You shouldn’t be here.”

In difficult times like this, it can helpful to quiet the internal dialogue by adopting the perspective of giving advice to a friend you care about. What if your friend were in this situation, and she were looking to you for counsel? What would you say? You probably would remind her, first, that her acceptance to law school was built on a long track record of success, some of which didn’t come easy. You’d also remind her that the admissions office didn’t, in fact, make a mistake in letting her in. And you’d give her unconditional support and encouragement to believe in herself and take the steps necessary to regroup and figure out an effective way forward.

Although law students often exude confidence externally, many are plagued with relentless self-doubt and self-critique. So if you’re feeling some of these kinds of emotions, it’s normal. You’re not alone. In fact, many attorneys also feel these same emotions—and yet, a large number of those attorneys are very successful. So self-doubt in law school is not inconsistent with success as a lawyer. Recognizing that reality can make it easier to accept yourself and, maybe, give yourself a little grace. Doing so can help your psychological well-being and give you the physical and mental strength necessary to effectively gather the necessary information and strategize about how to effectively pivot. So, work on healthy sleep, eating, and workout habits. Remain connected to friends and family who support and encourage you. Take care of yourself.

Step 2: Choose your focus wisely. Within the academic setting, imagine one large circle containing the things you care about. Only you can know what’s in that circle, but it might include making higher grades, feeling like you’ve worked as hard as you can, being invited to join a journal, becoming an effective oral advocate, being selected as a teaching or research assistant, etc. And then imagine a second circle containing all the things you have control over in your life. Your most efficient, effective use of time and energy is at the intersection of these two big circles: the things you can control that also matter to you.

It gives us a sense of security to imagine that we control a lot in our lives; but in reality, we really don’t. What we truly control, I think, boils down to two areas: our effort (behavior) and our attitude. That’s it. We like to think we control outcomes: whether we make an A in a class or whether we get hired for a certain job. But we don’t. We can certainly influence and affect these kinds of outcomes as a result of our effort and attitude, but we absolutely do not control them.

Is this just a theoretical distinction without practical meaning? I don’t think so. Going back to Step 1, we often take “failure” personally, as a reflection of some shortcoming of ours. But if we can step back a little and recognize that we never had control over those outcomes to start with, we can refocus on what we do, in fact, control while also treating ourselves more humanely. By doing so, for example, our focus can shift from getting an A to working more strategically to execute as effectively as possible on the exam. Reframing in this way gives us a sharper, more honest way to evaluate ourselves.

Step 3: Ask useful questions to identify what is real. Useful questions might be grouped into three categories: (1) Why Questions; (2) You Questions; and (3) Community Questions. “Why Questions” focus on the big-picture: Why are you in law school? Why are you willing to work hard and persevere through three (or more) difficult years of schooling? What do you hope to accomplish with a law degree? The answers to these kinds of questions are foundationally motivating. They help illuminate your purpose and can motivate you in difficult, trying times. People who demonstrate grit and resilience often have a clearly-identified purpose that serves as an ongoing source of strength, motivation, and even inspiration.

“You Questions” are some of the most important questions to ask in this process: What did you do the first time to prepare? How did you spend your time studying on a daily basis? Was your focus on class preparation or getting ready for exams? What happened on your exams? This category of questions gathers both the steps you took as you prepared to execute and the specific results, at a granular level, of your assessments. Meaningfully evaluating your performance in each class may be the trickiest part of this analysis.

To truly gather the necessary information to pivot effectively, you need detailed information from your Fall courses. For midterms and final exams: How did you do on each section of the assessment, as compared to the class high, low, and average? Were you consistent in your performance across all of your doctrinal classes? How did you do in your 1L writing class as compared to your doctrinal classes? How did you do in your writing class as compared to the essay components of your doctrinal classes? What feedback do your professors have on your assessments? The answers to these kinds of questions give you important information on what should be your focus of attention this semester. And without fact-based answers to these questions, you’re just guessing about what to do differently.

Finally, “Community Questions” help you consider resources beyond yourself that could be useful. What school resources are available? How can you access them? When would be the most beneficial time to do so? Are there resources your classmates can provide? Within this category of questions, you may identify possibilities such as visiting professor office hours to clarify areas of confusion every week. Or meeting with academic support staff for strategies on answering multiple choice questions. Or forming a study group to begin preparing for your midterms.

It’s important to emphasize that within this step, the goal is to gather specific information about what is real. Although that point may seem obvious, my experience is that many, many students at this point in the semester have reached conclusions about what is real based on their unreasonably negative emotions. In emotionally difficult situations, particularly when there is significant uncertainty and a perceived lack of control, we tend to conflate the emotions we’re feeling with reality. If we’re feeling “not good enough” or “a failure,” it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that these feelings reflect the truth—that we are, in fact, not good enough or a failure. The negative spiral that often follows can be powerful.

Walking a healthy and useful line here can be challenging. On the one hand, it’s essential to be aware of and process your emotions. What you’re feeling in any given situation carries meaning. Attorneys and law students are not well-served by blocking and ignoring their emotions. But we need to see emotions in perspective. Perhaps one useful way to frame this balance is that while our emotions are valid, they do not necessarily reflect reality. In fact, we might go so far as to say that emotions (especially negative ones experienced in times of stress and uncertainty) are not reality unless proven otherwise.

Step 4: Putting it all together. If you’ve worked through the prior steps, you have in front of you the raw information needed to make thoughtful, effective decisions about adjusting your study plan this semester. Your actual plan is personal to you and your needs, rather than some generic template. But here are a few general observations, based on years of working with 1Ls, that might help you consider how to strategically pivot this semester.

  • Consider the purpose of your study activities. Fall 1L students need to spend significant time learning how to read appellate cases and understand their various components. For many students, this involves reading the assignment multiple times and creating a written brief for each case. Most of that significant time investment is focused on understanding the material well enough to follow class discussions. Students also frequently cite another, related reason for spending so much time preparing for class: They don’t want to be embarrassed if they’re called on for a case. You’ll need to figure out, with reflection, whether the cost-benefit tradeoff was worth it for you. In particular, did you over-prepare for class discussions, particularly in light of how much (or little) those discussions directly impacted your final grade?
  • Shift study time to make it more effective. With a little experience under your belt, maybe it makes sense to reallocate your study time for each class. For example, if you allocate two readings for each case, maybe move one of those to after class so you can see the case in light of your professor’s comments and class discussions. Without adding time to your overall studying, this pivot may increase the value of the time you’re investing.
  • Look for near-value activities. These are study activities that do bring some value; however, their worth could be greatly enhanced with just a little more time investment. Practice questions are the prime example. Maybe you worked some sample questions in the Fall, but you didn’t seek input from your professors on your answers. That may have been due to time constraints or a reluctance to attend office hours. But if you have the opportunity to seek feedback on practice questions from the person who will be grading your final exam, why wouldn’t a reasonable person prioritize that activity? Ten minutes in office hours talking about your practice answer can be invaluable.
  • Target your weaknesses. This should be obvious, but look for specific ways to address the relative weaknesses you identified when you analyzed your Fall exam performances. What types of questions give you trouble? If there were areas of material you never fully understood, what could you do differently this semester to avoid that problem?
  • Look for subtractions. Pivoting, by definition, involves subtractions, as well as additions. As a rule, law students work very hard, and I’m not suggesting that most students should invest a net increase in study time this Spring. Whatever you’re adding in terms of study time and activities should be more than offset by what you’re taking away. Be rigorous in your evaluation of what you spent your time on this Fall. Was each activity strategically designed to bring you closer to your goal? If not, don’t be shy about abandoning that task (and then carefully evaluating the impact of that decision). What might fall into that category? Possibly extra passes through your reading even after you understood it; unproductive study group sessions that were disorganized and without a clear goal; reading outside sources to make absolutely sure you understood everything you could about the covered material; or tracking down and working every multiple choice question available.

Although pivoting can be challenging for all of us, a stepwise process of gathering relevant information and then strategically plotting a path forward can help. And as we become more adept at pivoting, our overall self-directedness improves as well.

Please feel free to reach out to me at ashort@law.tamu.edu if you have any questions or comments.

Aric Short, Professor of Law and Director of the Professionalism & Leadership Program, Texas A&M University School of Law

 

 

February 14, 2023 by
Greg Miarecki

Laying the Foundations of Professional Identity Formation with All First-Year Law Students

By: Greg Miarecki, Executive Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Professional Development,
Director of the University of Illinois College of Law Leadership Project, University of Illinois College of Law

As we are now well into the spring semester at the University of Illinois College of Law, professional identity formation is front and center for our entering students.  In the spring of 2015, we introduced a required 1L course—Fundamentals of Legal Practice.  Fundamentals was originally designed to address many issues that many of us refer to as “professional identity formation” or “ABA Standard 303” issues.  When I first designed the course, I labeled the course with a bit of oversimplification—it “teaches what you need to be a successful lawyer, but that many law schools don’t really care about and most students don’t really know about.”  It’s a required, one-credit pass/fail course taught in the spring semester.  I’ve served as the course instructor since the course began, and have tweaked it continually over the years.  I’ve experimented with different sessions, different guest speakers, and different modes of instruction.  I’ve always found this course challenging to teach because students come to law school with their own views on professional identity formation topics, and they often are resistant to discussing them in law school—typically arguing that “I already know this stuff.”

This year’s edition of Fundamentals begins with a session styled the “business of law,” which provides an overview of different practice areas and the skills and traits usually seen in successful lawyers in those practice areas.  We follow those up with sessions on communication skills, project management skills, and wellness.  We added the wellness and project management pieces this year.  I was particularly focused on adding a wellness component, so that we could support our students who were running into “speed bumps” during their 1L year, often in the form of lower than expected grades.

The next tranche of classes features lessons in marketing, relationship building, personal branding, client service, and the importance of pro bono service.  Marketing and branding are especially important to our Office of Career Planning and Professional Development given that many 1Ls are in the midst of their summer job search.  And client service, as many of us former practicing lawyers know, can be the majority of what a lawyer does on a daily basis.

Following these sessions, we offer three separate sessions on leadership—an overview session, followed by a session highlighting the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in leadership, and a session on leadership in the non-profit sectors.  We added the latter two sessions last year and they’ve been great additions.  During each of these sessions, we bring in leaders in our profession to engage with the student on these topics.  The final session of Fundamentals, titled “A View From the Bench”, features a number of judges commenting on the importance of the class and the topics we cover.  This is always the most popular session in the course.

For two years, we taught the class virtually.  I thought it was a great innovation because it allowed me to bring in guests from around the world to interact with our students, giving me the ability to offer a more diverse set of speakers.  Now, with the return to in-person classes, I took the opportunity to involve our faculty members more heavily in the sessions.  And it turns out, I like the class even better now—it’s been great to have so many colleagues in our building take part in the professional identity formation of our students.

I love teaching this course because there’s always something new to learn, and always a way to tweak it and improve the class.  And by now, we have many hundreds of alumni who can attest to how the lessons they learned in Fundamentals made a difference (some big, some small) in their careers.  If you haven’t designed a formal professional identity formation class for your incoming students, I hope you’ll consider doing so—you’ll be impressed with how much value it can generate for your students.  Be ready for it to have flaws and imperfections—you’ll always find new ones every year!

I would welcome the chance to discuss Fundamentals with anyone who’s interested.  Please feel free to contact me at miarecki@illinois.edu.

Greg Miarecki is the Executive Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Professional Development and the Director of the University of Illinois College of Law Leadership Project at the University of Illinois College of Law.

February 9, 2023 by
Christopher Corts

Seeking Wisdom in the Counsel of Many

By: Christopher Corts, Professor of Law, Legal Practice, University of Richmond School of Law

Today I am writing to offer some practical suggestions for how you can actively, intentionally seek—and find—wisdom in the counsel of many.

I am no expert on this. To be clear: there is nothing in my natural inclinations that would suggest I would ever seek out the wisdom of the many. Left to my own devices, I would be tempted to say: the “wisdom of the many” is not even a thing. I am an introvert…with some misanthropic tendencies. I love “people”— in the abstract. The idea of “humanity” inspires me. I always try to respect “human dignity” as I work my way through life.

But, too often, as soon as I have to deal with real, live, messy human beings in all their glory—like, say, during a faculty meeting—I quickly lose faith in “humanity” and start ruminating on how people around me can’t seem to do much of anything effectively, except make me miserable.

It’s not that I think relying on myself is any better. It is more like: I have more comfort and confidence in my own ability (than others) to survive the many failures and messes I create in the world. To “go it alone” feels pragmatic—doable, if not exactly wise.

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, an expert on the science of human emotion, has described the paradox like this: the best thing for our nervous systems is another person; the worst thing for our nervous systems is…another person.[1]  I read that and think: Ok, so maybe just avoid people!

But my better, more reflective, and growth-oriented self is drawn to two maxims found in wisdom literature from the Hebrew Bible. One adage warns that “[w]ithout counsel, plans go wrong, but with many advisors they succeed.”[2]  Another maxim, similar to the first, goes like this: “Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.”[3]

These warnings challenge me to move away from solitude and toward the counsel of (not just some select chosen few, but) many others. This requires intention, commitment, and skill. So in today’s post, I want to share with you some of the facilitation techniques I have come to find useful for teaching and modeling a form of public dialogue as part of a larger, more inclusive process of collective decision-making.

File this one away in your “how to lead like a lawyer” files. The techniques shared below are premised upon two value statements:

  1. The best kind of public conversation about a topic of shared concern is one that includes participation from the greatest number of people present.
  2. In a public conversation about a topic of shared concern, the best kind of participation is a statement that accurately represents the speaker’s deepest, truest, most meaningful viewpoint on the matter at issue.

In short? I want everyone speaking, if they wish to speak—and, when they do, speaking courageously—from the heart. Five basic techniques, elaborated in more detail below, can help facilitate a public conversation like that. Here are the five in summary form:

  1. As facilitator, sit in a circle with everyone else.
  2. At the start of the conversation, collaboratively create clear, explicit rules of engagement for speakers and listeners to follow.
  3. At first, use open-ended questions to facilitate a more inclusive conversation.
  4. Once trust is established, have courage to directly invite participants to share their deepest hopes or deepest concerns on the subject.
  5. Throughout the conversation, take care to make public displays of valuing statements of difference and disagreement (and not just statements of unity and consensus).

In the paragraphs that follow, I will give suggestions for how to implement each one of these five techniques for discourse. As may already be obvious: there is a sizing issue here. Every one of these suggestions presumes a kind of public conversation that can be held using one or more small groups (with each group facilitated by at least one facilitator).

I accept that it will not always be possible to go small, but I suggest that you always ought to make every effort to make this kind of small-group interaction possible. Even if practicalities force you to speak in a mass group, at least some of the techniques described below can be implemented or adapted to fit the constraints of that kind of larger public conversation.

  1. As facilitator, sit in a circle with everyone else. In a previous post, I explained why this practice is so important. I won’t repeat myself here, except to remind the reader that a circle is an iconic representation of the values you are seeking to promote and achieve in this conversation. By eliminating (front and back) rows and (literally) de-platforming the speaker, by staging your conversation using a circle, you place speakers and listeners in the same position relative to each other. A circle creates a non-hierarchical, equitable configuration that makes broad, consistent, active participation—as both speakers and listeners—more likely.
  2. Collaboratively create clear, explicit rules of engagement for speakers and A feature of mindful or non-violent communication is to ask each member of the conversation circle to collaboratively establish conversation norms—norms of speaking and listening. This approach is most inclusive and organic to that particular group for that particular conversation on that occasion. As part of the process of building a set of shared norms to which every participant can agree, do not just dictate the norms you want to use without also inviting each participant to share what they need —as a speaker and listener—in order to productively engage in the conversation that is about to occur.To be sure: this takes time. But it is time well spent. It gets people talking. It builds trust and solidarity. It powerfully communicates one of your core values and objectives: you sincerely do want everyone to speak.As facilitator, you can compile the list of norms on a white board, blackboard, piece of paper, etc. That will create a transparent, easily-accessible published record of what everyone agreed to do as speakers/listeners at the very start of the conversation.The following subparts of the second technique provide additional clear, explicit rules for speakers and listeners:
    • From the start, get collective buy-in from all participants that speakers will be given freedom to speak and be heard as individuals. Facilitators should take care to explicitly release participants from the burden of speaking for others. For example: in an inter-faith dialogue, an Episcopal clergy should not be heard to speak for all Christians, all Protestants, all Episcopalians, or even all members of her parish! She is a singular individual. She speaks only for herself.This same concept applies to any group that any speaker might be identified with along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, nationality, political identification, whatever. We are a circle of individuals representing only ourselves.To make this even more concrete: you can invite and encourage speakers to use subjective “I” statements whenever possible. “I think, I worry, I see, I hope, I wonder, I feel, It seems to me, etc.” When we describe something we have individually experienced or observed as if it were universal, absolute fact, we threaten to make our one experience the absolute, definitive, only account of that thing—and that can unwittingly erase or de-value the (different) perspectives of others on that same subject.The practice of speaking for one’s self can be especially important in situations where you might want to welcome comments from someone who holds an official title. You want to create space and freedom for them to speak in their capacity as an individual member of the community—not just in an official capacity. (They are of course free to decline to do this! What matters is that you made the effort to make it possible, if they so desired).
    • Explicitly keep (and build) a sense of privacy and confidentiality. At the start, before any question is asked: assure participants that whatever is shared in the conversation will be kept confidential. You want to build a circle of trust. Make sure everyone understands that by continuing in the circle and engaging in the conversation, every member is agreeing to keep the conversation amongst ourselves, and to not broadcast any particulars outside of this context. Similarly, assure everyone that the session will not be recorded. Or, if you have an important reason to record, inform everyone that it will be recorded and put them on notice that they might want to say “pass” instead of sharing (since they will also know that they are free to say “pass” at any time).Don’t just assume that everyone consents to a recording, or that gaining consent is not important. It is! Recording can have a chilling effect on conversations. It cuts against the twin purposes (participation and quality) that guide the public conversation we aspire to facilitate.
    • Use a talking stick. The beauty of a talking stick is that it comes with rules of discourse attached. And the rules are designed to slow down the conversation—which makes off-the-cuff, emotionally-reactive responses less It creates space, air, and light for deeper and more authentic speaking, listening, and thinking. Rule number 1 is that only the person who is holding the talking stick may speak. When she is done speaking, she either places the talking stick in the center of the circle, or passes it to the left or right. The talking stick prevents cross-talk and interruption. It helps to prevent a debate. It facilitates slowness and reduces the likelihood that someone will blurt out a response in the heat of the moment, before it has been fully thought through. When it comes to selecting the talking stick: don’t be too literal; it does not have to be an actual stick. Make it meaningful! Be creative and use the talking stick convention to help you to convey value and create meaning to your group. For example: when convening a hard, heart-to-heart conversation about well-being with a small group of (struggling, for different reasons and in different ways) 1Ls, I once used an Apple Air-Pods case as the talking stick. When I introduced the convention of using the case as a talking stick with the group, I told them: “The Air Pods case is a symbol of distraction and disconnection in everyday life. But I want us today to re-claim it as an object that can facilitate deeper connection and engagement with each other.” By framing something as banal as the choice of a talking stick as an act of counter-cultural resistance, I helped spark their creative/abstract imagination, played to their counter-cultural inclinations, and helped to create ritualized meaning in what could have just been presented as a mindless everyday object selected for the sake of bland convenience.
    • Keep giving clear, explicit procedural guidance about what you expect to happen next with the talking stick. Each time you ask a question and invite everyone to respond, set clear guidelines for how you expect the conversation to proceed. You can start with person X and go clockwise or counter-clockwise from there; you can place the talking stick in the center of the circle and let anyone who wishes to pick up the talking stick do so in whatever order they prefer. But the key here is: no individual can speak a second time until everyone has had a chance to speak. If you elect not to use a talking stick, you can still integrate equitable rules of procedure. Each time you ask a question, you can start with a different person in the circle, and move in a different direction (clockwise, counter-clockwise, whatever). The goal would be to make sure that the same voices are not being heard first or last; you do not just want a diversity of voices being heard—you want them to be heard in a different order.
    • Adopt an opt-out rule that liberates everyone to participate at any time simply by saying “pass.” I like to establish this rule at the outset of a conversation. And then, every time I ask a facilitated question and invite each person to speak in response, I remind everyone that they are always free to simply say “pass.” This serves at least four purposes. (1) It ensures that every voice will be heard, even if only to say “pass.” (2) It reinforces how valuable hearing every voice is to the conversation. (3) It minimizes coercive social pressure, so that participants who do not yet feel safe or able to speak candidly and sincerely about the guided prompts are still able to hold attention and bring their voice into the room. And (4) it helps to prevent insincere responses, because people know that “pass” is a credible, respected alternative to saying something simply for the sake of fulfilling a formal participation requirement. (Frequently, at some early point in a conversation that I am facilitating, I will say “pass” myself, to model that it really, truly is ok to just say “pass.”)
  1. At first, facilitate a more inclusive conversation by asking open-ended questions. Embedded in this suggestion is an invitation to practice a radical form of hospitality. As facilitator, you hold power to welcome and bless every person present. Use it! Artful public conversations that include everyone—especially those who are not inclined to speak in public settings, or about certain selected topics—merit light-touch structure. With thoughtful planning and intention, an artful facilitator will pose an open-ended question…and then invite each participant to respond in a way that person prefers. These open-ended questions are especially important at the start of a conversation. They break the proverbial ice. They build comfort, encourage trust, and create a tone and atmosphere for the proceedings. They help to get people comfortable sharing, because they give each person the most freedom to speak to whatever aspect or dynamic of the chosen topic matters most to them. Here is one concrete example of how you might develop a hospitable, open-ended question to elicit deeper engagement that can help build a conversation space: “We gathered today for the purpose of talking about [describe the topic]. To start our conversation together, I want to first give each one of you an opportunity to share what is on your heart or mind as you entered today’s circle of conversation.What have you directly observed or experienced about [the issue]? What do you see with respect to [the issue]? What are your thoughts, feelings, or reactions to what you’re seeing? Whatever you want to share—share it. Good, bad, inspiring, upsetting, ambiguous, whatever; we welcome any comment that accurately captures your point of view, whatever that might be. So long as it respects the dignity of others, we welcome it. We need to hear from everyone so we can more clearly understand what is really going on in our community, what the stakes of this conversation are, and how we can move forward together from here. Every perspective matters, because we all have blind spots. There is no shame in that. Each one of us might be seeing or experiencing something that someone else in this circle needs to see or understand. We cannot arrive at a full, shared version of the truth if we do not have the benefit of every individual perspective. So let’s start helping each other figure this out.

    One at a time, as you see fit, please share what is on your heart or mind with respect to [the issue].”

    Or, to give a simpler version (without so much wind-up to the pitch):

    “For our first round of responses, I welcome each one of you to share anything you wish to share about this topic: [Frame and ask the question].”

    As these two examples suggest: whether you want to invest heavily in framing or keep your question short, use the wind-up to explicitly voice the values you wish to nurture. Words matter. Don’t just ask a question…invite and welcome a response. Make it safe for each speaker to share what they most want to say. Don’t just assume everyone will speak…make sure everyone knows you want or need them to speak. Appeal to peoples’ sense of hope and duty. So long as you sincerely want to hear from everyone, say so. The key here is to be authentic, open, and vulnerable.

    Any time you ask for everyone to participate, you risk the humiliation of no one listening to what you have to say. That’s ok. Risk it! It is the only way. There is no shame in giving a warm welcome, whatever the response.

  2. Once trust is established, have the courage to directly invite participants to share their deepest hopes or deepest concerns on the subject. Once people get comfortable responding to these broad, open-ended questions, a baseline of trust will be established. From there, if you wish, you can narrow the focus of your questions, make them less open-ended (more targeted to achieve your particular purposes), and invest more in framing the question in a particular way that is designed to elicit the information you (as facilitator and planner) most want and need to hear from the participants. One concrete way to think about crafting a narrower, more focused kind of question is to think about how you can inspire participants to speak in a way that reveals their personal, subjective experience: their perceptions, beliefs, commitments, and values. An artful question inspires a speaker to share something about her unique way of looking at the world, her unique way of valuing the world, the particular way she hopes the world can be made better, and her ideas and intuitions about how to make that more beautiful world possible. Don’t be afraid to play around with crafting questions designed to elicit value statements. On this view, a well-crafted question is one that can help invite a speaker to voice something personally meaningful about what she perceives, believes, desires, values, wants, or fears. Framing the question in terms of “hopes” or “fears” can be a good way to elicit both a statement of fact (about what we want or dread)—and a value (a why to make meaningful our description of what we factually hope for or fear most in the current debate).Here is an example of that kind of question:
    What about our law school’s current approach to[Issue X] concerns you most? Why?And then, something like:

    As we work out [Issue X], do you see anything in our law school’s community that gives you hope that we can do better and get to where you want us to be? What would “doing better” look like, from your point of view? Why do you feel that would be better than the current state of things?

    Crafting questions is an art. Try, fail, try again, fail again, and on and on. The keys to creating questions are to learn what works (and what doesn’t) and keep trying.

  3. Throughout the conversation, take care to make public displays of valuing statements of difference and disagreement (and not just statements of unity and consensus). There is a beautiful human tendency to steer toward unity and consensus as soon as division and disagreement surface—especially when we are in a circle of conversation with colleagues, peers, friends, students we care about. But that caring impulse can choke prophets, silence critics, and chill authentic engagement in the group. The true test of a healthy community is not converting everyone to some bland, watered-down uniformity that enables us to market a fake, superficial unity at the cost of authenticity and truth. It is cringe-inducing and actually damaging when kind-hearted, well-meaning voices try to gaslight us into convincing everyone that, despite perception or appearances, we are not as divided as we seem. We are. It’s probably worse than we imagine. The truth, no matter how unpleasant or difficult, is worth hearing. A healthy community does something brave every time it gathers together, gives voice to disagreement, and collectively stares down the awesome chasms of separation and division that (in part) define it.

So there you have it: five simple, concrete suggestions (with rationalizations and specific examples included) for how you, too, can model and teach a kind of public conversation in small groups that can include the greatest number of voices and elicit the most authentic viewpoints possible. Over time, I have come to sincerely believe that—against my personal preferences—the best counsel really does live in the spaces where the most counselors are (1) given a voice and (2) use it to share their unique point of view.

In that same spirit, I invite you to help me. If you have any ideas, thoughts, concerns, or suggestions that you would like to share on these or related topics: please do! I can’t even hope to be wise without you.

Email me at ccorts@richmond.edu. (Thank you in advance!)

Christopher Corts is Professor of Law and Legal Practice at the University of Richmond School of Law.

[1] https://ideas.ted.com/author/lisa-feldman-barrett/  (“It’s ironic but true: The best thing for your nervous system is another human and the worst thing for your nervous system is another human. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett tells us why.”) Feldman Barrett is the author of two books I enthusiastically recommend to legal educators, How Emotions are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain.

[2] Proverbs 15:22, New Revised Standard Version.

[3] Proverbs 11:14, New Revised Standard Version.

February 7, 2023 by
Linda Sugin

A Peer Mentoring Program For 2L Students that Teaches Leadership and Creates Community

By: Linda Sugin, Professor of Law & Faculty Director for the Office of Professionalism, Fordham Law School

At Fordham Law School, we have a program that supports vulnerable second-year students, fosters cross-cultural understanding, builds friendships and professional networks, and teaches leadership skills.  Since its launch five years ago, hundreds of students have chosen to participate.  The premise of the program is simple: law students can support each other and achieve professional and personal growth if law schools provide a modicum of institutional support.  We have designed a professional identity formation course that equips 3L mentors with the skills and confidence they need to provide meaningful support to the 2L students they mentor.  Through collaboration with Fordham’s student affinity groups, the program also contributes to the law school’s DEI efforts.

In this article, published last spring in the NALP Bulletin, I described our program’s key elements.  Jordana Confino, Fordham’s Assistant Dean for Professionalism, and I are happy to share our syllabus and answer any questions you have about our program.  Feel free to contact me at lsugin@fordham.edu and/or Jordana at jconfino@fordham.edu.

Linda Sugin is Professor of Law & Faculty Director for the Office of Professionalism at Fordham Law School in New York.

February 2, 2023 by
Aric Short

The Power of Pivoting (Part I of II)

By: Aric Short, Professor of Law & Director of the Professionalism and Leadership Program,
Texas A&M University School of Law

The Spring semester in law school is a new beginning for students, staff, and faculty, but it can be extremely difficult for 1Ls who have just received their first semester grades. It’s normal for law students, most of whom have achieved consistent academic success over the years, to experience a range of emotions when they receive grades that don’t match their expectations. Disappointment, frustration, and even anger are common initial reactions. But throughout the years I’ve taught 1Ls, the reaction I’ve observed most of all is bewilderment. Exploring this reaction of bewilderment fully would require more than a blog entry. But for now, I think this general reaction signals a fundamental difficulty some students experience in knowing how to move forward productively in the face of unexpected feedback that is inconsistent not just with their past grades, but with their deeply-rooted sense of identity.

To help students “right the ship” in the early Spring, three core lawyering competencies can be especially important: grit, resilience, and strategic pivoting. This powerful triad of competencies provides a key to succeeding with difficult challenges. Lawyers face difficult challenges on a daily basis—demanding schedules, difficult personalities, and regular setbacks and even losses—so learning and internalizing these competencies in law school can help students with their longer-term careers. But 1L students may be especially receptive to exploring them in the first weeks of the Spring semester as they struggle to process Fall grades and figure out a strategic path forward in the Spring.

Grit. Most law students don’t struggle with grit. In fact, they’ve achieved academic and other life successes largely because of grit: the ability to work very hard, over a sustained period of time, to achieve long-term goals. Gritty people passionately pursue their goals, tirelessly, recognizing that consistent hard work will separate them from the pack. Long-term grit can be difficult to maintain. Focusing on the “why” underlying the pursuit can help motivate students to continue working hard, day after day. Not surprisingly, people who are generally successful in academic and professional settings rate high when it comes to grit. So it might be considered a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for success. Anyone who works with 1Ls knows that the vast majority of them enter law school already possessing this competency, and they work very hard during their first year.

Resilience. In the course of pursuing difficult goals, there will be setbacks, roadblocks, losses, and other adversities. Continuing the chase, and even growing through those challenging times, requires resilience. Being agile and “bouncing back” are both ways of articulating aspects of resilience. Michael Jordan famously described his own resiliency when he said that he had “missed more than 9,000 shots . . . lost almost 300 games . . . ”  and missed the game-winning shot twenty-six times. “I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Resilient people persist despite results that might cause others to stop.

Grit and resilience are both critical to long-term success. If we don’t work hard, or if our response to the first signs of adversity is to give up, we won’t make it very far. We know this intuitively, and we see it play out in all aspects of our lives. But to succeed at difficult things, we often need more than hard work and the ability to bounce back. We need to know when and how to strategically pivot in an effective manner.

Strategic pivoting. Pivoting is simply changing—direction, strategy, or area of focus. Pivots can be big (“I’m quitting my job as a teacher to go to law school”) or smaller (“I’m going to start going to the gym twice a week”). We change direction in our lives all the time, often without giving it much thought. But we don’t always realize the power of strategic pivoting: intentionally changing direction in the face of feedback and after deliberate and calculated reflection on what it will take to improve. Pivoting in a strategic way can be extremely liberating, and it makes great sense. Yes, we should work hard and reasonably bounce back, but it should appear fundamentally unreasonable for us to continue the same strategies going forward when we have clear evidence that those strategies have not led to the desired outcome in the past.

In my experience, while 1Ls are relatively strong at grit, they are relatively weaker at resilience—perhaps because many of them have not faced exceptionally hard challenges before law school (although clearly there are many exceptions to this rule). So bouncing back from adversity may be a new competency for some of them to develop. But within this triad of competencies that helps us succeed at difficult tasks, strategic pivoting is by far the least familiar to students, and it is the most difficult for them to implement. But if mastered, it can be extraordinarily powerful.

Why is strategic pivoting a difficult concept for students to implement? One reason may be, as just mentioned, that while 1Ls have a track record of working hard before law school, most of them have been largely successful in school and outside activities because of that hard work. “Failures” have been relatively minor, and often working a little harder or being more consistent with hard work was enough to then achieve success. For many students, law school is a different beast. Fifty percent of students will be in the bottom half of their class—a reality that most law students probably do not fully absorb before they start. Resilience and strategic pivoting are theoretical concepts, at best, for many students, because they just haven’t needed to rely on them.

Strategic pivoting is also a challenging concept for students because embedded in this concept is the idea of quitting. Changing direction requires pursuing a new path while abandoning an old one that wasn’t effective. And many students have an uneasy relationship with the idea of quitting. Society tells us all that “quitters are losers.” And the very concept of grittiness seems to be in tension with quitting. How can we continue to work hard (and thereby achieve our dreams) while also giving up?

This last question is hopefully rhetorical. Wise law students know, at some level, that if their first grades in law school don’t meet their standards, they will need a new and different strategy moving forward. But it can be helpful to make this explicit for students: I know you worked extraordinarily hard in the Fall, and I am not asking you to work harder in the Spring. For most of you, doing so would be unhealthy and detract from your well-being. What I am suggesting is that there are some things you can do differently to more effectively pursue your goals. The strategy you come up with will likely involve some additional tasks; but if you’re thoughtful about this process, that strategy will also involve eliminating some less-effective activities that you engaged in last semester. Quitting, or strategic pivoting, is critical to this process. It can free up time and energy for more useful work.

How can students work to develop this new strategy for academic success? A helpful orienting concept in this regard is the “mother of all competencies”: being self-directed. Students can remind themselves that there are four connected steps to achieving their goals: (1) Identify their goals with specificity; (2) Create a plan of specific steps that must be completed to be successful; (3) Execute; and (4) Monitor and reflect: what adjustments need to be made to be more successful next time? Return to Step 1. Repeat as necessary.

That self-directed cycle provides just the basic framework for developing a strategy for academic success—or a strategy to be successful in any endeavor. In Part II, we’ll explore some specific suggestions and practical tips on exactly how to strategically pivot to greater academic success in the Spring, using a student’s experience in the Fall as a springboard.

Please feel free to reach out to me at ashort@law.tamu.edu if you have any questions or comments.

Aric Short, Professor of Law and Director of the Professionalism & Leadership Program, Texas A&M University School of Law

January 31, 2023 by
Megan Bess

Goal Setting Across the Law School Experience: a Simple and Powerful Professional Identity Formation Tool

By: Megan Bess, Director of the Externship Program and Assistant Professor of Law,
University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

I have spent a good amount of time over the past few months reflecting on how to best incorporate professional identity formation in my teaching and across our law school’s curricular and extracurricular programming.  Like many of us, I wear many hats at my institution, some with easier connections to PIF than others. For instance, in my role overseeing externships I have been able to craft a curriculum centered on reflection, self-assessment, and professional identity formation. Nearly everything students do in their externship experience furthers the development of their professional identity. But when I teach a large section of Professional Responsibility, my interest and desire to incorporate professional identity formation often conflict with the pressures to cover as many Model Rules and PR concepts as I can. I have been asking myself which of the PIF-related activities I utilize in the externship program could I easily incorporate into other classes and activities. And then I had a realization: I can work goal setting into almost anything I teach.

More than three years into my role directing my school’s externship program I have now seen hundreds of student goals for their externship experiences. Many follow common themes of improving specific research and writing skills and participating in lawyering activities. Some of the best goals I have seen, however, demonstrate strong self-awareness and a desire to improve professional behaviors. For example, one student set a goal to develop a system to better manage their school, work, and personal obligations so that they could be more fully present in each rather than multi-tasking. I’ve seen students set goals for increasing and managing their physical and mental health or strengthening their understanding of, and connections to, their legal community.

While an externship, clinical, or other real-world lawyering experience easily lends itself to goal setting, I believe that students can and should be encouraged to set goals across their entire law school experience. Goal setting is especially powerful if introduced early in law school. For example, UIC Law has a one-credit required first-semester course, Expert Learning, that introduces students to study and exam-taking strategies, lawyering skills, resilience and mindset, and other professional skills and behaviors important for success in law school and in law practice. The course covers goal setting and requires students to set a goal for the course itself.

Goal setting empowers students to take charge of and responsibility for themselves and their experiences. Studies show that rigorous and specific goal setting correlates with higher performance.[1] And feelings of success in the workplace derive from pursuing and attaining meaningful goals.[2] In short, setting goals is a habit that will aid students in their legal careers. And the very act of setting goals requires some self-reflection that aids in professional identity formation.

Most students are familiar with the concept of goal setting. A popular framework is SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). Encouraging students to set goals for the courses you teach and activities you oversee is a simple tool to encourage their reflection and self-assessment with a framework that is familiar to them.

The good news is that this can be incredibly easy to do. There are numerous goal setting lessons and resources available. When I first sought to incorporate goal setting in the externship program, a simple online search turned up numerous videos (I selected a simple SMART goal overview from LinkedIn Learning) and written materials. One of my favorites is this simple worksheet from Baylor University that explains SMART goal setting and walks the user through a goal setting process.

If you are worried about the labor required with providing feedback on student goals, consider asking students to share their goals with and elicit feedback from their peers. My students have shared that they enjoy this goal setting method. I give students time to brainstorm one goal and then have them share in small groups with instructions to offer suggestions for making the goal “SMARTer.” In my experience, law students are amenable to suggestions from their peers who are proud of themselves when they can offer helpful feedback to their classmates.

I can easily envision students setting goals related to course performance and grades. But we can encourage our students to think of goals from a broader perspective. Students can set goals for a course that relate to organizational skills, time management, study habits, understanding and applying course material in real-world context, the contributions they make to their group, and/or class participation. If we provide them some examples along these lines, then they will feel like they have permission to identify and work on these skills. Imagine the power we have to help students commit to and practice goal setting habits in as few as ten (10) minutes at the start of our courses.

If you have questions, comments, or ideas for improvement, please reach out to me at mbess@uic.edu.

Megan Bess is the Director of the Externship Program and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.

[1] Edwin A. Locke & Gary P. Latham, New Directions in Goal Setting Theory, 15 Current Directions in Psychological Science, 265-268 (2006).

[2] Barbara A. Blanco & Sande L. Buhai, Externship Field Supervision: Effective Techniques for Training Supervisors and Students, 10 Clinical L. Rev. 611, 642 (2004); Laurie Barron, Learning How to Learn: Carnegie’s Third Apprenticeship, 18 Clinical L. Rev. 101, 107 (2011).

January 26, 2023 by
Leah Teague

Baylor Law’s Professional Identity Formation History and the Influence of the Carnegie Report and the Holloran Center on Baylor Law’s Continual Professional Identity Formation Efforts

By: Leah Witcher Jackson Teague, Professor of Law & Director of Business Law Program and Leadership Development Program, Baylor Law School

Thanks to Robin Thorner, Assistant Dean, Office of Career Strategy, at St. Mary’s Law School, law faculty and staff interested in professional identity formation efforts gathered twice in the fall to converse. The next conversation is scheduled for this Thursday, January 26, at 3:00 p.m. Central using the following link via Zoom. I plan to join and hope you will too!

During the fall gatherings, a common request was for more information about law schools’ processes for addressing the recent amendments to ABA 303 and descriptions of programs, events, and activities. In this post, I offer some insight on the background for our work at Baylor Law and also thank the Holloran Center for encouraging us, and so many others, in our work in the areas of professional development and leadership development. In a future post, I will describe Baylor Law’s ongoing review process of our professional identity formation efforts in response to the amendments to ABA Standard 303.

At Baylor Law, professional identity formation efforts have been part of the fabric of our program throughout our 165-year history, but not by that name. As I recently wrote in a post, professional development and leadership development, in an informal manner, have been “baked” into our program from the beginning. Baylor Law’s mission statement expresses a desire to “develop lawyers who are able to practice law with competence, serve with compassion, and provide effective and ethical leadership.” We strive to prepare our students for the demands they will face as members of the legal profession. We also want them to be better equipped to use their legal education and training, along with their status in society as lawyers, to serve effectively and be difference makers.

Our approach to legal education (which incorporates legal analysis, practical lawyering skills, and professionalism) aligns with the scaffolding approach advocated in Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (more commonly referred to as the “Carnegie Report”). The Carnegie Report, published in 2007, described the three dimensions of professional education that are necessary to adequately prepare students for their careers and professional obligations. The three dimensions for legal education were described as:

  1. Critical thinking skills and legal knowledge that have been the traditional focus of law schools.
  2. Practice application and skills development through experiential education as mandated in the ABA Standards beginning approximately 2005.
  3. Professional identity formation defined as “effective ways to engage and make their own the ethical standards, social roles, and responsibilities of the profession, grounded in the profession’s fundamental purposes.”

This scaffolding approach to legal education aligns perfectly with the practical, values-based, and service-oriented approach to legal education at Baylor Law. When the Carnegie Report came out in 2007, I admittedly did not give its findings and recommendations the attention it deserved, that is, not until hearing presentations and reading articles from our friends at the Holloran Center (specifically Co-Directors Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ and Holloran Center Fellow Lou Bilionis) and others who devoted years to improving the professional development and ethical leadership of our law students.

Before meeting these dedicated teachers and scholars, we had already begun our own efforts at Baylor Law to enhance and incorporate more emphasis on professional identity formation and professional development of our students, including the creation of our Professional Development Program and Leadership Development Program in 2014. Validation that we were on the right track with our approach to legal education came for us in the fall of 2016 when Neil Hamilton and Lou Bilionis traveled to Waco, Texas to lead our Baylor Law faculty and staff in a workshop. The Holloran Center team complimented us on our multi-dimensional, multi-year approach. Baylor Law professors were encouraged to better communicate to our students the efforts already in place to teach and enforce professionalism. I offer my perspective of fundamental aspects of our approach to teaching and training Baylor Lawyers:

  • teach students to think like lawyers;
  • offer a variety of practical skills training opportunities;
  • require a rigorous practicum in the third year;
  • insist upon professionalism (work ethic, respect for one another, integrity, etc.) in all interactions inside and outside the classroom; and
  • encourage students to adopt a service orientation in their professional and personal endeavors.

The Holloran Center initiatives continued to inform and inspire our work in the summers of 2017 and 2019, when Baylor Law faculty and staff joined teams from other law schools to attend Holloran Center summer workshops. Again, we were encouraged to compose a description of our professionalism training that spans from orientation through graduation. As part of our work in response to the 303 amendments, we are making a conscious effort to do so. More detail of our work in this area will be shared in a future post.

The Holloran Center’s work on professional identity formation continues to influence and inspire us as we seek to improve and enhance the “whole building” approach (as described by Dean Emeritus Bilionis) to teaching, training, and inspiring Baylor law students. Thank you!

I am always happy to visit further with anyone who desires additional information. Feel free to reach out to me at Leah_Teague@baylor.edu.

Leah Witcher Jackson Teague is the Professor of Law and Director of Business Law Programs at Baylor Law School.

 

January 24, 2023 by