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Felicia Hamilton

Barbara Glesner FInes, David Grenardo, Felicia Hamilton, Jerome Organ, Kendall Kerew, Louis Bilionis, Neil Hamilton

Welcoming the new year with gratitude: Holloran Center Resolutions for 2024

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

What better time to reflect on professional identity formation than the new year, when so many of us are making resolutions for growth and improvement. Here are three of our resolutions for the Holloran Center’s continued formation:

We resolve to be grateful. We are grateful for the leadership of Tom Holloran, whose example of servant leadership inspires us. We are grateful for the work of scholars and teachers in other professions who have given us so many insights and inspiration. We are especially grateful to you, our colleagues engaged in this work of coaching, mentoring, and guiding our students in their transformation from student to lawyer.
We resolve to listen. This past year, we have learned so much from the questions and critiques posed by our colleagues. What do we really mean by formation? How is it different from the knowledge and skills transfer we aim to teach and provide? How do we assess development? How do or should concepts of professionalism and civility fit into professional identity? What about this idea of “identity”? How does that singular-sounding noun reconcile with our diverse cultures and values as individuals and communities? How do we ensure that the work of formation is shared and equitably by our entire community? Our understanding of our work has evolved with each question and challenge.
We resolve to share. Since 2013, over 400 scholars, teachers, and student services professionals from over 60 law schools have attended a Professional Identity Formation workshop or conference or symposium sponsored by the Holloran Center. We look forward to hosting at least three additional workshops in 2024: a conference for professional responsibility scholars and teachers in April, along with two summer workshops. We will continue to support others leading in this effort. We are also working to develop our online community: revising our databases of materials and inventories, and growing our blog and listserv. Let us know how we can help.

Happy New Year!

Neil, Jerry, David, Lou, Barb, Kendall, and Felicia

January 5, 2024 by hami3258

David Grenardo, Felicia Hamilton

Debunking the Major Myths Surrounding Mandatory Civility for Lawyers Plus Five Mandatory Civility Rules That Will Work

By Felicia Hamilton, Holloran Center Coordinator

David Grenardo, Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, recently won the prestigious Warren E. Burger award for his essay “Debunking the Major Myths Surrounding Mandatory Civility for Lawyers Plus Five Mandatory Civility Rules That Will Work.” This award honors research that contributes significantly to the field of professionalism, civility, ethics, and excellence.

Building on his previous scholarship on the importance of civility in the legal profession, Grenardo tackles common misconceptions that prevent widespread standardization and proposes five rules for holding lawyers accountable to practicing civility with colleagues, clients, and opposing counsel.

Read the abstract below:

Civility remains a problem in the legal profession. Teaching law students about civility is important, if not critical, but it is not enough. Entertaining CLEs on civility for lawyers make for a fun hour, but they also fall short. Calls for civility and calls to return to civility have become routine, yet they can ring hollow. Adding phrases about civility to the oaths lawyers take to practice sounds wonderful, but those oaths oftentimes lack accountability. Recognizing that our country is divided and toxic in the way we communicate with each other is accurate, but that similarly fails to solve the problem. And most of all, we are naïve to hope that some lawyers will make significant changes to their behavior in a profession riddled with systemic incivility just because others in the legal profession kindly ask them to do so. Systemic change requires significant changes to the system.

Part I of this Article provides an overview of civility in the legal profession. Part II describes mandatory civility in the legal profession. Part III raises the major myths of mandatory civility and responds to each of them. Part IV includes proposed mandatory civility rules, while Part V sets forth arguments against mandatory civility and responds to those arguments. This Article concludes that mandatory civility rules are necessary and practicable.

How many more calls to civility must we endure as civility continues to decline in society and the legal profession? How long will the legal profession continue to pay lip service to civility while the negative effects of incivility continue to plague the profession? Talking is not enough—leaders of the legal system need to act. State bars, state supreme courts, and, if necessary, state legislatures must take the step that four brave states already have—mandate civility.

Download the full article from SSRN here.

Felicia Hamilton is the Coordinator for the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

David Grenardo is a Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

October 12, 2023 by hami3258

Felicia Hamilton, Jerome Organ

“We’re Always Shaping People”: Podcast Interview with Jerry Organ, Co-Director of the Holloran Center

By: Felicia Hamilton, Holloran Center Coordinator

Jerry Organ, Bakken Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Our very own Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership, Jerry Organ, was recently featured on the Legal Docket segment of the podcast The World and Everything in It: September 11, 2023 Episode. Legal correspondent Jenny Rough speaks with Organ, along with hosts Mary Reichard and Nick Eicher, about the revision to Standard 303(b), which encourages law schools to provide opportunities for the development of a student’s professional identity.

In the interview, Organ emphasizes the importance of identity formation in a career that is focused on serving others:

Law school… [is] about developing a specialized knowledge base and a specialized set of skills that are directed toward serving others. So, part of professional school really is a shift from a kind of a self-focus to now acquiring knowledge, acquiring skills. I’m going to shift from being a student absorbing information to a lawyer who’s now serving others.” [1]

He also highlights the need for law students to have the opportunity to discover and test out their professional interests along with the importance of being able to process those experiences with a faculty mentor or advisor, noting that at the start of second and third years of law school there is a rich opportunity to help students process their summer experience and then plan for next steps on their journey.

Organ also speaks to the importance of having courses like St. Thomas’s Serving Clients Well intensive, which highlights communication and relationship skills and encourages students to focus on client service and to act in accordance with their values.

According to Organ, law schools are “always shaping people. We just have tended not to be very thoughtful about it. And what this new movement is really talking about is trying to help us as law professors and people involved in legal education be more intentional about what it is we want to be communicating to our students about what it means to be a lawyer.”

Listen to the full podcast episode and read the transcription here! The interview can be heard starting at 08:45.

[1] Rough, Jenny. “Legal Docket: Law and service.” The World and Everything in It, World News Group, September 11, 2023, https://wng.org/podcasts/legal-docket-law-and-service-1694291807.

Jerome Organ is the Bakken Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law

Felicia Hamilton is the Coordinator for the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

September 29, 2023 by hami3258