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Greg Miarecki

Do These PIF Courses Really Matter?

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

Each spring semester, I teach our professional identity formation class, known as Fundamentals of Legal Practice. A good number of our students speak positively about the class. But each year, there are always a series of comments in the course evaluations along the lines of, “Why do I have to take this? This is a waste of time. I’d rather spend more time learning about constitutional law or contracts.” For years, I was pretty disappointed in this kind of response (even if it was a minority view). Then, several years into my PIF journey, I was at a Holloran Center retreat and learned that many of you who teach these classes get the same response. That support allowed me to take these kinds of comments with a grain of salt, continually reminding myself that my 25 years in the legal profession equipped me with skills and insights that brand new law students simply don’t have.

And, over the years, I get some support from unexpected sources. Last week, I was meeting with a Chicago firm – a senior partner and a junior associate. The junior associate graduated from our law school and took Fundamentals. At the outset of the meeting, the partner talked about what he wanted in junior lawyers – he needed responsiveness, focus on client service, someone who could build relationships, and be a leader – all things we talk about in Fundamentals. I chuckled a bit, turned to the junior associate and asked her if she’d ever taken a class focusing on those kinds of things. She looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then said, “Oh, that nonsense we listened to in 1L year” – clearly referring to our Fundamentals class.

The partner, intrigued, asked me to explain. I told him about what we taught in the class, and he enthusiastically responded that he loved the idea of the class. We both looked at the junior associate, who looked a bit confused and then sheepishly admitted, “I actually wish I had paid more attention to some of those sessions.”

Some of our students will “get it” right away. Some will eventually get it, perhaps years into the future. And some might never get it. If you ever need reinforcement and support for your PIF initiatives, just talk to alumni and employers – many of them appreciate what you’re doing!

If you would like to share your PIF successes or commiserate, then please connect with me on LinkedIn or email me at miarecki@illinois.edu.

November 16, 2023 by hami3258

Greg Miarecki

The Leadership Project

As part of our work on professional identity formation, the University of Illinois College of Law recently launched a Leadership Project that is designed to teach students about core principles of leadership. For many reasons, our profession is over-represented in leadership ranks. One only need look at the 45 U.S. Presidents (Grover Cleveland was one man, but two Presidents) for proof – 26 of them were trained as attorneys, two of them (Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama) from Illinois.

The Leadership Project begins in the 1L year, with three sessions of our Fundamentals of Legal Practice course focused on leadership. One class offers general principles of leadership, co-taught by our Dean and the CEO of Portillo’s Hot Dogs. The second class focuses on the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion when leading teams. The third and final class in the series focuses on leadership in the non-profit realm, recognizing that lawyers will be called to lead everything from condo boards to nations.

We invite 2Ls and 3Ls to continue with Leadership Project activities. Each year, we offer a series of lectures and classes focused on leadership, as well as two “book talks” – sessions that discuss selected books focused on leadership. During the past couple of years, we’ve hosted notable guests such as former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Lisa Holder White. And, together, we’ve read and analyzed a variety of books, including, for example, Barack Obama’s A Promised Land and Sam Walker’s The Captain Class. As part of the event planning process, we regularly reach out to student groups and encourage them to co-host Leadership Project events. This year, many of our events featured student moderators and discussants. In fact, each year, our Student Bar Association hosts a panel discussion of student leaders – moderated by students – as part of the Project.

Students who complete the required number of lectures, book talks, and classes are invited to participate in a half-day leadership retreat facilitated by an executive coach. Upon completing the retreat, students receive the designation of Leadership Scholar, which is added to their transcript. This month, we’re looking forward to graduating our second cohort of Leadership Scholars, and interest in the Project among our students continues to grow.

We’ve also expanded the Leadership Project beyond the student body, offering continuing legal education in this area to alumni and friends around the world. If you’re interested in learning more about the Leadership Project, or taking part in some of our events, please connect with me on LinkedIn or e-mail 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

April 4, 2023 by gren2380

Greg Miarecki

How Can You Increase Connection and Engagement with Students in a Professional Identity Formation Class You Teach? Be Vulnerable

As I discussed in a prior article, the University of Illinois College of Law has taught a required 1L professional identity formation class in since early 2015 – known as Fundamentals of Legal Practice. I teach the class each spring semester, and we cover a wide variety of topics, including the business of law, professional communications, personal branding, relationship building, client service, the importance of pro bono service, and leadership. Each year, usually sometime in February, I get some backlash from students. Some of them tend to be overwhelmed with the demands of the profession I discuss, and express some frustration and exasperation. Once in a while, students will complain that I “don’t get it,” because I went to law school a while ago, went to a T-14 school, and was a litigation partner in a large law firm for many years.

A year or so ago, I was discussing the topic of personal branding, and related a story about how I brought a sleeping bag to my first trial site, believing that I might need it given the long hours. I shared that, while I never actually used the sleeping bag during the trial, the act of bringing it had established me as someone who was willing to work hard. One of my students actually chastised me for taking such an extreme measure. To be honest, I’d never actually thought about why I brought that sleeping bag to the trial site – a trucking facility in Akron, Ohio – in the cold winter of 1999. And in the moment, it came to me why I had – I really didn’t know any better. I had never been part of a trial team before, and I didn’t have anyone in my family who was a lawyer to ask, “What’s a trial like?” So I told my students exactly that – I was new to the legal profession. No one had ever told me what a big trial was like. All I knew is that I’d have to work a lot, and I had a sleeping bag, so I brought it with me. My students’ response was surprising – many of them commented that they had no idea I was a “first generation law student” who didn’t really know my way around at the time. Several of them thanked me for making this “admission.” The act of showing some vulnerability seemingly allowed me to connect with students in a different way.

So this year, I decided to double down on the concept of vulnerability. At the outset of the class, I told my students about some of my foibles in the legal profession, including my highly inefficient 1L job search (sending out 250 form letters), a C in a constitutional law class my second year, a rough summer internship experience the same year, and terrible interviewing skills/habits during both OCI seasons. And I referred back to those “war stories” repeatedly during the course. In the end, I found it helpful to share some of my vulnerabilities with the students, and found most of them to be more engaged than previous classes. If you’re looking to engage your students in professional identity formation discussions, try telling them about some of your worst failures and how you recovered from them using the concepts you’re teaching. You might be pleasantly surprised!

Please feel free to contact me at miarecki@illinois.edu if you have any questions or comments.

March 9, 2023 by hami3258

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.

February 9, 2023 by hami3258