Louis Bilionis – Holloran Center Professional Identity Implementation Blog

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Ben Rigney, Daisy Floyd, Elisabeth Kincaid, Janice Craft, Katya Cronin, Kenneth Townsend, Leah Teague, Louis Bilionis, Neil Hamilton, Timothy Floyd

Leadership, Character, and Professional Identity: New Scholarship in the Journal of Legal Education, Volume 74, Number 1

By Felicia Bennett, Holloran Center Coordinator

The latest issue of the Journal of Legal Education offers a rich collection of articles addressing professional identity formation, leadership, and character development. Developed as a follow-up to the 2025 Leadership and Character in the Law Conference at Wake Forest University School of Law, this issue brings rising and distinguished scholars together to examine an increasingly central question of legal education: How can law schools form the leadership and judgment skills of law students so that they enter the profession with a values-driven approach to their role as both lawyers and citizens?

Readers of the Holloran Center’s blog will be familiar with the themes covered in these articles. Authors explore professional identity formation as a theory, the role and importance of virtues and values, leadership and character formation, the responsibilities of lawyers in times of institutional change, and the challenge that generative AI poses to the development of professional judgment skills.

This is the first of two posts that will highlight the scholarship in Volume 74 of the Journal of Legal Education. Today’s post contains the themes of professional identity formation as a theory and leadership and character development. We present these two themes together because they are at the core of the questions faced by legal education today: what are the human-centered skills and traits that law students need to acquire as they prepare to enter society as leaders, and how do law schools shape curricula and pedagogies to support this formation process?

The next post will cover articles on the topics of legal education during times of institutional change and generative AI and professional formation.

Below you will find article summaries with links to the scholarship and suggested, related reading on the Holloran Center Blog.

The Theory of Professional Identity Formation

Louis D. Bilionis & Neil W. Hamilton, “Professional Identity Formation As Theory and As Practice for the Education of a Lawyer,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Summer 2026).

This article examines the value of professional identity formation as a unifying theory of legal education that ties academic performance and bar passage, meaningful employment, and a client-centered mindset into the same pedagogical package.

Character, Values, and Leadership Development

Kenneth Townsend, “Leadership and Character in the Law: An Introduction From Kenneth Townsend,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Summer 2026).

Townsend introduces the importance of addressing leadership and character development in the face of internal and external pressures in the legal profession.

Leah Teague, “Fostering Future Difference-Makers: The Integration of Leadership Training in Law Schools,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Summer 2026).

This article highlights the critical responsibility that law schools have for developing character, professionalism, and ethics in students. With lawyers heavily represented in leadership positions across sectors, Teague argues that including training that prepares students to “serve and lead with integrity” is not optional.

Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, “Practicing Pietas: Character Development for Lawyers as Citizens,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Summer 2026).

This article draws connections between the trait of patriotism and the Augustinian/Thomist theory of piety, establishing a positive framework for a lawyer as a virtuous and engaged citizen.

Katya S. Cronin, “Conviction, Character, Courage: The Case for Integrating Values into the Professional Identity Formation of Tomorrow’s Lawyer-Leaders,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Summer 2026).

This article explores the role of leadership in the law and argues for the importance of reworking law school curricula to foster moral growth.

Timothy W. Floyd, “Moral Virtues, Professional Identity, and Leadership,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Summer 2026).

This article focuses on how the professional identity of lawyers can be framed as the front line of defense for the preservation of a societal commitment to the rule of law. Floyd posits that lawyers are uniquely positioned to serve as ethical leaders, provided they are formed to center values and virtues as part of their professional identity.

Benjamin Rigney & Janice Craft, “The Large Impact of Small Groups on the Character-Based Leadership Development of Law Students,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 74, No. 1 (Summer 2026).

This article highlights the role of lawyers as change agents and proposes that small-group work can play a vital pedagogical role in the formation of law students as future ethical leaders.

September 17, 2026 by
Celebration
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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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
Barbara Glesner FInes, David Grenardo, Jerome Organ, Louis Bilionis, Neil Hamilton

Standard 303 and the Development of Student Professional Identity: A Framework for the Intentional Exploration of the Profession’s Core Values

 

By Felicia Hamilton, Holloran Center Coordinator

Holloran Center Directors Neil Hamilton, Jerry Organ, and David Grenardo, along with Holloran Center Fellows Barbara Glesner Fines and Louis Bilionis recently co-authored an article that supplies a framework for understanding the core values of the legal profession. The authors’ intention is to guide legal educators into a thoughtful exploration of the nature of these values, and to encourage law school faculty and staff to make intentional choices around how their programs highlight them. Using the metaphor of a tree, the authors address the core values of the “trunk” (a sense of responsibility to those whom the professional serves and the commitment to professional development) and the “branch” values as codified into the Model Rules.

Read more in the abstract for “Standard 303 and the Development of Student Professional Identity: A Framework for the Intentional Exploration of the Profession’s Core Values” below:

Legal educators, following the change in ABA accreditation Standard 303(b)(3)[1], must face directly the question “what are the core values of the legal profession?” This article offers a framework both to help faculty and staff clarify their thinking on what are the profession’s core values and to spotlight the choices law schools need to consider in purposeful fashion.

The framework offered here should also help allay two concerns that faculty, staff, and students may have about core values of the profession.  One concern is that all statements of values are subjective in the sense that they are expressions of individual subjective preferences, beliefs, and attitudes.[2]  A second concern is that statements of values tend to privilege the traditional, and hence fail to reflect the diversity of the profession and the experience and views of marginalized members of the profession – particularly with respect to the elimination of bias, discrimination, and racism.[3]

On the first concern, the article analyzes first the core values of all the service professions to point out two core values foundational to all of them. The article then analyzes the legal profession’s core values articulated in the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, adopted with some variation by all fifty states. The fifty-state adoption of the Model Rules indicates a strong consensus on the core values of the profession.  On the second concern, the values framework offered here makes clear that elimination of bias, discrimination, and racism is among the profession’s core values, and that the profession should, on an ongoing basis, seek feedback widely regarding its core values, particularly from marginalized groups, and reflect on the feedback.

Part II outlines the ABA accreditation Standard 303 changes that require each law school to help students develop a professional identity through the intentional exploration of the values of the profession. This means the faculty and staff need to discern the values of the profession they want the students to explore.  Part III analyzes what is a professional identity?  Part IV provides a framework to help legal educators clarify their thinking about the profession’s core values.  The framework features some widely shared fundamental values for all the service professions, and locates also values particular to the legal profession. Part V explores how the core values of the profession in part IV connect to “successful legal practice.”  Part VI discusses cautionary arguments that traditional values like those in the Model Rules can privilege some groups and fail to account for the experiences and viewpoints of marginalized groups.

[1] Standards & Rules of Procedure for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 303(b)(3) (Am. Bar Ass’n 2023), [hereinafter Accreditation Standards], https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/legal_education_and_admissions_to_the_bar/standards/2023-2024/23-24-standards-ch3.pdf.

[2] See, e.g., Joseph Singer, Normative Methods for Lawyers, 56 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 899, 902-911 (2009).

[3] See discussion in Part VI of this article.

You can download the article from SSRN here.

Neil Hamilton is the Holloran 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 in Minnesota.

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

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.

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

Louis Bilionis is the Dean Emeritus and Droege Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.

October 24, 2023 by
Louis Bilionis, Neil Hamilton

Latest Article from Bilionis and Hamilton on ABA Revisions of 303(b) and (c) Published by NALP’s Professional Development Quarterly

NALP just published the third and final installment of Louis Bilionis and Neil Hamilton’s three-part series on the Standard 303 revisions. Part 1 and Part 2 appeared in the May and June 2022 editions of NALP’s PDQ, respectively.

The last article in the series, which is titled “Revised ABA Standards 303 (b) and (c) and the Formation of a Lawyer’s Professional Identity, Part 3: Cross-Cultural Competency, Equal Access, and the Elimination of Bias, Discrimination, and Racism,” can be read here.

September 28, 2022 by