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.