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Erika Pont

Barbara Glesner FInes, Daisy Floyd, David Grenardo, Erika Pont, Jerome Organ, Neil Hamilton, Patrick Longan, Timothy Floyd, Todd Peterson

By the Numbers: The Holloran Center

By Barbara Glesner Fines, Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law, Dean Emerita of UMKC School of Law

The occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Holloran Center provides an opportunity to review the Center’s twenty years by the numbers.

First, let’s just count heads at Holloran:

One. Neil Hamilton, whose interest and concern for professionalism and the development of ethical leaders has been the centerpiece of his work since the beginning of his career. A prodigious, thoughtful, humble, and generous scholar, his humility, wisdom, and collaborative spirit set the Center up for success from day one.

Two. Jerry Organ, with Neil, a founding member of the University of St Thomas School of Law. Also an influential scholar, Jerry has brought an indefatigable energy and a brilliant talent at convening and communication that ensured that the Holloran Center would never be a best kept secret.

Three. A magical number, that magic came together when Tom Holloran gave his time, talent, and treasure to ensure that the Holloran Center would have strength, stability, and impact. His spirit continues to animate it.

Four. By joining the Holloran leadership team, David Grenardo has broadened the focus and reach of professional identity formation. His scholarship’s focus on inclusivity and civility (not to mention his kindness and good humor) not only makes faculty want to be part of the Holloran Center mission, but also lets them know that they are welcome.

Five. Felicia Bennett, and Brady King before her, are the extraordinary assistants who have lent their own unique perspectives and skills to make sure that the Center gets the work done.

What happens when you add together a team like this? Addition becomes multiplication.

Let’s just consider publications.

Neil and Jerry have published eight books (and counting) that focus on some aspect of professional identity formation (PIF). Since then, at least fifteen other faculty members have published ten textbooks that also focus on this theme.

Neil, Jerry, and David have published over 120 law review articles, book chapters, or other academic monographs, not to mention over 100 blog posts, focusing on PIF. The multiplication is evident from a Lexis search identifying over four hundred law review articles that discuss professional identity formation; 139 of those have PIF in the title.

Then there are the Holloran Center’s workshops, conferences, and programs. By my count, over 300 faculty have attended a Holloran Center workshop. The leadership team also takes PIF on the road, with over 30 presentations annually at an alphabet soup of national and international organizations from pre-law advisors to the practicing bar and everywhere in between.

The consequence? Over 100 law schools have first-year required courses or programs on professional formation. With the passage of ABA accreditation standard 303(b) more will come, and they will look to the Holloran Center for leadership and guidance.

Three of the earliest of these law school programs prove how much impact on students this can mean:

The University of St. Thomas School of Law has a 1L course entitled “Serving Clients Well”. The program introduces students to the profession and its values and gets the students started on the law school’s Mentor Externship program. Serving Clients Well was started in 2018 with over 150 students having completed it each year. Many of these graduates have gone on to serve as mentors to the next generation of students in the program.

Another early example of a first-year PIF course can be found at Mercer Law in their 1L “Legal Profession” course, developed by Daisy Hurst Floyd, University Professor of Law and Ethical Formation; Patrick Longan, William Augustus Bootle Chair in Professionalism and Ethics; and Timothy Floyd, Tommy Malone Distinguished Chair in Trial Advocacy and Director of Experiential Education. The course was established in 2004 and is taught using Professors Floyd, Longan, & Floyd’s text, The Formation of Professional Identity: The Path from Student to Lawyer, now in its second edition. Mercer’s 1L class size has stayed consistent at about 150 students a year over those twenty years since the course was founded. That means about 3,000 Mercer graduates began their law school journey immersed in virtue ethics and reflection on what it means to be a lawyer.

This year the Holloran Center recognized George Washington Law School for its signature PIF program. GW established its Fundamentals of Lawyering program in 2019. The required 1L course integrates PIF principles and is taught by a team of faculty members led by its Director, Professor Iselin Gambert, and by Associate Directors Professor Anita Singh and Associate Professor Erika Pont. The Fundamentals Program is part of a comprehensive program including the school’s Inns of Court and Foundations of Practice programs, directed by Carville Dickinson Benson Research Professor Todd D. Peterson. These programs were conceived and planned in part through GW faculty attendance at multiple Holloran Center workshops. With GW’s average annual matriculation of about 600 first-year students, that adds up to 3,000 graduates impacted by the program to date.

Just these three courses, pioneered by leaders connected to the Holloran Center, have introduced over 7,500 students to the fundamental values of the profession and provided students opportunities for mentorship and reflection.

The Holloran Center’s broader impact shows that educational change does not happen because of one article or one speech. It happens when scholars name an important idea, develop it repeatedly, support it with evidence, build organizations and tools around it, bring other people into the work, and stay with it long enough for the idea to move from innovation to best practice. It happens when no one person owns an idea and early entrants are flexible enough to support and encourage the broadening of their ideas. It shows that real reform in legal education is not only intellectual. It is strategic, collaborative, and persistent.

The numbers make it clear that in twenty years of leadership, the Holloran Center has embodied the twin values of PIF: a continual striving for growth and excellence, and a deeply embedded value of service in ever widening circles.

Congratulations to the Holloran Center and to the hundreds of faculty, staff, students, attorneys, and judges who count themselves part of this extraordinary organization.

May 20, 2026 by hami3258

Erika Pont

An Old Truth for a New Era: Professional Identity Is Formed in Relationship

by Erika N. Pont, Associate Director, Fundamentals of Lawyering Program; Coordinator of the Dean’s Fellow Program; Associate Professor of Fundamentals of Lawyering
George Washington University Law School

I’m writing this on the flight home from the first annual Holloran Center Conference & Awards Dinner. As I reflect on the weekend, I keep returning to something I’ve been learning since I first connected with the Holloran Center in 2019: formation happens in relationships.

We often talk about professional identity formation as something that happens inside a person—reflection, judgment, values, purpose. Of course it does. But people are shaped by the people around them too. Mentors matter. Classmates matter. Faculty matter. Communities matter. Much of who we become is formed in conversation with other people.

We talked about that frequently this weekend. But more importantly, I experienced it first hand.

In the formal sessions and in the in-between moments, people challenged and supported my ideas, sharpened my thinking, and offered kindness that meant more than they likely knew. More than that, I learned about people’s children, grandchildren, favorite music, travel plans, and beloved pets—all the ordinary details that make up a life. That kind of connection does not weaken serious work. It creates the trust and ease in which the best work happens and the sharpest ideas emerge.

What the Holloran Center has built is more than a conference or network. In the language associated with Professors Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ, it is a community of care: a place where people are challenged and supported all at once. Mostly, it is a place where people can be seen as whole humans, not only as academics. That is rarer than it should be and especially important now.

In 2023, the Surgeon General warned of a new kind of public health crisis– an “Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” ^[1] Three years later, many students are coming of age in environments where connection is easier to simulate and harder to practice. They can outsource first drafts to AI, stay socially “connected” online, and move through school needing less from other people. But some important skills are developed only by depending on other people. Empathy, trust, collaboration, and asking for help are skills. And like any skills, they atrophy when underused.

Law has always been a deeply relational profession. Clients need people they trust. Colleagues need one another. Mentors shape careers. Reputation grows slowly. Relationships also sustain us when work and life get (inevitably) hard.

Legal education has something to learn from what the Holloran Center has built. As we all know, formation does not happen only through coursework or solitary reflection. It is cultivated through culture, community, and relationships over time.

If we are serious about well-being and professional identity formation, relationship-building deserves intentional design.

That means more than teaching students to “network.” It means helping them practice the ordinary habits on which good relationships actually depend: curiosity, reliability, generosity, vulnerability, collaboration, gratitude, and knowing when to ask for help. It also means building schools and programs where connection is possible and nurtured, not just discussed.

I’m heading home reminded that this work matters. Now, perhaps more than ever, our students need places where they can grow, be challenged, be supported, and be known.

So do we.

^[1] Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The US Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community, 2023, available at chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf (last accessed April 27, 2026).

Erika N. Pont is an Associate Professor & Acting Co-Director of the George Washington University Law School’s Fundamentals of Lawyering Program.

April 28, 2026 by hami3258