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Michael Robak

THE “ONE FILE” COORDINATED COACHING INFORMATION SYSTEM: Developing a Robust Advising Management Application

By: Michael Robak, Director of the Schoenecker Law Library, Associate Dean, and Clinical Professor, University of St. Thomas School of Law

The concept behind developing a robust advising management application is to create “One File” of information developed by and about each student from the law school’s whole organization as the student moves through their law school career.

Collecting uniform information in one place, and allowing for appropriate organization-wide access will, we believe, create an advising mechanism that helps each law student move from novice to professional as described in the Holloran Center’s Competency Alignment Model.  (Figure 2 below)

This information system is comprised of three elements:


The first element of this platform, Coordinated Coaching, will be used to capture information for each student from the nine coaching touch points that occur in their journey through law school as identified by Professors and Co-Directors of the Holloran Center Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ.  The Coordinated Coaching takes place at several points: (1) 1L Fall in a mandatory meeting with the Office of Career and Professional Development (CPD), which is described below in detail; (2) 1L Spring in a mandatory 1L class, Serving Clients Well, where professors, alumni, and local attorneys serve as coaches to the law students who work through Neil Hamilton’s award-winning Roadmap book regarding a student’s journey to finding meaningful employment; and (3) 2L and 3L years in the mandatory Mentor Externship program in which the professors teaching the classroom component of this program continue coaching and guiding the students.  Capturing information from all of these contributors at these different times will allow for those coaching the students to coordinate to better assist student development of learning outcome competencies. Currently this information is captured and stored in multiple systems and trapped in organizational silos.

The second element of this platform is the Academic Communication System (ACS).  We know, anecdotally, there are behavioral “red flags” which constitute potential clues (data points) for those at risk.  The University of St. Thomas School of Law (“School of Law”) currently has nothing in place to serve as a tracking/communication platform for all the department administrators to record and share these interactions—the ACS would serve that function.  The backbone of this element is key information for all students brought in from Banner.  There are eight School of Law departments that would provide information into the system through twenty-three “Reporters” from across those organizations. [1]  The first and most important interactions to capture are the ones with the Director of Academic Achievement and Bar Success as the Director is usually the first stop for students who have some academic success issues or concerns.

The third element of the platform, the Self-Directed Index, allows us to identify the students most at risk for possible problems with first-time bar passage and employment outcomes.  While there is anecdotal evidence suggesting about 20% of students in any given year are at risk, we are seeking to fine tune that identification by developing an instrument to gauge an individual student’s self-directedness.  This self-directed index would pull information primarily from Canvas.  For example, one item of potential concern is class attendance.  With the use of the Canvas attendance tracker, we could gather student information for each semester looking for patterns of activity.  Another example includes tracking when students turn in their assignments?  Are assignments submitted by students early, on time, or late?  This is another variable we would be able to examine.

With these three platform elements in place, the One File system becomes the single source for capturing all the information about the student journey.

The Applications behind One File are Salesforce, Qualtrics, and Canvas.  Salesforce will be customized for this specific project.  Qualtrics will be used to capture the Coordinated Coaching and Academic Communication System information.  The Self-Directed index will primarily rely on Canvas data.

Phase One of the One File system is putting parts of the Coordinated Coaching and Academic Communication System in place by the end of the Spring 2023 semester.  For the Coordinated Coaching element, One File is “starting from scratch” with only the current 1L class; we are investing in the Class of 2025 as our beta group.  We are not seeking to make One File retrospective for Coordinated Coaching.

At launch it will be built to hold the information for that Class’s 1L and 2L years.  We would seek to add the 3L year sometime later in 2023 or early 2024.  We have identified nine coaching touch points through the student’s law school journey for which we wish to track key information, and this first phase will track the first five touch points occurring in the 1L and 2L years.  The last four touch points occur during the 3L year and are similar to the 2L year with the addition of a CPD exit interview and work for bar preparation through the JD Compass program.

Phase one development of the Academic Communication System will be built for our Director of Academic Success to capture the interactions with students.  We anticipate broadening this to include other “Reporters” who can provide additional information to the file.

COORDINATED COACHING – the Beginning Touch Points

The first Coordinated Coaching touch point occurs during the 1L Fall term.  Each 1L meets with a CPD team member, and this provides the initial (and base line) information about the student.

Coaching Touch Point 1:

Currently, CPD uses Symplicity for storing student resumes, as well as their meeting notes with students.  In addition to the resume, the data we will capture in Salesforce for this touch point are:

CPD Meeting in First Year

  1. Practice Areas of Interest
  2. Geography of Interest
  3. Quick Assessment of Self-Directedness

These questions will be captured using a Qualtrics survey.  The first two questions are answered by the students on their own or as part of the CPD meeting.  The third question would need to be answered by CPD.   We created a drop-down menu for the Practice Areas and Geography to create uniformity and consistency in the data gathered.

Coaching Touch Point 2: The second touch point, the Roadmap Coaching meeting, occurs early in the spring semester of the 1L year in conjunction with the Serving Clients Well class.

Prior to meeting with their Coach, the students create a student Roadmap and upload it to Canvas.  The coaches have not had a single place to store the information they keep on their Coaching meetings with the students.  In addition, two other documents have been created by the students, an essay written for the Moral Reasoning for Lawyers course and a Personal and Professional Development Plan written for the Mentor program.  These documents, along with the completed student Roadmap template, will be placed in Salesforce and made available for review.

Qualtrics will be used for capturing the following data:

  1. Practice Areas of Interest
  2. Type of employer
  3. Geography of Interest
  4. Students self-identified and peer-affirmed strengths/competencies
  5. Quick Assessment of whether student understands concept of having to communicate a persuasive story of value and has good stories to tell
  6. Quick Assessment of Self-Directedness
  7. Identified goals for summer
  8. Identified interests for registration for next year
  9. Identified possible Mentor Experiences in which student is interested in next year

Again, we will be using drop downs to create uniform data capture.

This is a high-level overview of the One File system.   Also, somewhat unique in the development of the application, we are not building the system all at one time.  As mentioned earlier, we are starting with the School of Law Class of 2025 as the beginning point.  We will be developing the system as that class moves through its law school career and then add the following incoming classes.  In this way we can also learn as we develop the platform and allow for continuous improvement.  We’ll have more to describe as we continue this journey.

If you have questions or comments, please reach out to me at michaelrobak@stthomas.edu.

Michael Robak is the Director of the Schoenecker Law Library, Associate Dean, and Clinical Professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

[1] The Departments and Reporter count are as follows:  Lawyering Skills (5 reporters), Academic Achievement and Bar Success (1 reporter), Mentor Externship (2 reporters), Alumni Engagement and Student Life (1 reporter), Holloran Center (2 reporters), Clinics (3 reporters), Career and Professional Development (3 reporters), Registrar (1 reporter), and Deans (5 reporters).  St. Thomas Law does not currently have a Dean of Students.

March 7, 2023 by
Barbara Glesner FInes

A Question to Define Professional Identity Formation

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

During many Holloran Center Workshops since 2017, Jerry Organ (Co-Director of the Holloran Center) has asked participants to begin their exploration of professional identity formation with a simple question:  “When did you first think of yourself as a lawyer?”  Participants reflect on the question individually and then share their reflections.  The question helps to highlight the development process that is identity formation and the key transitional moments in that process.

In a recent faculty workshop at my law school, we used that same exercise but with a slight variation. Participants were asked to think of an identity or a role that they have assumed as adults that is central to their concept of who they are.  For many of us, parenthood is one such role, but we were encouraged to consider professional roles, including the one role we all had in common: “professor” or “teacher.”  We were then asked to think back to one of the first times that we thought of ourselves as being or fitting into that role.

The identities shared varied widely: lawyer, teacher, mentor, public servant, military officer, and parent, among others.  While the identities varied, the descriptions of the transformative moments that caused each of us to more fully assume that identity shared many characteristics.

Nearly all the incidents involved the awareness of significant responsibility for another.   Whether it was the moment that a new parent brought their babies home from the hospital to the moment that a new attorney found strangers in a courthouse lobby asking for help, there was a realization that others were depending on us.

For many, the incidents had a sense of permanence as well—that the shift in our sense of self was not a momentary impression but a moment of transformation.  This sense of movement might have been from outsider to insider, from observer to actor, or from one who follows to one who leads.

These moments often carried significant emotional weight as well.  They were challenging, frightening, exhilarating, or confusing, but never mundane.

The process of reflecting on this question and sharing the reflections helped us to better understand the process of professional identity formation and to think more deeply about how we might guide our students along this path.

First, the exercise emphasized that, for most of us, transformative moments in professional identity formation came from an experience of acting in the role.  That is not to say that formation never occurs in a classroom or in reading or listening, but transformative moments more often involve the emotional content that results from being given real responsibility to another.  This realization led to a discussion of how we could provide or capture more of these high-impact experiences for our students.

Second, the exercise demonstrated the power of reflection as a pedagogy for identity formation.  We saw that the process of reflection and discussion about identity and meaning were just as rigorous and had just as much impact as Socratic dialogue about the meaning of a legal doctrine.  Not only did the exercise require reflection, but for many of us the transformative moments we were describing also included reflection as an integral component.  “I remember thinking…” was a common phrase in the shared reflections.  We discussed how we could more regularly incorporate reflection into our work with our students.

For faculty who are looking for helpful exercises to explore the meaning and practice of professional identity formation, this simple question accompanied by reflection can serve as an invaluable tool.

Please email me at bglesnerfines@umkc.edu if you have any questions or comments.

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

February 28, 2023 by
Janet Stearns

The Case of the Mortified Toe: Some Reflections on Tom Sawyer, Rescheduling Exams, and Professional Identity

By: Janet Stearns, Dean of Students, University of Miami School of Law

Many life lessons are addressed by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Mark Twain.[1]

Chapter 6 begins with Tom waking up “miserable” on a Monday morning. “Monday mornings always found him so—because it began another week’s slow suffering in school….Presently it occurred to him that he wished he was sick; then he could stay home from school.”  Tom ”canvassed his system” in a search for possible ailments that might keep him home. He finally comes upon his toe and a loose tooth.  Tom starts groaning so much that his brother goes running for his Aunt Polly to report that Tom is “dying.”  When Aunt Polly enters Tom’s room, Tom reports “my sore toe’s mortified.”  After a good laugh, followed by Aunt Polly pulling the loose tooth, Tom is sent off to school for the day.

Fast forward to my teenage years, when I was attending summer camp in New Rochelle, New York.  The camp was focused on arts (which I enjoyed), but we went swimming several times a week (which I hated.)  The only way to get out of swimming was with a parent’s note.  Once I requested such a note from my dad.  My recollection (but the evidence is long gone) is that my dad handwrote out a note to the camp director which went something like this:

Please excuse Janet from swimming today. She has a mortified toe.

The note worked, and I didn’t have to go to swimming, and in retrospect, everyone likely had a good laugh at my expense.  The key point, though, is this: at that moment, swimming was not an essential part of that camp experience or my professional life.  In my childhood, I could relate to Tom Sawyer’s desire to avoid uncomfortable, difficult things.

I reveal this family secret for purposes of explaining some of the mindset, and insight, that I bring to my role as dean of students.  I want to discuss and highlight some of the challenges that we are all facing in response to a wide range of requests around examinations and other interim assessments.  We as law school administrators must bring a professional identity lens to evaluating these requests and consider the lessons that we are teaching with our responses.

Examination Policy

Our Law School Handbook, and our faculty, have delegated to me as dean of students the duty to exercise discretion in evaluating situations that arise during the examination period and deciding when, and how much, exams will be postponed.  Our Handbook references as possible reasons for rescheduling “personal illness requiring the care of a physician, pregnancy or childbirth, death or serious illness in the student’s immediate family or household, or because of religious prohibitions certified by an appropriate religious professional.”[2]  Between December 5 and 19, 2022 out of a student body of 1,300 students, we rescheduled about 170 exams that were delayed for a range of medical or family issues.  Note that these are distinct from testing accommodations granted to students under the ADA for recognized disabilities, and relate instead to injuries, accidents, illnesses, and other short-term situations not covered by the ADA.

Here is some sampling and paraphrasing of situations that I have received during this recent testing period, and some of my approaches.

Please excuse me from testing as I have COVID, mono, flu, pink-eye (and typically note from medical professional)

For a range of medical and particularly contagious diseases, we do not expect students to be on campus for in-class exams.  The protocols on these issues have become only clearer in the aftermath of the pandemic.  If exams are take-home exams, and the student is sufficiently healthy, we will permit remote testing.  We will typically postpone in-class exams until the student is cleared by a medical professional.

Please excuse me from testing as I am in emergency room (for kidney stones, appendicitis, surgery, broken bones).

Students who find themselves in the hospital or emergency room do not need to test until released and healthy enough to do so.  This would cover both in-class and remote exams.  In some cases, depending on the severity of the hospitalization, a student may not be able to test at all during the testing period and then need to make up a course in a subsequent semester.

Please excuse me from testing as my parent/spouse/partner/grandparent or pet has died or is imminently about to die.

I typically work with students in these situations to try to evaluate the best path forward for testing and completing the semester.  This will depend on the ability of the student to compartmentalize and focus on the task at hand, proximity of family to support, and customs around celebrating the life of the deceased love one.  Some will want a few days immediately for bereavement and others will wish to complete testing and then be free to travel.

We are receiving an increasing number of requests relating to pet illnesses. As we know, we have many students with significant emotion around beloved furry family members.  We have tried to show some compassion to students around the death of a pet while recognizing that this is an expansion of the definition of “immediate family or household.” This is also an issue where legal employers may vary as to how much “bereavement” time would be granted for pets as opposed to family members.

Please excuse me from testing as I am going through medication changes that are impacting my sleep or ability to focus on the exam; or I am unable to access my prescribed medications due to market unavailability.

We are aware that we have a significant number of our law students who are prescribed medications for a range of emotional and learning issues including depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorders, and, thus, they take (for example) antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications.[3]  In general, these medications require some period of weeks if not longer to adjust to changes in dosage.  In the Fall of 2022, there were significant disruptions in the supply chain for Adderall, a commonly used stimulant to treat ADHD.[4]  It was therefore not surprising that students were coming forward and asking for exam accommodations.

The issues of adding medications, changing medications, or withdrawing from medications are real.  That said, these are issues that are not easily addressed with a short-term exam accommodation, any more than they could be addressed in a workplace with paid days off.  We were counseling students to evaluate their own ability to move forward with testing or to consider dropping classes or postponing the submission of papers where possible.  We are still struggling to evaluate reasonable accommodations for this category of situation.

Please excuse law student from testing as he/she/they are suffering from generalized anxiety and need additional time to prepare.

A significant group of today’s law students are experiencing anxiety.  According to the 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being, 39.8% of law students had a diagnosis of anxiety during their lifetime, 22.5% of whom were diagnosed after starting law school.[5]  This anxiety is real, and it is manifesting in an array of emotional and physical impacts on our students.

And yet, I do not know how we address this pervasive issue of anxiety in the context of a policy to reschedule exams for personal illness.  I have thought long and hard on this and I don’t have a fair way to evaluate how much anxiety triggers an exam postponement, or how many days would be sufficient for the medical situation to resolve.  In my experience, I will distinguish this type of request from that of a student who is suffering from an acute anxiety attack in advance of, or during, an examination.  We typically treat those as medical emergencies and work with the student to evaluate if they will be well enough to return to testing or if they need to be treated for the medical emergency.  But for cases of generalized anxiety, we need to articulate an approach, based on our lens of professional identity preparation, about expectations in our legal community.  And once articulated, we must communicate this clearly to our students throughout their law school experience.

When does a situation merit our throwing a student a compassionate lifeline, and when do we need to clarify that we cannot grant these requests and provide reasons for the life lessons that we are trying to teach?  I welcome thoughts and reactions from our community as we continue to navigate these issues.  You can reach me at jstearns@law.miami.edu.

Janet Stearns is Dean of Students at the University of Miami School of Law and Chair of the ABA COLAP Law School Committee.

[1] MARK TWAIN, THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER 43-45 (Signet Classic Edition, 2002).

[2] Miami Law Student Handbook 2022-2023, https://student.law.miami.edu/policies/student-conduct/handbook/index.html, at page 12.

[3] Jaffe, Organ, and Bender, It’s Okay Not to Be Okay: The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being, 60 University of Louisville Law Review (2022) at 461.

[4] FDA Announces Shortage of Adderall, https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-announces-shortage-adderall (October 12, 2022).

[5] Jaffe, Organ, and Bender, It’s Okay Not to Be Okay: The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being, 60 University of Louisville Law Review (2022), supra note 3 at 464.

February 23, 2023 by
Patrick Longan

Professional Identity, Fast and Slow

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

At Mercer University School of Law, we use virtue ethics to teach professional identity. We have drawn on the dozens of professionalism codes and creeds adopted by courts and bar associations over the last thirty-five years and distilled from them the virtues that a lawyer needs. Those virtues are excellence, fidelity to the client, fidelity to the law, public spiritedness, civility, and practical wisdom. Our students learn of the roots of this approach in Aristotelian ethics. We are convinced that this is the best approach to professional identity. Indeed, I have written elsewhere that professional identity is virtue ethics by another name.

There is sometimes a problem in getting this message across. Some lawyers and some law students recoil at the mention of “virtue.” To them, it sounds preachy. Then when we utter the word “Aristotle,” their eyes begin to roll at these academics who are revealing how detached they are from the everyday world of lawyering. (You don’t want to know what they say and do if you use the word “Aristotelian.”) With these audiences, we need another way to convey the key insights of virtue ethics for the professional identities of lawyers without using what they will hear as off-putting academic mumbo-jumbo.

My answer is to make an analogy to the Nobel Prize-winning work of Daniel Kahneman (done in collaboration with Amos Tversky, who died before he could share in the Nobel). Professor Kahneman popularized their work in Thinking, Fast and Slow, which was published in 2011 and has sold more than 2.6 million copies.

Kahneman explains two ways in which people make decisions. Some come from “System 1,” which “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.” System 1 engages in “thinking fast.” Other decisions come from “System 2,” which “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it …. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.” System 2 controls “thinking slow.”

For lawyers, the analogy to “thinking fast” is the cultivation of habits and dispositions. Take habits first. Part of a lawyer’s professional identity is excellence. An excellent lawyer shows up on time and meets all deadlines. In the busy life of a practicing attorney, this does not happen because the lawyer sits back and reflects deeply on the need to be punctual for meetings and court appearances. It does not happen because the lawyer takes the time to contemplate each filing deadline and ponder over the importance of meeting it. These parts of excellence emerge when the lawyer cultivates the right habits.

Of course—just between us—much of virtue ethics is about the cultivation of good habits. But habit formation also fits into the more digestible “thinking fast” framework.

As professors, we have enormous power to help our students cultivate the right habits. In our mandatory professional identity course at Mercer, punctuality is rigidly enforced. Students may not enter any class late without advance permission, no matter the reason. When they show up late and miss class, they must explain why and are required to come up with a plan to prevent tardiness in the future. For some, it is simply a matter of setting another alarm. For others, it is starting a long commute much earlier in case of traffic. Regardless of the details, they are developing the habit of punctuality, one of the habits that supports excellence.

We do something similar with the habit of meeting deadlines. The students know that by 8 a.m. every Monday they must complete a writing assignment on Mercer’s learning management system. The assignment closes automatically at 8 a.m. Any students who are late with the assignment must contact me, and I require them to come up with a plan to avoid late submissions in the future. They are cultivating a habit of attentiveness to deadlines, another habit that supports excellence.

In other situations, a lawyer must deal immediately with a problem—they must be ready to “think fast”—and something more than habit is needed. For example, a lawyer may unexpectedly encounter discourtesy or a lack of cooperation from opposing counsel. The lawyer must be prepared to respond appropriately to incivility in the moment. There is no time to reflect on a “Lawyer’s Creed” or an “Aspirational Statement on Professionalism.” The natural tendency (especially for someone like me who grew up with three older brothers) is to return fire. Incivility begets incivility, and the atmosphere quickly becomes toxic. Litigation slows down. It becomes more expensive for the clients and more unpleasant for clients and lawyers alike.

Virtue ethics would say that the lawyer who is the target of the discourtesy should deploy the virtue of civility and break the cycle. How do you prepare students and lawyers to do that when there is no time to think when a fellow lawyer is snide in a deposition, and when these students and lawyers are the ones who roll their eyes at the notion that Aristotle has anything to say about it?

The answer is to introduce the concept of a “disposition,” in the sense of one’s natural inclination to act in a particular way in response to a particular situation. Again, the terminology sometimes can get in the way because lawyers and students think that, by “disposition,” we mean a mood or characteristic attitude, as in “he has a grumpy disposition.” Students understand the concept better if you describe a disposition as a “default setting.” A lawyer whose default setting is not to be surprised or angered at another’s incivility, and who is therefore disposed not to respond in kind to discourtesy, is much more likely to defuse rather than escalate a conflict with an uncivil adversary. There is time before the fact to reflect and decide on what your disposition should be. Having the right disposition then enables the lawyer to do the right thing in the moment when there is no time to ponder. The lawyer is “thinking fast.”

Cultivating such a disposition or default setting in students requires some work. We first have to expose them to the toxin of incivility by having them watch or listen to examples. For many, their natural response to this surprising prospect is fight or flight. With time and effort, we can help them understand the inevitability of encountering these situations, the harm that flows from them, and some strategies for dealing with them. We must “think slow” with them at first. But the ultimate goal is to send them out into the world prepared to encounter others’ incivility and become naturally disposed not to respond in kind. Their professional identity will include an internal commitment to maintaining civility even in difficult and infuriating moments, because they have the right “default setting” or “disposition.”

Lawyers must also, of course, be able to “think slow.” An essential component of professional identity is the cultivation of the “master virtue” of practical wisdom, which enables lawyers to chart or recommend a course of action in uncertain circumstances when multiple goals are in conflict. Again, terminology can get in the way. Lawyers and law students may tune out to the mention of a “master virtue” or “practical wisdom” (don’t ask what they do if you use the word “phronesis”). But the need for practical wisdom translates easily into the need for good judgment, and no lawyer or law student will roll their eyes at the proposition that lawyers need good judgment.

Teaching judgment is harder than teaching punctuality. We use small group (25 to 30 students) weekly meetings in which we discuss a series of “practical wisdom” exercises and put the students in role to exercise judgment about what to do and how to do it. (These exercises are available at https://law.mercer.edu/academics/centers/clep/education.cfm). All of them present circumstances where there is time to “think slow,” work through different possibilities, and contemplate what might follow from each option. We train them to ask and answer the question, “what if I do this?” as part of the exercise of good judgment.

For example, one problem requires the students to decide (in the role of a junior non-equity partner in a large law firm) what, if anything, to do when they suspect a senior partner
of overbilling a client. The junior partner might choose to do nothing, talk to the partner, or report her suspicions within the firm. For each possibility (and any others the students generate), their preparation for the discussion includes how to go about implementing the decision, as well as the anticipated consequences of each decision, and a plan for dealing with those possible consequences.

For a lawyer to have the right kind of professional identity, the lawyer must cultivate the right virtues. Aristotle and his virtue ethics are powerful tools for helping law students get started on the right path. For skeptical students and lawyers, the concept of professional identity as “thinking fast and slow” may be more relatable. The need to cultivate the rights habits and dispositions, and to learn to exercise good judgment, are things we all should be able to agree on, regardless of the terminology.

Please feel free to contact me at longan_p@law.mercer.edu if you any questions or comments.

Patrick Longan is the William Augustus Bootle Chair in Ethics and Professionalism in the Practice of Law at Mercer University School of Law
and is Director of the Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism

February 21, 2023 by
Aric Short

The Power of Pivoting (Part II of II)

By: Aric Short, Professor of Law & Director of the Professionalism and Leadership Program, Texas A&M University School of Law

In Part I, we talked about three important competencies that help us accomplish difficult tasks: grit, resilience, and strategic pivoting. Putting those competencies into action can make an enormous difference, in particular, for students struggling to rebound from disappointing Fall grades. But the long-term benefit in professional identity formation can be even more powerful given the challenges and setbacks that lawyers frequently face. As essential sub-parts of being self-directed, these competencies better position students for later professional success.

Effectively pivoting can be especially hard for law students for various reasons as discussed in Part I. So in this post, we’re going to cover a number of specific, practical steps to begin strategically pivoting to achieve greater academic success. And for students who may feel bewildered or even despondent about their Fall grades, I want to add a personal plug: I know this process works. Having worked with hundreds of 1Ls, I’ve personally seen students make dramatic gains in the Spring following this general approach.

Step 1: Practice self-compassion. Let’s not sugar-coat it: In the face of disappointment, whether it’s about grades, a relationship, or something at work, we can feel bad about ourselves. Our feeling isn’t just that the goal wasn’t achieved; it’s that we failed. It’s about us. For law students already struggling with imposter syndrome, lower-than-expected grades can serve as fuel for their inner-critic: “See, I told you that everyone else is smarter. You shouldn’t be here.”

In difficult times like this, it can helpful to quiet the internal dialogue by adopting the perspective of giving advice to a friend you care about. What if your friend were in this situation, and she were looking to you for counsel? What would you say? You probably would remind her, first, that her acceptance to law school was built on a long track record of success, some of which didn’t come easy. You’d also remind her that the admissions office didn’t, in fact, make a mistake in letting her in. And you’d give her unconditional support and encouragement to believe in herself and take the steps necessary to regroup and figure out an effective way forward.

Although law students often exude confidence externally, many are plagued with relentless self-doubt and self-critique. So if you’re feeling some of these kinds of emotions, it’s normal. You’re not alone. In fact, many attorneys also feel these same emotions—and yet, a large number of those attorneys are very successful. So self-doubt in law school is not inconsistent with success as a lawyer. Recognizing that reality can make it easier to accept yourself and, maybe, give yourself a little grace. Doing so can help your psychological well-being and give you the physical and mental strength necessary to effectively gather the necessary information and strategize about how to effectively pivot. So, work on healthy sleep, eating, and workout habits. Remain connected to friends and family who support and encourage you. Take care of yourself.

Step 2: Choose your focus wisely. Within the academic setting, imagine one large circle containing the things you care about. Only you can know what’s in that circle, but it might include making higher grades, feeling like you’ve worked as hard as you can, being invited to join a journal, becoming an effective oral advocate, being selected as a teaching or research assistant, etc. And then imagine a second circle containing all the things you have control over in your life. Your most efficient, effective use of time and energy is at the intersection of these two big circles: the things you can control that also matter to you.

It gives us a sense of security to imagine that we control a lot in our lives; but in reality, we really don’t. What we truly control, I think, boils down to two areas: our effort (behavior) and our attitude. That’s it. We like to think we control outcomes: whether we make an A in a class or whether we get hired for a certain job. But we don’t. We can certainly influence and affect these kinds of outcomes as a result of our effort and attitude, but we absolutely do not control them.

Is this just a theoretical distinction without practical meaning? I don’t think so. Going back to Step 1, we often take “failure” personally, as a reflection of some shortcoming of ours. But if we can step back a little and recognize that we never had control over those outcomes to start with, we can refocus on what we do, in fact, control while also treating ourselves more humanely. By doing so, for example, our focus can shift from getting an A to working more strategically to execute as effectively as possible on the exam. Reframing in this way gives us a sharper, more honest way to evaluate ourselves.

Step 3: Ask useful questions to identify what is real. Useful questions might be grouped into three categories: (1) Why Questions; (2) You Questions; and (3) Community Questions. “Why Questions” focus on the big-picture: Why are you in law school? Why are you willing to work hard and persevere through three (or more) difficult years of schooling? What do you hope to accomplish with a law degree? The answers to these kinds of questions are foundationally motivating. They help illuminate your purpose and can motivate you in difficult, trying times. People who demonstrate grit and resilience often have a clearly-identified purpose that serves as an ongoing source of strength, motivation, and even inspiration.

“You Questions” are some of the most important questions to ask in this process: What did you do the first time to prepare? How did you spend your time studying on a daily basis? Was your focus on class preparation or getting ready for exams? What happened on your exams? This category of questions gathers both the steps you took as you prepared to execute and the specific results, at a granular level, of your assessments. Meaningfully evaluating your performance in each class may be the trickiest part of this analysis.

To truly gather the necessary information to pivot effectively, you need detailed information from your Fall courses. For midterms and final exams: How did you do on each section of the assessment, as compared to the class high, low, and average? Were you consistent in your performance across all of your doctrinal classes? How did you do in your 1L writing class as compared to your doctrinal classes? How did you do in your writing class as compared to the essay components of your doctrinal classes? What feedback do your professors have on your assessments? The answers to these kinds of questions give you important information on what should be your focus of attention this semester. And without fact-based answers to these questions, you’re just guessing about what to do differently.

Finally, “Community Questions” help you consider resources beyond yourself that could be useful. What school resources are available? How can you access them? When would be the most beneficial time to do so? Are there resources your classmates can provide? Within this category of questions, you may identify possibilities such as visiting professor office hours to clarify areas of confusion every week. Or meeting with academic support staff for strategies on answering multiple choice questions. Or forming a study group to begin preparing for your midterms.

It’s important to emphasize that within this step, the goal is to gather specific information about what is real. Although that point may seem obvious, my experience is that many, many students at this point in the semester have reached conclusions about what is real based on their unreasonably negative emotions. In emotionally difficult situations, particularly when there is significant uncertainty and a perceived lack of control, we tend to conflate the emotions we’re feeling with reality. If we’re feeling “not good enough” or “a failure,” it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that these feelings reflect the truth—that we are, in fact, not good enough or a failure. The negative spiral that often follows can be powerful.

Walking a healthy and useful line here can be challenging. On the one hand, it’s essential to be aware of and process your emotions. What you’re feeling in any given situation carries meaning. Attorneys and law students are not well-served by blocking and ignoring their emotions. But we need to see emotions in perspective. Perhaps one useful way to frame this balance is that while our emotions are valid, they do not necessarily reflect reality. In fact, we might go so far as to say that emotions (especially negative ones experienced in times of stress and uncertainty) are not reality unless proven otherwise.

Step 4: Putting it all together. If you’ve worked through the prior steps, you have in front of you the raw information needed to make thoughtful, effective decisions about adjusting your study plan this semester. Your actual plan is personal to you and your needs, rather than some generic template. But here are a few general observations, based on years of working with 1Ls, that might help you consider how to strategically pivot this semester.

  • Consider the purpose of your study activities. Fall 1L students need to spend significant time learning how to read appellate cases and understand their various components. For many students, this involves reading the assignment multiple times and creating a written brief for each case. Most of that significant time investment is focused on understanding the material well enough to follow class discussions. Students also frequently cite another, related reason for spending so much time preparing for class: They don’t want to be embarrassed if they’re called on for a case. You’ll need to figure out, with reflection, whether the cost-benefit tradeoff was worth it for you. In particular, did you over-prepare for class discussions, particularly in light of how much (or little) those discussions directly impacted your final grade?
  • Shift study time to make it more effective. With a little experience under your belt, maybe it makes sense to reallocate your study time for each class. For example, if you allocate two readings for each case, maybe move one of those to after class so you can see the case in light of your professor’s comments and class discussions. Without adding time to your overall studying, this pivot may increase the value of the time you’re investing.
  • Look for near-value activities. These are study activities that do bring some value; however, their worth could be greatly enhanced with just a little more time investment. Practice questions are the prime example. Maybe you worked some sample questions in the Fall, but you didn’t seek input from your professors on your answers. That may have been due to time constraints or a reluctance to attend office hours. But if you have the opportunity to seek feedback on practice questions from the person who will be grading your final exam, why wouldn’t a reasonable person prioritize that activity? Ten minutes in office hours talking about your practice answer can be invaluable.
  • Target your weaknesses. This should be obvious, but look for specific ways to address the relative weaknesses you identified when you analyzed your Fall exam performances. What types of questions give you trouble? If there were areas of material you never fully understood, what could you do differently this semester to avoid that problem?
  • Look for subtractions. Pivoting, by definition, involves subtractions, as well as additions. As a rule, law students work very hard, and I’m not suggesting that most students should invest a net increase in study time this Spring. Whatever you’re adding in terms of study time and activities should be more than offset by what you’re taking away. Be rigorous in your evaluation of what you spent your time on this Fall. Was each activity strategically designed to bring you closer to your goal? If not, don’t be shy about abandoning that task (and then carefully evaluating the impact of that decision). What might fall into that category? Possibly extra passes through your reading even after you understood it; unproductive study group sessions that were disorganized and without a clear goal; reading outside sources to make absolutely sure you understood everything you could about the covered material; or tracking down and working every multiple choice question available.

Although pivoting can be challenging for all of us, a stepwise process of gathering relevant information and then strategically plotting a path forward can help. And as we become more adept at pivoting, our overall self-directedness improves as well.

Please feel free to reach out to me at ashort@law.tamu.edu if you have any questions or comments.

Aric Short, Professor of Law and Director of the Professionalism & Leadership Program, Texas A&M University School of Law

 

 

February 14, 2023 by
Greg Miarecki

Laying the Foundations of Professional Identity Formation with All First-Year Law Students

By: Greg Miarecki, Executive Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Professional Development,
Director of the University of Illinois College of Law Leadership Project, University of Illinois College of Law

As we are now well into the spring semester at the University of Illinois College of Law, professional identity formation is front and center for our entering students.  In the spring of 2015, we introduced a required 1L course—Fundamentals of Legal Practice.  Fundamentals was originally designed to address many issues that many of us refer to as “professional identity formation” or “ABA Standard 303” issues.  When I first designed the course, I labeled the course with a bit of oversimplification—it “teaches what you need to be a successful lawyer, but that many law schools don’t really care about and most students don’t really know about.”  It’s a required, one-credit pass/fail course taught in the spring semester.  I’ve served as the course instructor since the course began, and have tweaked it continually over the years.  I’ve experimented with different sessions, different guest speakers, and different modes of instruction.  I’ve always found this course challenging to teach because students come to law school with their own views on professional identity formation topics, and they often are resistant to discussing them in law school—typically arguing that “I already know this stuff.”

This year’s edition of Fundamentals begins with a session styled the “business of law,” which provides an overview of different practice areas and the skills and traits usually seen in successful lawyers in those practice areas.  We follow those up with sessions on communication skills, project management skills, and wellness.  We added the wellness and project management pieces this year.  I was particularly focused on adding a wellness component, so that we could support our students who were running into “speed bumps” during their 1L year, often in the form of lower than expected grades.

The next tranche of classes features lessons in marketing, relationship building, personal branding, client service, and the importance of pro bono service.  Marketing and branding are especially important to our Office of Career Planning and Professional Development given that many 1Ls are in the midst of their summer job search.  And client service, as many of us former practicing lawyers know, can be the majority of what a lawyer does on a daily basis.

Following these sessions, we offer three separate sessions on leadership—an overview session, followed by a session highlighting the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in leadership, and a session on leadership in the non-profit sectors.  We added the latter two sessions last year and they’ve been great additions.  During each of these sessions, we bring in leaders in our profession to engage with the student on these topics.  The final session of Fundamentals, titled “A View From the Bench”, features a number of judges commenting on the importance of the class and the topics we cover.  This is always the most popular session in the course.

For two years, we taught the class virtually.  I thought it was a great innovation because it allowed me to bring in guests from around the world to interact with our students, giving me the ability to offer a more diverse set of speakers.  Now, with the return to in-person classes, I took the opportunity to involve our faculty members more heavily in the sessions.  And it turns out, I like the class even better now—it’s been great to have so many colleagues in our building take part in the professional identity formation of our students.

I love teaching this course because there’s always something new to learn, and always a way to tweak it and improve the class.  And by now, we have many hundreds of alumni who can attest to how the lessons they learned in Fundamentals made a difference (some big, some small) in their careers.  If you haven’t designed a formal professional identity formation class for your incoming students, I hope you’ll consider doing so—you’ll be impressed with how much value it can generate for your students.  Be ready for it to have flaws and imperfections—you’ll always find new ones every year!

I would welcome the chance to discuss Fundamentals with anyone who’s interested.  Please feel free to contact me at miarecki@illinois.edu.

Greg Miarecki is the Executive Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Professional Development and the Director of the University of Illinois College of Law Leadership Project at the University of Illinois College of Law.

February 9, 2023 by
Megan Bess

Goal Setting Across the Law School Experience: a Simple and Powerful Professional Identity Formation Tool

By: Megan Bess, Director of the Externship Program and Assistant Professor of Law,
University of Illinois Chicago School of Law

I have spent a good amount of time over the past few months reflecting on how to best incorporate professional identity formation in my teaching and across our law school’s curricular and extracurricular programming.  Like many of us, I wear many hats at my institution, some with easier connections to PIF than others. For instance, in my role overseeing externships I have been able to craft a curriculum centered on reflection, self-assessment, and professional identity formation. Nearly everything students do in their externship experience furthers the development of their professional identity. But when I teach a large section of Professional Responsibility, my interest and desire to incorporate professional identity formation often conflict with the pressures to cover as many Model Rules and PR concepts as I can. I have been asking myself which of the PIF-related activities I utilize in the externship program could I easily incorporate into other classes and activities. And then I had a realization: I can work goal setting into almost anything I teach.

More than three years into my role directing my school’s externship program I have now seen hundreds of student goals for their externship experiences. Many follow common themes of improving specific research and writing skills and participating in lawyering activities. Some of the best goals I have seen, however, demonstrate strong self-awareness and a desire to improve professional behaviors. For example, one student set a goal to develop a system to better manage their school, work, and personal obligations so that they could be more fully present in each rather than multi-tasking. I’ve seen students set goals for increasing and managing their physical and mental health or strengthening their understanding of, and connections to, their legal community.

While an externship, clinical, or other real-world lawyering experience easily lends itself to goal setting, I believe that students can and should be encouraged to set goals across their entire law school experience. Goal setting is especially powerful if introduced early in law school. For example, UIC Law has a one-credit required first-semester course, Expert Learning, that introduces students to study and exam-taking strategies, lawyering skills, resilience and mindset, and other professional skills and behaviors important for success in law school and in law practice. The course covers goal setting and requires students to set a goal for the course itself.

Goal setting empowers students to take charge of and responsibility for themselves and their experiences. Studies show that rigorous and specific goal setting correlates with higher performance.[1] And feelings of success in the workplace derive from pursuing and attaining meaningful goals.[2] In short, setting goals is a habit that will aid students in their legal careers. And the very act of setting goals requires some self-reflection that aids in professional identity formation.

Most students are familiar with the concept of goal setting. A popular framework is SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely). Encouraging students to set goals for the courses you teach and activities you oversee is a simple tool to encourage their reflection and self-assessment with a framework that is familiar to them.

The good news is that this can be incredibly easy to do. There are numerous goal setting lessons and resources available. When I first sought to incorporate goal setting in the externship program, a simple online search turned up numerous videos (I selected a simple SMART goal overview from LinkedIn Learning) and written materials. One of my favorites is this simple worksheet from Baylor University that explains SMART goal setting and walks the user through a goal setting process.

If you are worried about the labor required with providing feedback on student goals, consider asking students to share their goals with and elicit feedback from their peers. My students have shared that they enjoy this goal setting method. I give students time to brainstorm one goal and then have them share in small groups with instructions to offer suggestions for making the goal “SMARTer.” In my experience, law students are amenable to suggestions from their peers who are proud of themselves when they can offer helpful feedback to their classmates.

I can easily envision students setting goals related to course performance and grades. But we can encourage our students to think of goals from a broader perspective. Students can set goals for a course that relate to organizational skills, time management, study habits, understanding and applying course material in real-world context, the contributions they make to their group, and/or class participation. If we provide them some examples along these lines, then they will feel like they have permission to identify and work on these skills. Imagine the power we have to help students commit to and practice goal setting habits in as few as ten (10) minutes at the start of our courses.

If you have questions, comments, or ideas for improvement, please reach out to me at mbess@uic.edu.

Megan Bess is the Director of the Externship Program and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.

[1] Edwin A. Locke & Gary P. Latham, New Directions in Goal Setting Theory, 15 Current Directions in Psychological Science, 265-268 (2006).

[2] Barbara A. Blanco & Sande L. Buhai, Externship Field Supervision: Effective Techniques for Training Supervisors and Students, 10 Clinical L. Rev. 611, 642 (2004); Laurie Barron, Learning How to Learn: Carnegie’s Third Apprenticeship, 18 Clinical L. Rev. 101, 107 (2011).

January 26, 2023 by
Leah Teague

Baylor Law’s Professional Identity Formation History and the Influence of the Carnegie Report and the Holloran Center on Baylor Law’s Continual Professional Identity Formation Efforts

By: Leah Witcher Jackson Teague, Professor of Law & Director of Business Law Program and Leadership Development Program, Baylor Law School

Thanks to Robin Thorner, Assistant Dean, Office of Career Strategy, at St. Mary’s Law School, law faculty and staff interested in professional identity formation efforts gathered twice in the fall to converse. The next conversation is scheduled for this Thursday, January 26, at 3:00 p.m. Central using the following link via Zoom. I plan to join and hope you will too!

During the fall gatherings, a common request was for more information about law schools’ processes for addressing the recent amendments to ABA 303 and descriptions of programs, events, and activities. In this post, I offer some insight on the background for our work at Baylor Law and also thank the Holloran Center for encouraging us, and so many others, in our work in the areas of professional development and leadership development. In a future post, I will describe Baylor Law’s ongoing review process of our professional identity formation efforts in response to the amendments to ABA Standard 303.

At Baylor Law, professional identity formation efforts have been part of the fabric of our program throughout our 165-year history, but not by that name. As I recently wrote in a post, professional development and leadership development, in an informal manner, have been “baked” into our program from the beginning. Baylor Law’s mission statement expresses a desire to “develop lawyers who are able to practice law with competence, serve with compassion, and provide effective and ethical leadership.” We strive to prepare our students for the demands they will face as members of the legal profession. We also want them to be better equipped to use their legal education and training, along with their status in society as lawyers, to serve effectively and be difference makers.

Our approach to legal education (which incorporates legal analysis, practical lawyering skills, and professionalism) aligns with the scaffolding approach advocated in Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (more commonly referred to as the “Carnegie Report”). The Carnegie Report, published in 2007, described the three dimensions of professional education that are necessary to adequately prepare students for their careers and professional obligations. The three dimensions for legal education were described as:

  1. Critical thinking skills and legal knowledge that have been the traditional focus of law schools.
  2. Practice application and skills development through experiential education as mandated in the ABA Standards beginning approximately 2005.
  3. Professional identity formation defined as “effective ways to engage and make their own the ethical standards, social roles, and responsibilities of the profession, grounded in the profession’s fundamental purposes.”

This scaffolding approach to legal education aligns perfectly with the practical, values-based, and service-oriented approach to legal education at Baylor Law. When the Carnegie Report came out in 2007, I admittedly did not give its findings and recommendations the attention it deserved, that is, not until hearing presentations and reading articles from our friends at the Holloran Center (specifically Co-Directors Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ and Holloran Center Fellow Lou Bilionis) and others who devoted years to improving the professional development and ethical leadership of our law students.

Before meeting these dedicated teachers and scholars, we had already begun our own efforts at Baylor Law to enhance and incorporate more emphasis on professional identity formation and professional development of our students, including the creation of our Professional Development Program and Leadership Development Program in 2014. Validation that we were on the right track with our approach to legal education came for us in the fall of 2016 when Neil Hamilton and Lou Bilionis traveled to Waco, Texas to lead our Baylor Law faculty and staff in a workshop. The Holloran Center team complimented us on our multi-dimensional, multi-year approach. Baylor Law professors were encouraged to better communicate to our students the efforts already in place to teach and enforce professionalism. I offer my perspective of fundamental aspects of our approach to teaching and training Baylor Lawyers:

  • teach students to think like lawyers;
  • offer a variety of practical skills training opportunities;
  • require a rigorous practicum in the third year;
  • insist upon professionalism (work ethic, respect for one another, integrity, etc.) in all interactions inside and outside the classroom; and
  • encourage students to adopt a service orientation in their professional and personal endeavors.

The Holloran Center initiatives continued to inform and inspire our work in the summers of 2017 and 2019, when Baylor Law faculty and staff joined teams from other law schools to attend Holloran Center summer workshops. Again, we were encouraged to compose a description of our professionalism training that spans from orientation through graduation. As part of our work in response to the 303 amendments, we are making a conscious effort to do so. More detail of our work in this area will be shared in a future post.

The Holloran Center’s work on professional identity formation continues to influence and inspire us as we seek to improve and enhance the “whole building” approach (as described by Dean Emeritus Bilionis) to teaching, training, and inspiring Baylor law students. Thank you!

I am always happy to visit further with anyone who desires additional information. Feel free to reach out to me at Leah_Teague@baylor.edu.

Leah Witcher Jackson Teague is the Professor of Law and Director of Business Law Programs at Baylor Law School.

 

January 24, 2023 by
David Grenardo

A Behind-The-Scenes Look at the Holloran Center that Provides Guidance to All Law Schools Implementing Professional Identity Formation

By: David A. Grenardo, Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law

Ever since I attended my first Holloran Center Workshop in 2016 and read the powerful materials provided by Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ, I always wondered how those two operated the Holloran Center. What were they doing at their own law school to implement professional identity since they were the ones giving others ideas of how to do so? What were their personalities like given their considerable influence and impact in legal education?

After joining the University of St. Thomas School of Law and the Holloran Center as its Associate Director this past fall, I can finally answer these questions and share those answers with you. The answers provide an incredible amount of knowledge and wisdom that any law school can use to implement professional identity formation for its students.

Raw Self-Reflection

Professional identity entails continuous self-reflection that allows law students to develop into the professionals they can and want to become. Neil and Jerry strongly encourage this aspect of professional identity for students, and they demonstrate it themselves.

The University of St. Thomas School of Law requires that all 1Ls take three one-credit classes, Moral Reasoning for Lawyers (MRFL), Serving Clients Well, and Business Basics. The concept of professional identity is introduced and reinforced in these courses, particularly MRFL and Serving Clients Well. When St. Thomas Law first introduced some of these ideas, they were included in one three-credit course, Foundations of Justice (Foundations). The three-credit course format was not well received by students. Jerry spearheaded efforts to improve each part of the course, which included commissioning a focus group of students who previously took Foundations to learn what the class did well and not so well.  Those conversations resulted in splitting Foundations into two courses— MRFL (one credit) in the fall and Foundations of Justice (two credits) in the spring. Eventually, the two-credit Foundations of Justice course in the spring also was divided and renamed Serving Clients Well (SCW) and Business Basics (BB) to give students exposure to client-service competencies they will need to be successful in practice.

I am now part of this evolutionary process myself as we revisit the design/implementation of the BB course, which I will co-teach with Jerry. Despite being an accomplished and elite teaching professor and scholar, Jerry once again has invited students to share their concerns about the design and content of the course, which has generated some brutal honesty from the students. Jerry has taken the critique and reflected on his own execution and design of the class. We are presently redesigning the class to make it more effective and to engage students where they are.

I also have witnessed Jerry’s and Neil’s honest self-reflection in our weekly Holloran Center meetings where they admit something could have been done better or acknowledge something went well. The vulnerability and candor in which they approach their own self-reflection allow them to truly understand and see where improvements can be made and success has been achieved. This leads to my next observation – they exhibit a growth mindset.

We Will Continuously Try New Things, and When We Fail, Which is Good, We Will Make Them Better

I sometimes feel like I am in the middle of the “Meet the Robinsons” Disney movie when I am working with Neil and Jerry. In that movie, the great inventor, genius, and orphan Lewis goes into the future as a young boy and unknowingly meets his eventual family. As he attempts one of his inventions, it fails horrendously and his future family cheers and congratulates him, “You have failed! From failure we learn, from success. . . not so much.” With Neil and Jerry, there is a humble joy in them when they speak of attempts at implementing professional identity with little or no success. Each of them will say something like, “We tried, but it didn’t work the way we expected or not at all.” They make statements like these without remorse or regret; instead, they do so with humility, pride, and hope. They would probably not call their efforts failures, but instead would likely characterize their attempts as Thomas Edison did, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

They attempt new things knowing that they will not be perfect and actively seek out ways to improve what they have done.

The tinkering and re-jiggering of MRFL, SCW, and BB, led to the inclusion of Roadmap into SCW. Now SCW includes one-on-one coaching of students in January and February of the 1L year using the Roadmap in SCW.

Roadmap, for the uninitiated, is a book written by Neil Hamilton that guides a law student “to prepare and implement a successful plan for meaningful employment.” Neil won the prestigious E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award from the ABA in 2015 based on the Roadmap and his efforts to improve professionalism in the legal profession. Neil is currently finishing up the third edition of the book to make it even more accessible and helpful to law students. The revised Roadmap will be ready for students to utilize this spring in SCW.

Over the last two decades, Jerry and Neil also have played a role in developing and implementing the classroom component associated with the law school’s distinctive Mentor Externship program in which all law students have a mentor for each of their three years in law school. A law student can change mentors during that time, but each law student is guaranteed a mentor throughout every year of law school. This program has also evolved and changed over time to better meet the needs of our students.  Presently, in the second year and third year, there is a classroom component with students earning one pass/fail credit in each year. The classroom component involves both small group conversations and also one-on-one coaching with each student three times over the course of the academic year. The Mentor Externship program includes a good deal of professional identity formation, such as self-reflections by the students based on the work they do and their experiences in the program. In addition, each student must develop a networking plan designed to support the individual student’s professional development as reflected in the student’s work with Roadmap.

Neil, through trial and error, even added coaches to his Professional Responsibility course. Now, his class not only teaches the basics of what law students need to understand and apply the rules of professional conduct, but it also explores aspects of professional identity formation as students learn from local practitioners.

Whatever Neil and Jerry do (or try to do), their focus is always on the students—learning about where the students are and searching for the most effective ways to help each student grow. Their thoughtful and creative approach entails a constant loop that involves trying something, seeking feedback, reflecting, improving the exercise, lesson, or class, and then repeating those steps.

Whole-Building Approach

Neil and Jerry have been working for several years towards a whole-building approach to professional identity. They preach it to other law schools, and they are living it out themselves. They have been working diligently to create a “one file” system that allows many departments of the law school to add feedback and notes on each student. The Roadmap coaches from SCW, Mentor Externship professors, the Office of Career & Professional Development (CPD), and Lawyering Skills (aka legal research and writing at some law schools) professors would each add their notes, thoughts, and work relating to professional identity formation into a file for each student so that when faculty or staff meet with students they could see the evolution of the student’s professional identity and the student’s professional development plans over the course of law school.

In particular, Jerry and Neil worked with our law library and IT experts to create a “one file” system that is scheduled to begin operation next semester, starting with the Roadmap and the Roadmap coach observations that will go into that file for each student. Jerry and Neil believe that we will be able to train the 2L and 3L Mentor Externship faculty on how to use the “one file” system by contributing their observations on professional identity formation learning outcomes into an efficient form for gathering insights after each of the six one-on-one meetings that occur throughout the 2L and 3L years. Additionally, notes from the one-on-one meetings with CPD staff will also be added to each student’s file. Neil and Jerry also plan on providing our required curriculum colleagues with some positive and reinforcing language on professional identity to cross-sell the value of these professional identity formation efforts to the students.

Planting Seeds

Jerry and Neil are always anticipating the needs of law students and law schools in the future. They look ahead to try to bridge the gap between what will be needed and what is currently offered. The Holloran Center’s next step will be hosting a symposium/workshop in the spring of 2023 in conjunction with casebook publishers focused on 1L and Professional Responsibility casebook authors (and possibly law professor adopters of those casebooks). It will be the first time the Holloran Center intentionally seeks out casebook authors and 1L/Professional Responsibility professors to convene in a single setting where they can learn, share, and generate ways to help law students develop their own professional identities within these required courses.

Neil and Jerry have done so much amazing work in the legal academy and professional identity formation in particular. I continue to learn from their fearlessness, humility, optimism, and apparent clairvoyance. Even though I was their twentieth choice to serve as Associate Director—I was actually their tenth—I feel honored and humbled to serve alongside them as they continue their phenomenal work.

Please email me at gren2380@stthomas.edu if you have any questions or comments about this post.

December 1, 2022 by
Janet Stearns

Teaching “Reflection & Growth” Through Mindfulness

By: Janet Stearns, Dean of Students, University of Miami School of Law

In this past year, I enjoyed some significant opportunities to advocate, negotiate, and study the new ABA standards. I return often to the text and context of the Standards and interpretations and consider how this language is challenging us in our critical roles in law schools today. In review, the comment to Standard 303 guides us:

The development of professional identity should involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice. Because developing a professional identity requires reflection and growth over time, students should have frequent opportunities for such development during each year of law school and  in a variety of courses and co-curricular and professional development activities.(emphasis added).

How do we teach the foundational skills of ‘reflection and growth” as part of well-being practices in law school? One very significant contribution to answering this question is through the teaching of Mindfulness in law schools.

My colleague and friend Professor Scott Rogers has written a fabulous and important resource—The Mindful Law Student: A Mindfulness in Law Practice Guide. Scott serves as Lecturer in Law and Director of University of Miami School of Law’s Mindfulness in Law Program and Co-Director of the University of Miami’s Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative. Scott is also a co-president of the national non-profit Mindfulness in Law Society. Scott has spent more than a decade collaborating on peer-reviewed neuroscience research assessing the efficacy of mindfulness training and shares a series of core practices that have been part of this research and are among those found in many well-respected mindfulness training programs. This Practice Guide was published in September by Edward Elgar publishing and is thus a very new tool in our toolbox for teaching mindfulness.

Overview: The Mindful Law Student

The Mindful Law Student is both profound and concise. The materials build upon Scott’s teaching at the University of Miami for the past 15 years. I have been blessed to have a “front row seat” and observe the evolution of Scott’s teaching from his first arrival at Miami Law. Having seen and heard many of his presentations over this time, I was tremendously impressed by Scott’s ability to pull together this complex body of work into such a focused and readable text.

The book is divided into three parts, each consisting of 5 chapters. The first part is called “Mindfulness Elements” and includes a discussion of Leadership, Attention, Relaxation, Awareness, and Mindfulness.  This material is foundational and elucidates the relevance of this topic to every aspect of our personal and professional lives. Part II is “Mindfulness and You” and features specific strategies relating to Solitude, Connection, Self-Care, Movement, and Practice. As Scott tells us:

The chapters in Part II can be read in any order, and you may find them to be useful interludes that complement the readings in Part I.

(I will admit that I read them “in order” the first time but see the opportunities to return to them in different orders, and that this would be welcoming to students.)

Part III, Mindfulness Integrations, raises our awareness of the ways that Mindfulness can affect our lawyering in the areas of Listening, Negotiation, Judgment, Creativity, and Freedom. This section included some very significant “aha” moments for me. For example, in Chapter 11 on Listening, Scott talks about the tendency of lawyers (and physicians) to interrupt their clients and patients. He then offers very specific guidance on how to transition to a mindful listener. Chapter 12 on Negotiation highlights the value of mindful attention to understand better our counterparties and moving beyond self-centered thinking to productive negotiation strategies. Returning to our main theme of professional identity, Part III makes clear the integral role of a mindfulness and reflective practice in performing key elements of our work as lawyers.

Some Special Gems in The Mindful Law Student

Each chapter skillfully integrates scholarship and key teachings on Mindfulness with elements that make this particularly accessible to law students. For one, Scott features seven fictional, diverse law students who face academic and professional challenges and find a pathway for Mindfulness to assist each of them. Each chapter also includes some insightful visualizations and images that capture main concepts. As a visual learner myself, I find these images particularly captivating. Scott is most adept with his key “metaphors”—a reader of the book will quickly understand the images of the flashlight (of attention), the snow globe (of life’s confusing moments), the lightbulb (for awareness), and the spirals (of over-reaction). These images return throughout the book.

Most chapters introduce readers to a different mindfulness practice that connects to that chapter’s subject matter.  A website for the book offers a series of 6-, 12-, and 18-minute versions of each practice, which students can also access via a free app. Scott provides access to practice scripts for those faculty who may wish to offer live guidance in class.

The text skillfully integrates the teachings of many great thinkers, from Rumi and Buddhist devotees to musicians like Herbie Hancock and Supertramp, from civil rights leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois to contemporary lawyers and judges who practice mindfulness.

The Mindful Law Student includes specific exercises and probing questions for meditation and self-reflection at the end of each chapter. Mindfulness requires practice and this is a practice guide. Each chapter also highlights key Trials and Takeaways, which are summaries of main concepts and areas for future work. Finally, each chapter has a concise but helpful list of references and resources for those who might want to dig deeper into any subject.

Chapter 14, “Creativity,” challenges the reader to connect with one’s creative soul through art and poetry. I felt the need to accept that challenge and take the “first step” on that “journey of a thousand miles.” The text discusses the Haiku structure, composed of three-line stanzas of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. I took the plunge, and so here I share my first mindful Haiku with you, inviting our readers to consider your own creative endeavors.

Haiku #1

Powerful Law profs

Changing the world mind by mind

Moment by moment

 

Guiding law students

Capable of breath, thoughts, dreams

The key: mindfulness

 

Reflective lawyers

Navigating this world with

Equanimity

 

Strategies for Using The Mindful Law Student

This Practice Guide can be integrated in a number of productive ways into the law school experience of teaching professional identity. Some options might include:

-A stand-alone course on Mindfulness. The fifteen chapters would be a successful outline of a weekly course dedicated to exploring the practice and applications of Mindfulness in the Law.

-The book, at just over 200 pages, could be on a recommended summer reading list for new law students, and then form the basis for well-being and orientation programming.

-The sections of the text that focus on listening, negotiation, judgment (and ethics), leadership, and creativity could be part of courses that focus on these particular skills, or included in law clinics, externships, or other experiential learning classes where these skills are taught.

As we explore new curricular options and models around professional identity in 1L and upper-level courses, consider whether The Mindful Law Student would be an appropriate addition to your curriculum.

For More Information:

Contact Elgar Publishing for a copy of The Mindful Law Student so that you can consider strategies for integrating this practice guide into your professional identity teaching.

www.themindfullawstudent.com

Other useful resources include:

Mindfulness in Law Society website:
https://www.mindfulnessinlawsociety.org/

UMindfulness at the University of Miami
https://umindfulness.as.miami.edu/

Mindfulness in Law Program at the University of Miami School of Law
https://www.law.miami.edu/academics/programs/mindfulness/index.html

Please feel free to reach out to me at jstearns@law.miami.edu if you have any questions or comments.

Janet Stearns is Dean of Students at the University of Miami School of Law and Chair of the ABA COLAP Law School Committee.

November 17, 2022 by