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Jerome Organ

Announcement: Jerry Organ Appointed Interim Dean of School of Law

We are excited to share the news that Holloran Center Co-Director Jerry Organ will serve as Interim Dean of the University of St. Thomas School of Law for the 2026-27 Academic Year. In a letter to faculty and staff this week, Professor Organ reiterated his commitment to steward and build on the unique community of care we have here at the School of Law. As one of the founding faculty members of the law school, he has been living out the mission as a servant leader from the school’s inception, and we know he will sustain and foster our goals of love of student, love of neighbor, and love of knowledge.

A letter from Provost Eddy Rojas regarding this appointment is included below.

Dear School of Law Faculty and Staff,

As you know, Dean Dan Kelly has accepted an offer to become the next dean of the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. While we will miss Dan’s leadership and contributions to the University of St. Thomas School of Law, his appointment is also a meaningful recognition of the strength, reputation, and growing national profile of our law school.

Over the last several days, I have engaged in meaningful consultation with faculty and staff regarding the School of Law and the best way to proceed during this transition. I am grateful for the thoughtful group conversations, one-on-one discussions, and emails I have received. Your candor, wisdom, and evident care for the School of Law have been deeply helpful to me.

After listening carefully and discerning the best course of action, I have decided to appoint Professor Jerry Organ as interim dean of the School of Law, effective June 24. Jerry is widely respected within the School of Law, across the University, and nationally in legal education. He brings deep institutional knowledge, a steady and collaborative leadership style, and a longstanding commitment to the mission and excellence of the School of Law.

Professor Organ will serve as interim dean for the coming academic year while we conduct a national search for the next dean. During this period, our shared goal will be not simply to maintain the School of Law’s strong position, but to continue advancing its momentum, building on its many strengths, and sustaining its upward trajectory as one of the most mission-centered and respected law schools in the country.

The School of Law is in a very strong position. Our student outcomes, bar passage, employment results, national reputation, and distinctive mission all speak to the exceptional work of our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and leadership. This is a community with real momentum, a clear sense of purpose, and a deep commitment to forming lawyers who lead with integrity, excellence, and a concern for the common good.

I am grateful to Jerry for his willingness to serve in this important role, and I know he will benefit from the partnership and support of this outstanding community. I am also grateful to all of you for your dedication to the School of Law and for the thoughtful way you have engaged this transition.

My best,

Eddy Rojas, Ph.D.

Executive Vice President and Provost

June 10, 2026 by hami3258

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

(header photo, from L to R: Jerry Organ, Ben Madison, Barb Glesner Fines, Daisy Floyd, Timothy Floyd, Erika Pont, Neil Hamilton, David Grenardo)

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. The program 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, originally conceived by Patrick Longan, William Augustus Bootle Chair in Professionalism and Ethics, and further developed and taught by Longan and Daisy Hurst Floyd, University Professor of Law and Ethical Formation 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

Barbara Glesner FInes, Jerome Organ

New Open-Source Textbook: INTERVIEWING & COUNSELING IN THE PROSPECTIVE CLIENT CONSULTATION

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

The Holloran Center is pleased to announce a new resource for a key skill for professional identity formation. Co-Director of the Holloran Center & Bakken Professor of Law Jerry Organ and Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law, Dean Emerita of UMKC School of Law, and Holloran Center Fellow Barbara Glesner Fines have just published INTERVIEWING & COUNSELING IN THE PROSPECTIVE CLIENT CONSULTATION (eLangdell 2026).

Because the text holds a creative commons license, faculty can freely adopt and adapt the text for many different uses. Possible uses include:

A primary text in an interviewing and counseling course;
A secondary text in a lawyering skills course;
A resource to support client interviewing exercises in doctrinal or broader lawyering skills classes; and
Training materials to prepare students for clinics, externships, and competitions.

Because this is an open-source textbook, the materials are also free to students.

The text frames instruction in the context of the initial interview of a prospective client, although the counseling portion of the text goes beyond what many attorneys might actually address in an initial interview. The knowledge and skills addressed in the text can apply equally to any conversation with a client or others involved in a matter. The text provides ample opportunities for students to connect these skills to their ongoing conception of what it means to be an attorney, with practice problems representing diverse areas of practice and prompts for reflective writing or discussion.

You can access the book here: https://www.cali.org/books/interviewing-counseling-prospective-client-consultation.

Questions? Feel free to contact Jerry Organ (jmorgan@stthomas.edu) or Barbara Glesner Fines (glesnerb@umkc.edu).

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

Barbara Glesner Fines is the Dean and Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law.

May 18, 2026 by hami3258

Jerome Organ

Law School Transfer Data and Professional Identity Formation

By: 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

This blog posting updates my blog postings over the last several years regarding what we know about the transfer market, for example 2024 and 2023. With the ABA’s posting of the 2025 Standard 509 Reports, we now have more than a decade of detailed transfer data from which to glean insights about the transfer market among law schools, which has been in decline for most of the last decade. This posting also includes a section on transfer “feeder schools” and some reflections on whether and how law schools might be providing opportunities for professional identity formation for their transfer students. In addition, it speaks briefly to how changes in federal lending might impact the transfer market this summer.

Numbers of Transfers and Percentage of Transfers Decline to the Lowest Levels in the Last Decade

As shown in Table 1 below, the number of transfer students received by law schools in 2025 decreased nearly 10% from 1194 to 1085, the smallest number of transfers in the last decade as well as the smallest percentage of transfer in the last decade, at 2.7%. Notably, these numbers/percentages are essentially half of where the transfer market was in 2014. Aside from slight bumps in 2017, 2020, and 2024, there has been a continuous gradual decline in transfers over the last several years – from nearly 2200 to less than 1100 and from 5.5% of first-years to 2.7%.

TABLE 1 – Number of Transfers and Percentage of Transfers from 2014-2025

Figure 2 shows this in graph form:

As noted in my previous blogs, I believe the consistent decline in transfers is directly related to the increase in scholarship assistance over the last decade, including the elimination of conditional scholarships at dozens of law schools, which has made the financial calculus associated with transferring much less attractive. (The ABA defines a “conditional scholarship” as any scholarship “the retention of which is dependent upon the student maintaining a minimum grade point average or class standing” other than good standing. The number of law schools with conditional scholarship dropped from roughly 140 in 2011 to fewer than 70 as of 2023.) If a student were going to be paying full tuition at a given law school either because they did not receive a scholarship or lost a conditional scholarship and could transfer to a much higher ranked law school in the region for only marginal additional cost (and perhaps without having to move), transferring might make sense. But if a student has to forego scholarship assistance and absorb significantly more financial cost to transfer, then staying at the student’s initial law school makes more sense.

In addition, with the dramatic improvement in employment outcomes across law schools generally, with 81% of May 2024 graduates landing full-time, long-term bar passage required positions, the likelihood of having significantly better employment prospects at a school to which one might transfer also seems less compelling.

Finally, with the change in federal direct lending under the Trump Administration, there may be another financial factor that functions to discourage transfers this coming summer. Under the federal lending rules presently being promulgated, the legacy provision for first-year law students who first borrowed prior to July 1, 2026, which allows them to remain under the prior direct lending regime rules will be lost if students transfer to another law school this summer or transfer or change programs at any time during their course work. For some subset of potential transfer students that shift might provide a sufficient financial disincentive to keep them from transferring. (I am grateful to Monica Konate at AccessLex Institute for this insight.)

SOME LAW SCHOOLS CONTINUE TO DOMINATE THE TRANSFER MARKET

Table 2 below lists the top 15 law schools participating in the transfer market in descending order in Summer 2022 (fall 2021 entering class), Summer 2023 (fall 2022 entering class), Summer 2024 (fall 2023 entering class), and Summer 2025 (fall 2024 entering class)

(Note that in Table 2, Table 4, and Table 5 the “repeat players” are bolded – those schools in the top 15 for all four years are in black, those schools in the top 15 for three of the four years are in blue.) Eight of the top 15 for 2025 have been on the list for taking in the largest number of transfers all four years: Columbia, George Mason, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard, NYU, Northwestern, and UC Berkeley. Four others have been on the list for three of the four years: Arizona State, Florida, Florida International, and UCLA. Table 2 also shows that for 2025, the concentration of transfers in the top 15 law schools for transfers exceeded 50%, the highest percentage over the last four years.

TABLE 2 – Largest Law Schools by Number of Transfers from 2022-2025

As shown in Table 3 below, if we focus just on the top ten law schools for transfers in, the total number of transfers is 463 – 43% of all transfers – the highest percentage in the last decade.

TABLE 3 – Totals for Top Ten Law Schools for Transfers In as a Percentage of All Transfers for 2014-2025

In terms of law schools with the highest percentage of transfers in as a percentage of their previous year’s first-year class, as shown below in Table 4, seven law schools have been on the list each of the last four years – Florida State, George Mason, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard, NYU, and Northwestern. Six law schools have been on the list three times in the last four years – Columbia, Florida, Florida Int’l, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Vanderbilt. The number of law schools welcoming transfers representing 20% or more of their first-year class has fallen from nine in 2013 (not shown), to only one in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

TABLE 4 – Largest Law Schools by Transfers as a Percentage of Previous First-Year Class – 2022-2025

It is also worth noting that in addition to having some regular “players” in the transfer market, there are a large number of law schools that are not meaningful participants in the transfer market. On average over the three years from 2023-2025, over half of ABA-accredited law schools (103) had two or fewer transfers in, while over 20% (42) had no transfers at all.

TRANSFER FEEDER SCHOOLS

There also are some law schools that appear consistently in the list of top feeder schools for transfers as shown below in Table 5. These fifteen schools have been responsible for roughly 25-30% of transfer students in each of the last four years.

TABLE 5 – Largest Law Schools by Transfers Out for 2022-2025

Five law schools have been on the list of top transfer out law schools in each of the last four years – American University, Brooklyn Law School, George Washington University, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, and the University of Maryland. There are two additional law schools on the list in three of the last four years: Nova Southeastern and University of Miami.

Notably, one of these schools – George Washington University – shows up on both the transfer out in Table 5 and the transfer in list above in Table 2. They are losing students to higher-ranked law schools and then back-filling with their own transfers from lower-ranked schools.

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL MARKETS –

Starting in December 2014, the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar began collecting and requiring law schools with 12 or more transfers in to report not only the number of students who have transferred in, but also the law schools from which they came (indicating the number from each law school). In addition, the law schools with 12 or more transfers in had to report the 75%, 50% and 25% first-year law school GPAs of the students who transferred in. This allows one to look at where students are coming from and are going to, as well as the first-year GPA profile of students transferring in to different law schools.

Table 6 below focuses on the eight law schools in Table 2 that have been among the top 15 in terms of number of transfers in for each of the last four years, presented in descending U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News) rank. Table 6 indicates the extent to which these seven law schools were attracting transfers from the geographic region in which they are located and highlights that the transfer market, to some extent, is a set of regional sub-markets.

TABLE 6 – Percentage of Transfers from Within Geographic Region 2023-2024-2025 and Top Feeder School for 2025 at Each of the Eight Law Schools among the Top 15 for Transfers In for 2023, 2024, and 2025

Six of the eight law schools had at least 48% of their transfers from the region in which they were located in 2025, with UC Berkeley having at least 83% of their transfers from the geographic region within which the law school is located for the last three years. On the other hand, Harvard is the only law school to have 35% or fewer transfers from its own region all three years, while NYU is the only other law school to have less than half of its transfers from its own region all three years.

When one looks at the transfer out schools in Table 5 in comparison with the transfer in schools in Table 2, one can see some of the regional realities. In the Mid-Atlantic, American and George Washington, were the primary transfer feeder schools for Georgetown in 2025, with George Washington and George Mason receiving a number of transfers from American as well. In California, the University of California College of Law San Francisco, is the major transfer feeder school for the University of California Berkeley, whileUC Irvine, Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine were the primary feeder schools for University of California Los Angeles in 2025. George Washington in the Mid-Atlantic region, Fordham in the Northeast, and Loyola Marymount and UC Davis are the unique players in their respective regions as they tend to lose a significant number of transfers and also accept a significant number of transfers

Table 6 also identifies the law school that provided the largest number of transfers to each listed law school in 2025, as well as the percentage of transfers that came from that school. Four of the eight law schools had a significant percentage (more than 20%) of their 2025 transfers in from one feeder school – UC Berkeley with 36% from UC San Francisco, George Washington and Georgetown, with 33% and 24% of their transfers coming from American; and Northwestern with 21% of its transfers from Loyola Chicago.

Notably, six of the eight law schools that have been the most consistent players in the transfer market over the last four years are on the East Coast (Columbia, George Mason, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard and NYU), while one is in the Midwest (Northwestern) and one is in California (UC Berkeley).

VARIED QUALITY OF THE TRANSFER POOL

Table 7 below shows the tiers of law schools from which these eight largest law schools in the transfer market for each of the last four years received their transfer students. Six of the eight law schools that consistently have high numbers of transfers in are ranked in the top 15 in U.S. News, while the other two are ranked 31 (George Mason and George Washington).

TABLE 7 – Percentage of Transfers from Different Tiers of School(s) for 2023, 2024, and 2025 at the Eight Law Schools Among the Top 15 for Transfers in 2023, 2024, and 2025

(Bolded data indicates the modal percentage response for each law school.)

Three of the eight law schools – Harvard (no lower than 78%), NYU (no lower than 60%) and Columbia (no lower than 57%) – have consistently had large percentages of their transfers from law schools ranked between 1 and 50 in the U.S. News rankings. By contrast, in 2024 and in 2025, two of these eight law schools had more than 50% of their transfers from law schools ranked 101 or lower (George Mason (70% and 81%, respectively) and George Washington (54% and 61%, respectively)).

TABLE 8 – First-Year Law School 75^th/50^th/25^th GPA of Transfers in 2023, 2024, 2025 at the Eight Law School among the Top 15 for Transfers in 2023, 2024, 2025

Table 8 above highlights the reported GPAs of transfers in for these eight law schools. In looking at Table 8, one quickly sees that of the five law schools ranked in the U.S. News top 15, only one – Harvard – has a 50th GPA for transfers that is consistently 3.9 or above, and a 25th GPA that is consistently 3.83 and above. Harvard also is accepting most of its transfers from top 50 law schools, making it clear that it is accepting transfers in who could have been admitted to Harvard in the first instance.

The other four top 15 law schools – NYU, Columbia, Northwestern, and UC Berkeley — are a step below in terms of the credentials of their transfers, with 50th GPAs between3.87 and 3.65, across the three years and with 25th GPAs between 3.76 and 3.50 across the three years. In 2025, over 65% of UC Berkeley’s, Northwestern’s, and Georgetown’s transfers were from law schools ranked 51 or lower. For these three law schools, with a majority of their transfers coming from law schools ranked outside the top 50, many of these transfer students may not have had the credentials to be admitted as first-year students at these law schools.

Once you drop out of the top 15, the other two law schools – George Washington and George Mason – each has had a 50th GPA well below that of the other law schools on the list and 25th GPAs that drop to 3.26 or lower with one exception. With 80% or more of these transfers coming from law schools ranked 51 or lower, these law schools clearly are welcoming a number of transfer students whose entering credentials almost certainly were sufficiently distinct from each of those law schools’ entering class credentials such that the transfer students they are admitting would not have been admitted as first-year students in the prior year.

STILL MANY UNKNOWNS

As I have noted for the last few years, these more detailed transfer data from the ABA should be very helpful to prospective law students and pre-law advisors, and to current law students who are considering transferring. These data give them a better idea of what transfer opportunities might be available depending upon where they are planning to go to law school (or are presently enrolled as a first-year student).

Even with these more granular data now available, however, there still are a significant number of unknowns relating to transfer students, particularly regarding gender and ethnicity of transfer students and performance of transfer students at their new law school (both academically and in terms of bar passage and employment).

With the increased emphasis on professional identity formation reflected in ABA Standard 303(b)(3) and (c), there may be questions about how law schools are addressing professional identity formation for transfer students, particularly at those law schools that have added a first-year course/program focused on professional development or professional identity formation.

Are these law schools requiring transfers to take these courses with their incoming first-year students? Are there specific professional development or professional identity formation courses structured for transfer students at those law schools with a significant cohort of transfer students (10-15 or more)? Are there better ways to address the professional identity formation of transfer students that would help them integrate into the law school community where they are transferring? These are questions for which additional research would be warranted.

Please feel free to contact me at jmorgan@stthomas.edu should you have any comments or questions.

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

April 28, 2026 by hami3258

Jerome Organ

Continuing Strong Employment Outcomes for the Class of 2025

by Jerry Organ, Bakken Professor of Law and Holloran Center Co-Director

I am writing to follow up on my employment outcomes blog for the class of 2024 with an analysis of the employment outcomes for the class of 2025. The ABA will be releasing data on employment outcomes for 2025 graduates of all ABA-accredited law schools in the coming days. I went and gathered the data from those ABA-accredited law schools that have posted their employment outcomes on their website – comprising 185 of the 191 law schools outside of Puerto Rico. (Data were not available for Belmont, Emory, North Carolina Central, Northern Illinois, Ohio Northern and Texas Southern as of April 21.)

Increase in Percentage of Graduates in Full-Time, Long-Term Bar Passage Required Positions Despite Decrease in Number of Graduates in Such Positions

Across these 185 ABA-accredited law schools outside of Puerto Rico, the number of graduates between 2024 and 2025 decreased by 2,266, from 37,662 to 34,928, but the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required jobs decreased by only 1,716 – from 30,934 to 29,218!

As a result, these 185 law schools once again saw the percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions increase from 82.1% to 83.7% — the highest rate since records have been maintained.

First Decline in Several Years in the Number of Graduates in Full-Time, Long-Term Bar Passage Required Positions

For the graduating class in 2014, nearly 25,000 graduates found full-time, long-term bar passage required jobs. For the next several years, from 2015-2020, the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required jobs fluctuated between a low of roughly 22,800 and a high of 24,500.

Since 2021, the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions has been on the rise – 26,500 in full-time, long-term bar passage positions for 2021 graduates, 27,700 for 2022 graduates, 27,900 for 2023 graduates and roughly 31,500 for 2024 graduates, the highest number ever, surpassing the previous high of roughly 30,500 for the graduating class in 2007, just prior to the great recession. While the class of 2025 reflects the first year-over-year decline in several years in the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions, this is not surprising given that there was a significant decline (roughly 6%) in the number of graduates between 2024 and 2025.

Vast Majority of Law Schools and States Saw Increases in the Percentage of Graduates in Full-Time, Long-Term Bar Passage Required Positions

Across the 185 schools for which information is available, 120 saw an increase in the percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions, while 4 were flat and 61 saw a decrease. This means nearly two-thirds of law schools saw an increase in the percentage of graduates in full-time, long term bar passage required positions in the class of 2025.

For the class of 2023, 60 law schools had 85% or more of their graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required position. That number grew to 76 for the class of 2024, and to 85 for the class of 2025.

For the class of 2023, 20 law schools had 90% or more of the graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions. That number increased to 28 for the class of 2024 and to 37 for the class of 2025.

When one looks at this on a state-by-state basis, one sees strong results as well. There were 37 states that saw an increase in the percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions between the class of 2024 and the class of 2025, with one flat and 12 that saw a decrease. Seventeen states – one-third – had more than 85% of the graduates of law schools in each of those states in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions, up from eleven for the class of 2024.

Possible Explanations

What might explain this growing appetite for law grads in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions?

I think the most likely explanation is demographic. The attorneys that started the significant, sustained growth in the legal profession in the late 1970s and early 1980s are finally starting to retire or pass away in significant enough numbers to counterbalance new entrants into the legal profession, with new entrants also at a smaller number than a decade ago given the right-sizing of law school enrollment in response to the great recession.

It appears that the number of lawyers exiting the marketplace has increased sufficiently over the last decade that more full-time, long-term bar passage required positions were available to 2024 law school graduates than ever before with the demand remaining robust for 2025 law school graduates given the increased percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions.

While we may have reached a point where the market for lawyers has “matured” and reached a “new normal” in terms of having a number of annual exits from the legal profession that more closely equals the number of new entrants each year, after the class of 2026, the classes of 2027 and 2028 will see increases in the number of graduates (based on increased first-year enrollment in fall 2024 and fall 2025) that may not be matched by the available jobs in the legal services market particularly given the potential impact of artificial intelligence.

It is possible that the class of 2024 will be the high-water mark for the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions while the class of 2025 will represent the high-water mark in terms of the percentage of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required positions.

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

April 22, 2026 by hami3258

David Grenardo, Jerome Organ, Neil Hamilton

Faculty Statement and Call to Action

January 29, 2026

Dear Community,

The University of St. Thomas School of Law is inspired by justice, guided by faith, grounded in reason, committed to excellence, and devoted to advancing the common good. As faculty members of the School of Law, we write in our individual capacities to express our deep concern for our community and our country in light of the actions of some agents of DHS, ICE, and the Border Patrol that reflect a disregard for human dignity and the common good and a disregard for the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

As members of a Catholic university we are guided by our obligation to recognize in all the human dignity with which they are endowed as people made in the image of God. We are guided by Catholic Social Teaching which challenges us to live our lives in support of the common good in solidarity with our brothers and sisters and with a preferential option for the poor and marginalized.

Over the past two months, our streets have been flooded with federal agents wearing masks, holding machine guns, boxing in U.S. citizens while waving guns in their faces, demanding people to show proof of citizenship. Many of these people are people of color who are U.S. citizens but have been stopped based on the color of their skin. Additionally, people in our community shelter in their houses for fear of unlawful detainment. People are being detained without constitutionally required judicial warrants. Some members of our community, including some of our own students and faculty, travel to work or school each day in terror, many of whom now feel the need to carry their passports for fear of being stopped unlawfully and detained. Most importantly, we have suffered the profoundly unnecessary loss of life—Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

As law professors seeking to educate succeeding generations of law students to fulfill their responsibilities as lawyers with an understanding of their special responsibility to support the rule of law, we are deeply disturbed and heartbroken at the violations of the Constitution and the rule of law by some agents of DHS, ICE, and the Border Patrol. Two of the foundational principles that undergird the rule of law include equality under the law and due process. Equality demands that everyone is equal under the law and that no one, including the government, is above the law. Due Process requires that people receive robust legal processes before their rights are impaired by the government.

We applaud leaders in our community who continue to stand for justice and the rule of law. The Honorable Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz of the federal district court in Minnesota, who is also one of the founders of the University of St. Thomas School of Law, called out ICE’s brazen disregard for the law as the judiciary attempts to ensure accountability for unlawful actions by ICE here in the Twin Cities. In a recent order, Chief Judge Schiltz stated, “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”

The School of Law’s mission calls us to search for truth. We call for a vigorous effort to find the truth and to hold accountable those who have committed crimes.

With heartful respect,

Brenda Arndt

Tom Berg

Jennifer Cornell

David Grenardo

Daniel Griffith

Neil Hamilton

Julie Jonas

Robert Kahn

Sarita Matheson

Dennis Monroe

Rachel Moran

Jerry Organ

Julie Oseid

Michael Paulsen

Charles Reid

Michael Robak

Hank Shea

Gregory Sisk

Susan Stabile

Carl Warren

Virgil Wiebe

Professor Elizabeth Schiltz, as the spouse of a federal judge, is unable to join public statements about matters that might come before the federal courts.

January 30, 2026 by hami3258

Jerome Organ

The Intersection of Professional Identity Formation and the Rule of Law

In a fast-paced, energized 24-hours, over 50 participants gathered on October 24 and 25, 2025 at the University of St. Thomas School of Law for the Holloran Center’s Workshop on Professional Identity Formation and the Rule of Law.

Participants included law professors and law school administrators from nearly 30 law schools along with some St. Thomas law students and representatives from the American Bar Association and West Academic.

The Workshop was a culmination of the efforts of the Rule of Law Working Group, a joint enterprise of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions and the “Pluralizing” Legal Professional Identity: Democracy, Equity, Justice, and the Law School Curriculum project led by Eduardo Capulong, and funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The rule of law has long been embedded in the Holloran Center’s foundational professional identity norms:

a deep responsibility and commitment to serving clients, the profession, and the rule of law;

a commitment to pro-active continuous professional development toward excellence at all the competencies needed to serve others well in the profession’s work.

Earlier this year, however, the Holloran Center team came to appreciate that just as professional identity formation has been underemphasized in legal education, the rule of law likewise has not received sufficient attention. In response, the Rule of Law Working Group was created to generate a Rule of Law Learning Outcome and a Holloran Competency Milestone to support legal educators around the country interested in helping students learn more about the rule of law and their special responsibility as lawyers to support the rule of law.

The Workshop included twenty demonstrations of teaching materials focused on the intersection of professional identity formation and the rule of law in a variety of contexts – first-year orientation, lawyering skills, professional responsibility, experiential courses, doctrinal courses. Presenters had the opportunity to model a small portion of their teaching activity, while participants experienced the lesson as students. Each session also offered the opportunity for participants to give feedback, discuss further opportunities for learning, and celebrate successes.

Presenters shared their teaching materials so each participant can replicate the lessons and work to embed professional identity formation and the rule of law into their teaching and programming at their respective law schools.

Regardless of their roles at their law schools, participants found the materials full of opportunities to engage the rule of law in a way that brings students together to dialogue about foundational principles without being partisan or divisive. Participants recognized that being more intentional about engaging rule of law concepts in the context of professional identity formation reaffirms a collective commitment to justice, accountability, and the common good.

The Holloran Center is grateful for the generous support for the Workshop from The Program for Character and Leadership at Wake Forest University and from West Academic (A BARBRI Company). West Academic will be working with the Rule of Law Working Group to distribute the teaching materials presented at the Workshop. Stay tuned for more details!

The Holloran Center’s next event focused on professional identity formation will be on Saturday, April 25, 2026, when we gather for the University of St. Thomas Law Journal Symposium and the First Annual Holloran Center Conference and Awards Dinner.

November 18, 2025 by gren2380

Jerome Organ

Law School Transfer Data and Professional Identity Formation

By: 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

This blog posting updates my blog postings over the last several years regarding what we know about the transfer market, for example 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020. With the ABA’s posting of the 2024 Standard 509 Reports, we now have more than a decade of detailed transfer data from which to glean insights about the transfer market among law schools, which has been in decline for most of the last decade. This posting also includes a section on transfer “feeder schools” and some reflections on whether and how law schools might be providing opportunities for professional identity formation for their transfer students.

Numbers of Transfers and Percentage of Transfers Remain Essentially Flat at the Lowest Levels in the Last Decade

As shown in Table 1 below, the number of transfer students received by law schools in 2024 increased slightly from 1162 to 1194, the second smallest number of transfers in the last decade, but as a percentage of first-year students, it remained flat at 3.0%. For the last several years, the transfer market had been shrinking, having declined from 5.5% in 2014, to 4.7% in 2016, to 3.4% in 2019, and then to 3.0% in 2022, where it has remained in 2023 and 2024. Aside from a slight bump in 2017, and another bump in 2020, there has been a continuous gradual decline in transfers over the last several years – from nearly 2200 to less than 1200 and from 5.5% of first-years in the previous fall to 3.0% (both down over 45%).

TABLE 1 – Number of Transfers and Percentage of Transfers from 2014-2024

After an increase in transfers in 2020, we saw declines in 2021 (to 1375 and 3.6%), 2022 (to 1231 and 3.0%), and 2023 (to 1162 and 3.0%) – the lowest number and percentage in a decade. While the number of transfers increased slightly in 2024, because there was a corresponding increase in the number of first-years, the percentage remained flat at 3.0%.

As I noted in my previous blogs, I believe the consistent decline in transfers is directly related to the increase in scholarship assistance over the last decade, including the elimination of conditional scholarships at dozens of law schools, which has made the financial calculus associated with transferring much less attractive. (The ABA defines a “conditional scholarship” as any scholarship “the retention of which is dependent upon the student maintaining a minimum grade point average or class standing” other than good standing. The number of law schools with conditional scholarship dropped from roughly 140 in 2011 to fewer than 70 as of 2023.) If a student were going to be paying full tuition at a given law school either because they did not receive a scholarship or lost a conditional scholarship and could transfer to a much higher ranked law school in the region for only marginal additional cost (and perhaps without having to move), transferring might make sense. But if a student has to forego scholarship assistance and absorb significantly more financial cost to transfer, then staying at the student’s initial law school makes more sense.

SOME LAW SCHOOLS CONTINUE TO DOMINATE THE TRANSFER MARKET

Table 2 below lists the top 15 law schools participating in the transfer market in descending order in Summer 2021 (fall 2020 entering class), Summer 2022 (fall 2021 entering class), Summer 2023 (fall 2022 entering class), and Summer 2024.

(Note that in Table 2, Table 4, and Table 5 the “repeat players” are bolded – those schools in the top 15 for all four years are in black, those schools in the top 15 for three of the four years are in blue.) Seven of the top 15 for 2024 have been on the list for taking in the largest number of transfers all four years: Columbia, Florida, George Mason, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard, and Northwestern. Four others have been on the list for three of the four years: Arizona State, NYU, UC Berkeley, and UCLA. Table 2 also shows that for 2024, the concentration of transfers in the top 15 law schools for transfers remained near 50%, down just slightly from 2023.

TABLE 2 – Largest Law Schools by Number of Transfers from 2021-2024

As shown in Table 3 below, if we focus just on the top ten law schools for transfers in, the total number of transfers is 481 – 40% of all transfers – the second highest percentage in the last decade.

TABLE 3 – Totals for Top Ten Law Schools for Transfers In as a Percentage of All Transfers for 2014-2024

In terms of law schools with the highest percentage of transfers in as a percentage of their previous year’s first-year class, as shown below in Table 4, nine law schools have been on the list each of the last four years – Florida, Florida State, George Mason, Georgetown, George Washington, Harvard, Northwestern, UNLV, and Vanderbilt. Three law schools have been on the list three times in the last four years – Chicago, Florida Int’l, and NYU. Four schools have been on the list in two of the last four years – Arizona State, Columbia, Houston and UCLA. The number of law schools welcoming transfers representing 20% or more of their first-year class has fallen from nine in 2013 (not shown), to none in 2019, four in 2020, two in 2021, and only one in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

TABLE 4 – Largest Law Schools by Transfers as a Percentage of Previous First-Year Class – 2021-2024

TRANSFER FEEDER SCHOOLS

TABLE 5 – Largest Law Schools by Transfers Out for 2021-2024

Six law schools have been on the list of top transfer out law schools in each of the last four years – American, Brooklyn Law School, George Washington University, Nova Southeastern, University of California College of the Law – San Francisco, and the University of Miami. There are three additional law schools on the list in three of the last four years: Barry University, University of Maryland, and Touro University.

NATIONAL AND REGIONAL MARKETS –

Table 6 below focuses on the seven law schools in Table 2 that have been among the top15 in terms of number of transfers in for each of the last four years, presented in descending U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News) rank. Table 6 indicates the extent to which these seven law schools were attracting transfers from the geographic region in which they are located and highlights that the transfer market, to some extent, is a set of regional sub-markets.

TABLE 6 – Percentage of Transfers from Within Geographic Region 2022-2023-2024 and Top Feeder School for 2024 at Each of the Seven Law Schools among the Top 15 for Transfers In for 2022, 2023, and 2024

Five of the seven law schools had at least 44% of their transfers from the region in which they are located. Two of these seven law schools, Northwestern and Florida, obtained 50% or more of their transfers from the geographic region within which the law school is located for the last three years. On the other hand, Harvard is the only law school to have 35% or fewer transfers from its own region all three years, while Georgetown is the only other law school to have less than half of their transfers from its own region all three years.

When one looks at the transfer out schools in Table 5 in comparison with the transfer in schools in Table 2, one can see some of the regional realities. In the state of Florida, Nova Southeastern and Miami, followed by Barry University and to a lesser extent, St. Thomas University and Stetson, are transfer feeder schools for the University of Florida Levin College of Law, and to a lesser extent for Miami, Florida International, and Florida State, who received a number of those transfers. In the Mid-Atlantic, American, George Washington, and to a lesser extent Maryland, Baltimore, and Catholic are transfer feeder schools for Georgetown, with George Washington and George Mason receiving a number of transfers, too. In California, the University of California College of Law San Francisco, and to a lesser extent Loyola Marymount and Southwestern are transfer feeder schools for the University of California Berkeley and University of California Los Angeles. Miami, George Washington, and Loyola Marymount are the unique players in each region as they tend to lose a significant number of transfers and also accept a significant number of transfers.

Table 6 also identifies the law school that provided the largest number of transfers to each listed law school in 2024, as well as the percentage of transfers that came from that school. One of the seven law schools had a significant percentage (more than 20%) of its transfers in from one feeder school – George Washington with 25% of its transfers coming from American (which also was the biggest supplier of transfers to Georgetown and George Mason!). Similarly, Northwestern took 20% of its transfers from Loyola Chicago.

Notably, six of the seven law schools that have been the most consistent players in the transfer market over the last four years are on the East Coast (Columbia, Florida, George Mason Georgetown, George Washington, and Harvard) while one is in the Midwest (Northwestern).

VARIED QUALITY OF THE TRANSFER POOL

Table 7 below shows the tiers of law schools from which these seven largest law schools in the transfer market for each of the last four years received their transfer students. Four of the seven law schools that consistently have high numbers of transfers in are ranked in the top 15 in U.S. News, while the other three are ranked between 31 (George Mason and George Washington) and 38 (Florida).

TABLE 7 – Percentage of Transfers from Different Tiers of School(s) for 2022, 2023, and 2024 at the Seven Law Schools Among the Top 15 for Transfers in 2022, 2023, and 2024

(Bolded data indicates the modal percentage response for each law school.)

Two of the seven law schools – Harvard (no lower than 72%) and Columbia (no lower than 55%) – have consistently had large percentages of their transfers from law schools ranked between 1 and 50 in the U.S. News rankings. By contrast, in 2024, three of these seven law schools had more than 50% of their transfers from law schools ranked 101 or lower (Florida, George Mason, George Washington).

TABLE 8 – First-Year Law School 75th/50th/25thGPA of Transfers in 2022, 2023, and 2024 at the Seven Law Schools among the Top 15 for Transfers in 2022, 2023, and 2024

Table 8 above highlights the reported GPAs of transfers in for these seven law schools. In looking at Table 8, one quickly sees that of the four law schools ranked in the U.S. News top 15, only one – Harvard – has a 50th GPA for transfers in 2023 that is above 3.9, and a 25th GPA of 3.8 and above. Harvard also is accepting most of its transfers from top 50 law schools, making it clear that it is accepting transfers in who could have been admitted to Harvard in the first instance. Columbia is a close second, with all three of its metrics close to 0.1 below those of Harvard.

The other two top 15 law schools – Northwestern and Georgetown – are a step below in terms of the credentials of their transfers, with 50th GPAs of 3.8 and 3.69, respectively, and with 25th GPAs of 3.63 and 3.59, respectively, in 2024. In 2024, 60% or more of Northwestern’s and Georgetown’s transfers were from law schools ranked 51 or lower. For Georgetown and Northwestern, with a majority of their transfers coming from law schools ranked outside the top 50, many of these transfer students may not have had the credentials to be admitted as first-year students at Georgetown or Northwestern.

Once you drop out of the top 15, the other three law schools – Florida (3.51), George Washington (3.36) and George Mason (3.26) – each has a 50th GPA well below that of the other four law schools on the list and 25th GPAs that drop to 3.44, 3.19, and 3.14, respectively. With 80% or more of these transfers coming from law schools ranked 51 or lower, these law schools clearly are welcoming a number of transfer students whose entering credentials almost certainly were sufficiently distinct from each of those law schools’ entering class credentials such that the transfer students they are admitting would not have been admitted as first-year students in the prior year.

STILL MANY UNKNOWNS

Please feel free to contact me at jmorgan@stthomas.edu should you have any comments or questions.

I am very grateful for the help of research assistant Alena Stankaitis in compiling some of the information for this blog posting and for helpful comments from my colleague, David Grenardo.

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

May 6, 2025 by hami3258

Jerome Organ

Astonishingly Strong Employment Outcomes for the Class of 2024

By: 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

In January 2022, I posted a blog about the 10% increase in first-year enrollment across law schools in fall 2021, suggesting that the addition of roughly 3000-3500 law school graduates in May 2024 might mean employment challenges for some, particularly in states or regions that saw the largest increase in first-year students in fall 2021.

Was I ever wrong! The ABA will be releasing data on employment outcomes for 2024 graduates of all ABA-accredited law schools in the coming days. But I went and gathered the data from all ABA-accredited law schools to see how things turned out for the class of 2024, and the results are stunning! Absolutely, unbelievably stunning!!

Across all ABA-accredited law schools outside of Puerto Rico, the number of graduates between 2023 and 2024 increased by 3,710, from 34,845 to 38,555, but the number of graduates in full-time, long-term bar passage required [FTLT BPR] jobs increased by even more — 3,731 — from 27,854 to 31,585!

You read that right. The increase in the number of graduates in FTLT BPR jobs between 2023 and 2024 exceeded the increase in the number of graduates overall between 2023 and 2024.

As a result, despite adding roughly 3,700 law graduates, law schools saw the percentage of graduates in FTLT BPR positions increase from 79.9% to 81.9% — the highest rate since records have been maintained. This is truly astonishing!

Trend from 2014 to 2024

For the graduating class in 2014, nearly 25,000 graduates found FTLT BPR jobs.

For the next several years, from 2015-2020, the number of graduates in FTLT BPR jobs fluctuated between a low of roughly 22,800 and a high of roughly 24,500.

During this period, I began wondering whether the number of graduates passing the July bar exam might be imposing an upper limit on the number of graduates reported as being employed in FTLT BPR positions.

As shown in the table above, in 2014, the number of graduates in FTLT BPR positions was roughly 73% of those graduates from ABA-accredited law schools who were first-time passers on the July bar exam. By 2018, this percentage had increased to 97%. By 2020 and 2021, this percentage was over 99%. In 2022 and 2023, this percentage exceeded 100%. (These results can be more than 100% given that the ABA definition for bar passage required positions includes positions for which the graduate need not pass the bar (judicial clerk) as well as positions for which the graduate may not have passed the bar but is expected to pass the bar to continue in the position.) (The data for the number of graduates passing the July 2024 bar exam on their first try has not yet been released by the NCBE, but I expect the number to be between 29,500 and 30,000.)

Since 2021, the number of graduates in FTLT BPR positions has been on the rise – 26,500 in FTLT BPR positions for 2021 graduates, 27,700 for 2022 graduates, 27,900 for 2023 graduates and now roughly 31,500 for 2024 graduates, the highest number ever, surpassing the previous high of roughly 30,500 for the graduating class in 2007, just prior to the great recession.

These data points for the classes of 2020 through 2023 suggest that perhaps the market for law grads who have passed the bar exam has been growing at a rate greater than the number of law grads who have actually passed the bar exam.

Possible Reasons for this Increase in Full-time, Long-Term Bar Pass Required Positions

What might explain this growing appetite for law grads in FTLT BPR positions?

The chart above shows that between 1980 and 2015 the number of lawyers increased from roughly 500,000 to 1,300,000. From 1980 to 2000, the legal profession added about 25,000 lawyers each year, dropping to roughly 20,000 lawyers being added each year between 2000 and 2015. But since 2015, there has been little meaningful growth in the legal profession.

While the number of law school graduates fell to roughly 35,000 by 2017, the number actually passing the bar and getting admitted to practice was even lower, probably less than 30,000 annually for the period from 2017 to 2023 (including July and February takers).

It appears that the number of lawyers exiting the marketplace – through death, retirement, concerns about well-being, or simply a desire to pursue a different calling – has increased sufficiently over the last decade that more FTLT BPR positions were available to 2024 law school graduates than ever before.

This could be a blip. It could be that demand for law school graduates who had passed the bar exam in recent years exceeded the number of eligible graduates such that there was a little bit of pent-up demand that was satiated with the larger class of graduates in 2024. So perhaps this will ultimately be seen as the high-water mark.

But if, in fact, we have reached a point where the market for lawyers has “matured” and reached a new normal in terms of having the number of annual exits from the legal profession roughly equal the number of new entrants each year, this could mean that law schools and law graduates can expect that the gap between the number of law graduates and the number of FTLT BPR positions will remain relatively narrow compared to historical trends as shown in the next chart.

Of course, it is hard to make predictions with much confidence given the current economic turbulence and risk of a recession, along with a possible decrease in government jobs and the challenges and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, given that the number of law graduates will be smaller in 2025 and 2026 than for the class of 2024, any decline in the number of FTLT BPR jobs available for graduates likely will be counterbalanced by having fewer graduates.

(I am thankful for helpful comments on earlier drafts from Jim Leipold and my Holloran Center colleagues, Neil Hamilton and David Grenardo.)

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

April 22, 2025 by hami3258

David Grenardo, Felicia Bennett, Jerome Organ, Neil Hamilton

“Current Issues in Profession Identity Formation” Workshop: An Energizing Gathering of PIF Advocates

By Felicia Bennett, Holloran Center Coordinator

The Holloran Center has hosted dozens of workshops over the past 20 years, and each one serves as a community gathering, a touchpoint in the evolution of the Professional Identity Formation movement, and a source of ideas and inspiration for us at the Center and for our participants. The most recent workshop that took place on February 28 and March 1 was no different. We welcomed a small but mighty group of 29 legal education professionals. There was representation from the faculty to the dean level along with several program directors and representatives of the Law School Admissions Council, AALS, and the American Bar Association. As a participant noted, there is something “magic” about breaking down silos across geography and discipline to bring people together under the organizing principle of PIF.

Our workshop’s theme was “Current Issues in Professional Identity Formation.” As law schools around the country work to integrate PIF into their curricula to address ABA Standard 303(b), there are many positive developments and, conversely, new challenges to making changes in a change-averse profession. Co-Directors Jerry Organ and Neil Hamilton set the stage by talking about the importance of a coherent and whole-building approach to PIF and how to overcome pushback from both students and faculty. Discussions also explored incorporating the rule of law into students’ professional identities and fostering upper-level collaborations with career services, clinics, and externships.

Perhaps the most energizing portion of the Workshop was four speed-sharing sessions in which our participants presented on how they are engaging PIF at their own institutions. The themes covered included:

Models for the integration of PIF
Structuring a first-year PIF course
Mentoring (lawyer/judge, faculty and peer)
Specific exercises to engage students in PIF concepts

During these presentations, it was exciting and humbling to see that what began as an idea about how to educate lawyers better has transformed into an organizing principle for many legal educators. We look forward to seeing some of the ideas generated at this Workshop, from large projects such as the formation of a PIF nonprofit to small but impactful changes such as PIF outreach to specific academic communities, come to fruition in coming years.

We are grateful to everyone who joined us here in Minneapolis to further the movement and foster deep, supportive connections with one another. We are also thankful for the support of our own community, namely Dean Dan Kelly – who offered opening remarks – and Uyen Campbell, Director of Mentor Externship, who spoke to the group about the award-winning program she leads.

As one participant noted in our closing session, ‘This is more than a conference—it’s the sharing and sense of community that make it so worthwhile.’

If you have any questions or if you would like to stay informed about future Holloran Center Workshops, we encourage you to contact us. You can reach all members of the Center by emailing holloranctr@stthomas.edu, or you may contact Jerry Organ, the driving force behind our Workshops, at jmorgan@stthomas.edu.

March 13, 2025 by hami3258

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