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barbara glesner fines

Generative AI and Preparing Students for a Transformed Legal Profession

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

One of the reasons that artificial intelligence presents such a dramatic opportunity for the legal profession to increase efficiency and quality is the ability of generative AI to do some of the “dull and dirty”[1] work of law practice. We already use artificial intelligence to do document review, e-discovery, financial auditing, legal research, draft contracts, and more. Increasingly, it will be used to gain even more efficiencies in delivering legal services. We have seen the grossest of errors in using AI without supervision by experts, but problems of hallucinations and clear errors will decline as models improve. Yet, research also indicates that AI can produce these documents better than novices but not as well as experts.[2] Thus, we will still need experts to monitor the use of generative AI to ensure accuracy, fairness, creativity, and other values beyond simple win-loss metrics. We will still need experts to guard against abuses of AI.

The problem for legal education and for the formation of professional identity is that the profound expertise needed to be able to monitor generative AI requires professional judgment and deep mastery. Independent professional judgment and mastery are not acquired by classroom learning alone; they are acquired as an experiential matter through the process of trial and error, coaching, reflection, and feedback.

If novice tasks are undertaken by generative AI rather than novice attorneys, where will we develop the pipeline for the expert attorneys who will be able to supervise generative AI? This is a dilemma we face with each technology that frees humans from tasks. Calculators may not have had an overall negative impact on mathematics understanding and problem solving skills,[3] but it has undoubtedly decreased the skills of mental mathematics. Navigation skills have decreased with the introduction of GPS.[4] How will generative AI affect the development of new attorneys’ problem solving skills and independent judgment? How will legal education and the profession ensure that the next generation of attorneys have opportunities to develop these skills alongside the use of this powerful new technology?

This dilemma is yet another reason that intentional opportunities for professional identity formation are critical. The core pedagogies that develop professional identity are the pedagogies of apprenticeship. The challenge will be to design these experiences so that students learn not only how to harness the efficiencies of AI but also learn the skills to question and critique the products of AI while maintaining a commitment to the values of responsibility, service, and integrity. The answer must entail educators incorporating the use of generative AI into legal education and into the training of novices so that they can have the experiences of making mistakes and exercising judgment while also learning how to effectively use generative AI to assist them in those judgments. Kirsten Davis (Stetson University College of Law) and Carolyn Williams (University of North Dakota Law School) have been facilitating a “Legal Writing and Generative AI Convo Group” with over 450 law faculty to explore some of these issues. Undoubtedly each law school is having these same conversations amongst the faculty. Using the framework of professional identity formation to guide these conversations can help us think more deeply about how generative AI will affect the competencies our students need and the pedagogies that will best help them to acquire those competencies.

[1] Andrew McAfee & Erik Brynjolfsson, Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future 1498 (2017).

[2] Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With AI, Chapter 8 (2024).

[3] Aimee J. Ellington, A meta-analysis of the Effects of Calculators on Students’ Achievement and Attitude Levels in Precollege Mathematics Classes, 34:5 J. Math Education 433 (2003).

[4] Lukáš Hejtmánek, Spatial Knowledge Impairment after GPS Guided Navigation: Eye-Tracking Study in a Virtual Town, 116 Int’l J. Human-Computer Studies 15 (August 2018).

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

October 7, 2024 by hami3258

Barbara Glesner FInes

Drawing Pictures as a Professional Identity Formation Tool

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

As a new academic year begins, it’s that “fresh box of crayons” time of year. And so time for artwork to help us in understanding what it means to be a professional.

For over two decades, I have begun my Professional Responsibility (PR) class with a drawing exercise in which I ask students to “draw a picture of a professional.”[1] You could use this exercise in any course as we want our students to think about their professional identity formation throughout law school. Over the years, some things have remained constant with the pictures produced from this exercise – for example, briefcases still appear as the most frequent symbol of professionals.

Some things have changed. Women began appearing in about 2002 even though I had plenty of female students in my PR classes prior to 2002. Images of wealth and status waxed and waned. This year, after a six-year hiatus from teaching the PR course, I again repeated the experiment to see if new trends and assumptions were emerging. Here is my brief analysis of the new picture of professionals my students are bringing into the PR course.

It’s still hard work. Those briefcases are still there, this year with a litigation cart full of exhibits and a file cabinet stuffed full.
Technology is ubiquitous. Laptops, cell phones, smart watches… they haven’t quite replaced the briefcase, but they appear nonetheless.
Women are professionals. It’s hard to discern demographic data with stick figures (the artistic abilities of our students vary widely), but about 50% of the professionals appear to be women.
Not all professionals are attorneys. Professional athletes once again appeared as “bonus professionals”
Clients are in the picture! For nearly every year in which I conducted this exercise, the professionals in the picture were there alone. Occasionally a judge would appear. One-third of this semester’s students had a client in the picture (which is the punchline of the exercise – “a professional keeps the client in the picture”). The increased experiential opportunities (and requirements) of today’s students may explain why their picture of a professional reflects this vision of a service professional.

If you would like to see your students’ images of professionals, here are some suggestions.

Think about timing. I like to use this as an assignment on the first or second day. It’s a good ice-breaker, the students don’t have any preset notions of what they are “supposed” to draw, and you can use the pictures to develop themes you will emphasize during the course. For example, I always end the exercise by emphasizing to students that, as service professionals, we need to keep the client “in the picture” and remember that there are others in the picture as well for whom we have responsibilities.
Think about the image you are looking for. I start with “professional” because I use the exercise in professional responsibility, but you could ask for images of clients, lawyers, judges, or advocates… or even abstract concepts like justice or fairness.
Emphasize to the students that artistic talent doesn’t matter and that symbols are welcome. Discourage the use of words. Let students know that you will be showing some or all of the pictures to the class. Emphasize that the assignment is anonymous and they need not claim their artwork.
Collect the pictures and quickly sort through them for thematic elements. Use the document camera and just show one picture after another, noting the themes that jump out at you. Students will laugh and relax, which enhances learning. Difficult subjects can be raised without a lot of elaboration. I’ve had pictures raisestudent concerns about inclusion, wellness, workload, debt, and other deeply personal and difficult subjects. When students see they are not alone in these concerns, it opens doors for conversations.
I have never followed up the exercise with a written reflection, but one certainly could do so effectively.
Needless to say, while this exercise gives me a great deal of formative assessment of student attitudes and assumptions, it is not for a grade.

For ourselves, too, drawing exercises can be an excellent tool for capturing snapshots of perspectives and as a catalyst for reflection and conversation about professional identity. Recently, I had the opportunity to ask a group of legal educators to complete this same exercise but with the prompt to “draw a picture of a law professor.” [2]

How do you picture your professional identity?

^[1] To read more about this exercise and see pictures from students from 2007-2017, see Barbara Glesner Fines, Picturing Professionals: The Emergence of a Lawyer’s Identity, 14 U. St. Thomas L.J. 437 (2018) available at: https://irlaw.umkc.edu/faculty_works/94.

[2] My article exploring the identity of law professors based on this exercise is forthcoming in Volume 2 of the Journal of Law Teaching and Learning (forthcoming 2024) at https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawteachingjournal/.

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

August 23, 2024 by hami3258

Patrick Longan

Mercer Law School to Host Symposium on Current Issues in Professional Identity Formation

By: Pat Longan, William Augustus Bootle Chair in Ethics and Professionalism
Director, Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism
Mercer University School of Law

On March 8, 2024, Mercer University Law School and the Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism will host a symposium on current issues in professional identity formation. The Mercer Law Review will publish the articles that emerge from the event.

The symposium is the 24^th annual Georgia symposium on professionalism and ethics. The series is funded by an endowment that resulted from the settlement of charges of litigation misconduct in a civil case in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia in the 1990’s. That same settlement endowed professorial chairs in ethics and professionalism at Mercer, the University of Georgia, Emory University, and Georgia State. The annual symposium rotates among those four schools.

Mercer’s 2024 symposium will have four main presenters, who will each be followed by two commentators.

David Grenardo of the University of St. Thomas School of Law will present on “How Law Schools Can Help Historically Underrepresented Students Develop Their Professional Identities.” Women, people of color, first gen college and first gen law students, and individuals from the LGBTQIA+ group may have a harder time with their professional identity formation, particularly if they do not have family members, role models, and/or mentors who are lawyers. When you add in structural and institutional racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, bias, and prejudice that are a part of the legal system, it makes it that much more difficult for historically underrepresented individuals to know where and how they will fit in as lawyers. David’s presentation will focus on what law schools can do for these students as they develop their professional identities.

The commentators for David’s presentation will be Barbara Glesner Fines from UMKC School of Law and Janice Craft from the University of Richmond School of Law.

Daisy Floyd from Mercer Law will speak on “The Role of Purpose in Professional Identity.” In Educating Lawyers, the Carnegie Report describes the apprenticeship of “identity and purpose” to emphasize the importance of grounding legal education—and the student’s emerging professional identity as a lawyer—in the public purposes of the profession. During the 1950’s, social scientists began to study the role of meaning and purpose in a person’s life, and the advent of positive psychology in the early 2000’s spurred an emerging body of empirical research on the importance of purpose to a fulfilled and meaningful life. This presentation will address what lessons legal educators can learn from purpose studies to inform our work on the formation of professional identity.

Ken Townsend from Wake Forest Law and Harmony Decosimo from Suffolk Law School will be Daisy’s commentators.

Kendall Kerew from Georgia State College of Law has chosen as her topic, “The Rule of Law, the Role of the Public Citizen, and Professional Identity Formation.” The Preamble of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct defines a lawyer as “a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice,” and charges lawyers as “public citizens” to “seek improvement of the law, access to the legal system, the administration of justice and the quality of service rendered by the legal profession” while also “further[ing] the public’s understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and justice system. . . .” This presentation will explore the intersection of the Preamble’s definition of lawyer with the intentional exploration of law student professional identity formation and training on cross-cultural competence, racism, and bias required by ABA Standards 303(b)(3) and 303(c) as a means to help students discern their role as future lawyers and empower students in their duties to protect the rule of law as the foundation of democracy, provide access to justice, and make change where the law has created injustice.

Kendall’s commentators will be Eduardo Capulong from CUNY School of Law and Kelly Terry from University of Arkansas Little Rock (UALR) William H. Bowen School of Law.

Finally, Aric Short from Texas A&M University School of Law will speak on “Beyond Fiduciary Duties: Developing Discernment to Navigate Conflict in Law Student Professional Identity Formation.” The concept of lawyer as fiduciary is deeply rooted in what it means to be an attorney—it’s integral to our professional identity. Aric’s presentation and paper will explore the concept of the lawyer as fiduciary, including how that label affects well-being messaging and programming in law schools. Aric will identify predictable conflicts that can arise for legal professionals in the areas of values, duties, and priorities and explore how we can more effectively guide students to develop effective skills of discernment to better prepare them for these professional conflicts.

Carwina Weng from LSAC and Lindsey Gustafson from UALR William H. Bowen School of Law will provide the commentary on Aric’s presentation.

The events begin with a dinner for the speakers, invited guests, and Mercer Law Review members the night of March 7 at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. The Honorable Tony DelCampo, President of the State Bar of Georgia, will provide the welcoming address. The following day’s program will be held in the Bell-Jones Courtroom at Mercer’s law school.

I extend my thanks to all who have agreed to be part of this event. Anyone who is interested in attending or has any questions about the symposium may contact me at longan_p@law.mercer.edu.

January 16, 2024 by hami3258

Barbara Glesner FInes

Final Exams and Professional Identity Formation

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

As final exam season nears, we who teach doctrinal classes are turning our efforts toward constructing final exams that will fairly assess our students’ mastery of the learning outcomes we have set for our class. What conclusions might we draw about the final exam experience as an opportunity for students to experience being a lawyer or to reflect on what that identity means?

We might conclude that some traditional final exam approaches are not well suited as intentional formation experiences. Multiple-choice, standardized questions are unlikely to provide an opportunity to develop one’s conception of the role of attorney. While these exam question approaches can be helpful for assessing knowledge and, to some degree, analytical skill, they are an experience that is entirely academic. Traditional essay questions, even when framed as “you are the attorney for…” or asking students to “advise your client,” are equally unlikely to help students to form a professional identity. When delivered in the artificial environment of a timed, in-class final exam, students are unlikely to see these essay exams as experiences in which they are acting in an authentic lawyering role.

Nevertheless, traditional exam approaches are not irrelevant to professional formation. All communicate the need for professionals to prepare diligently, perform well under pressure, and communicate clearly: all part of the professional value of striving for excellence. However, they also may communicate negative habits and mindsets.

If the final exam is the only opportunity for graded credit that students receive during a semester, students are taught that day-to-day work has little value compared to the ability to deliver on deadline. Many of our students have intellectual abilities that allowed them to earn high grades during their undergraduate education by simply “cramming” for final exams rather than requiring steady, daily practice. Unfortunately, many attempt and even succeed in that same approach to their work in law school. It is little wonder, then, that we see the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct needing to comment that, “Perhaps no professional shortcoming is more widely resented than procrastination.”[1] One way, then, to create opportunities for students to internalize a strong commitment to sustained, quality work is to make sure that the final exam is not the only place in which they are given feedback or earn reward.

Probably the most powerful formation aspect of final exams is what comes after they are over: grades. Grades can impact professional formation in many negative ways. Law students, already overly reliant on external measures of self-worth, can be pushed even further in that direction. Students can take grades as indicia of career opportunities and academic expectations. For those at the bottom of the curve, grades can create a sense of hopelessness that undermines continual improvement. Students at the top of the statistical grade curve are not unaffected either. Their top-percentage grades can lead them to feel that they are doing something wrong if they do not enter the large firm tournament.

There is a tension here of course. The more we use “grades” to motivate student performance, the more we emphasize an external locus of control. We can find ways to provide frequent feedback and give students credit for regular practice without sending a message that student’s performance is tied to their competitive grade ranking with their peers. For example, regular practice quizzes or exams (i.e., evaluated but ungraded) can give students a way to assess their progress and earn the intrinsic satisfaction of producing a quality product.

As one of the most powerful experiences in law school, final exams could become transformative opportunities for students to reflect on their own attitudes toward professional work and value. For law schools to help make that happen, we must build in more opportunities to communicate with students about the meaning of exams and grades. We could engage students to reflect on the exam experience after it is over, develop the habit of reflection on performance for continual improvement, and right-size the impact of grades on their own self-evaluation. We do not generally structure our academic calendars to incorporate such an experience. That doesn’t mean that such an experience could not be built into our academic programs as part of an overall professional identity formation program.

Do any schools have such a program? Please share your experiences on the Holloran Center PIF listserv or with me at bglesnerfines@umkc.edu.

[1] ABA Model Rule 1.3, Comment 3.

November 30, 2023 by hami3258

Barbara Glesner FInes

American Bar Association Difference Maker Award Recognizes PIF Program

By Felicia Hamilton, Holloran Center Coordinator

At its annual fall meeting, the ABA Solo, Small Firm and General Practice Division’s (GPSolo) recognized Holloran Center Fellow Barbara Glesner Fines with its Difference Maker Award. The Award recognized Dean Glesner Fines’ leadership in developing a solo and small firm program at the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Law. This program is explicitly designed as a professional formation opportunity in which students are guided in envisioning themselves as entrepreneurial lawyers and are required to prepare a business plan and portfolio for their solo or small firm practice.

That program, first developed with Dean Emerita Ellen Suni and Professor Tony Luppino in 2004, serves those students who have a goal of entering solo or small firm practice upon graduation. More than simply a law practice management course (though that is an important component in building their plan), the course helps students to identify and demonstrate their unique value to the community. Students articulate the values that will guide their practice. They learn about the business of law and the professional guideposts. Their portfolio provides details of financing, equipment, software, staffing, insurance, and more.

To help guide students in preparing their portfolio, the program faculty work closely with members of the bar and professional support service providers to provide expertise, coaching, and mentoring. The primary course is held during the summer and includes student participation in the Missouri Bar Solo & Small Firm Conference. At the conference, students meet solo practitioners in their preferred fields of practice and geographic areas. Students share their portfolios and pitch their business plans to attorneys for critique, attend continuing education sessions, visit with vendors of support services, and meet members of the Missouri Supreme Court and leadership of the Missouri Bar.

Alumni of the program have launched a variety of very successful solo and small firm practices, many of them by starting in the law school’s post-graduate incubator. These have included solo practices focusing on a highly specialized fields, general practices in rural and underserved communities, innovative nonprofit law firms, practices focusing on innovation or technology, and highly successful solo and small firms across a wide range of practice areas. Graduates from even a decade ago report that they still revisit and revise their original business plan prepared during law school. These alumni, in turn, guide the next generation of solo and small firm attorneys.

The program is an example of collaboration in building a professional identity formation program to successfully help students in their transition from student to lawyers. Congratulations to Holloran Fellow Barbara Glesner Fines and her colleagues on making a difference with this program.

To learn more about the solo & small firm program or to share your own experience with similar programs, contact Professor Glesner Fines at glesnerb@umkc.edu.

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

October 26, 2023 by hami3258

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 hami3258