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Mandatory 1L Courses

The Leadership Project

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 part of our work on professional identity formation, the University of Illinois College of Law recently launched a Leadership Project that is designed to teach students about core principles of leadership. For many reasons, our profession is over-represented in leadership ranks. One only need look at the 45 U.S. Presidents (Grover Cleveland was one man, but two Presidents) for proof – 26 of them were trained as attorneys, two of them (Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama) from Illinois.

The Leadership Project begins in the 1L year, with three sessions of our Fundamentals of Legal Practice course focused on leadership. One class offers general principles of leadership, co-taught by our Dean and the CEO of Portillo’s Hot Dogs. The second class focuses on the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion when leading teams. The third and final class in the series focuses on leadership in the non-profit realm, recognizing that lawyers will be called to lead everything from condo boards to nations.

We invite 2Ls and 3Ls to continue with Leadership Project activities. Each year, we offer a series of lectures and classes focused on leadership, as well as two “book talks” – sessions that discuss selected books focused on leadership. During the past couple of years, we’ve hosted notable guests such as former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar, Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, and Illinois Supreme Court Justice Lisa Holder White. And, together, we’ve read and analyzed a variety of books, including, for example, Barack Obama’s A Promised Land and Sam Walker’s The Captain Class. As part of the event planning process, we regularly reach out to student groups and encourage them to co-host Leadership Project events. This year, many of our events featured student moderators and discussants. In fact, each year, our Student Bar Association hosts a panel discussion of student leaders – moderated by students – as part of the Project.

Students who complete the required number of lectures, book talks, and classes are invited to participate in a half-day leadership retreat facilitated by an executive coach. Upon completing the retreat, students receive the designation of Leadership Scholar, which is added to their transcript. This month, we’re looking forward to graduating our second cohort of Leadership Scholars, and interest in the Project among our students continues to grow.

We’ve also expanded the Leadership Project beyond the student body, offering continuing legal education in this area to alumni and friends around the world. If you’re interested in learning more about the Leadership Project, or taking part in some of our events, please connect with me on LinkedIn or e-mail 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

April 4, 2023 by gren2380

Patrick Longan

Meeting Students Where They Are

By: Patrick E. Longan
W.A. Bootle Chair in Ethics and Professionalism
Mercer University School of Law

One of the first lessons I learned about teaching professional identity was Neil Hamilton’s oft-repeated observation that we must “meet the students where they are.” This may also be the most important lesson I have learned.

Let me give you an example. At Mercer, a big part of our professional identity course is a series of small group discussions of hypothetical dilemmas the students might face in practice. In one, they are in role as a junior partner in a large firm and discover evidence that a more senior partner, who is a rainmaker and the source of most of their work, may be overbilling their biggest client, a large corporation. The students are asked to come up with a plan for how they are going to proceed and to be ready to convince others in the small group discussions of the wisdom of the chosen course.

This is a classic problem of practical wisdom. There are many values in play, and they are in tension with each other. The junior partner wants to keep a good relationship with the senior partner, for personal and professional reasons. The senior partner has been a mentor, and, without a steady flow of work from the senior partner, the junior partner’s future in the firm is in doubt. At the same time, the junior partner has obligations to protect the firm and the client from the senior partner’s possible wrongdoing. Overlaying those conflicting goals is irreducible uncertainty. Before taking action, the junior partner cannot know for sure whether the senior partner is overbilling or how the firm will react to any questions the junior partner might raise.

The students receive some guidance about how to approach such problems. At a fundamental level, they know that one of the non-negotiable components of a lawyer’s professional identity is fidelity to the client. We teach it as a virtue and articulate it in first-person terms: “I am the kind of lawyer who fulfills my duties of utmost good faith and devotion to my client, and I do not permit my personal interests or the interests of others to interfere with those duties.” For this problem, the students also receive more detailed instructions. The problem offers them the options to do nothing, to raise the issue directly with the senior partner, to consult in-house ethics counsel, or to report the partner to the bar.

Because of all the uncertainty, there is no one right answer. Maybe the senior partner is a thief. Maybe he’s a sloppy timekeeper. Or maybe the partner has an arrangement with the client that allows him to bill a certain number of hours each month regardless of how many hours he actually expends. The students have to think through those possibilities and decide what to do.

This is where the lesson “meet the students where they are” comes in. Although there is no single right answer, at least one answer is wrong: the junior partner cannot choose to do nothing. Once a lawyer has substantial reason to believe that their client may have been the victim of overbilling by a partner in the firm, the lawyer must at least inquire further. Fidelity to the client demands action. In the possible overbilling scenario, there are better and worse ways of proceeding, but the lawyer must proceed in some way, even if it is against self-interest.

Every year we learn that many first-year law students cannot bring themselves to accept, even in a law school hypothetical, that they might be required to take personal risks to protect a client from the acts of another. When the students do a written reflection on the exercise, many write, with great candor and self-awareness, that they would not do anything that would put their position at risk, because they feel a primary obligation to protect themselves and their families from the loss of their jobs. Some describe this decision as “minding my own business,” or “staying in my lane,” or – my personal favorite – “not my circus, not my monkeys.” More than a few foresee catastrophic personal consequences if they lose their job. Others justify the decision by pointing out that the client in the hypothetical is a big corporation that would not miss the money.

Students do not respond in these ways because they suffer from character flaws. They are simply at an early stage of their professional identity development. It is our job to “meet them where they are.”

The most important part of doing that is not to be preachy or judgmental about the decision to do nothing in order to protect themselves. We should expect many students to have a self-interested disposition rather than a fiduciary one at this stage. Law students are all high achievers, and being disposed to look out for #1 has helped them succeed. Although we do not shrink from explaining that the decision to do nothing is unacceptable, we do so in a kind and understanding way. For example, we try to help the students see the situation through the client’s eyes. The client has to trust the lawyer and the law firm because the client is unlikely to be able to detect overbilling. The client would surely feel entitled to know if one of the firm’s lawyers was stealing from the client, if for no other reason than to begin the search for a new law firm. The reasons why acting as a fiduciary to a client are non-negotiable begin to emerge from those discussions.

Another aspect of “meeting them where they are” is to address their fears of losing their jobs if they report the senior partner. That is a possible outcome in the scenario. But some students panic because they foresee economic catastrophe. Some say they fear “not being able to feed my family” or “losing everything I worked so hard for” if they lose their job. These fears are real because that is “where students are.” Many students lead precarious economic lives. Many have no assets or income and live on massive student loans that someday will need to be repaid. Their nervousness about money leads them, in responding to the problem, to cling to the good job they have with lockjaw tenacity, even if the client suffers. But the students do not appreciate that their economic lives as lawyers will be different from their economic lives as students. They do not realize that losing this particular job is unlikely to be quite so catastrophic. There are other firms, other jobs, other clients. There are steps they can take to insulate themselves from possible effects of switching jobs by cultivating their skill, reputation, and client base. At least in this part of the problem, we can speak some comfort to them. Although there is reason to be afraid of losing a job, there is likely no need to be terrified of it. We can start to move them from where they are to a place less filled with economic dread.

A final aspect of “meeting them where they are” in the handling of this problem is to address the suggestion that they owe less of a duty to a big corporate client than to a more sympathetic or impoverished one. The temptation to think that way at an early stage of professional identity development is understandable. Some of our students take a dim view of big business and instinctively feel entitled to condition their conduct as lawyers on the moral worthiness of the client.

If we handle this approach with understanding and patience, we can help the students cultivate a more mature professional identity. Early in the semester, we read a story about a criminal defendant who was executed after he received terrible representation, perhaps in part because his lawyers did not think he deserved it. After all, the client was a “wife-killer.” The students mostly were outraged by that. Many said “everyone deserves the lawyer’s best efforts” or something along those lines. When we play back those sentiments in our discussions about the representation of a large corporation, the students begin to move from where they are to a more sophisticated understanding of the lawyer’s role. If you can’t be 100% of a lawyer for a wife-killer, don’t represent him. If you can’t give your all for a big corporation, do something else. But the students begin to appreciate that selective fulfillment of the lawyer’s duties, depending upon the worthiness of the client, is not an option.

This is a specific example of a general point. Professional identity development is a process. Most law students are at an early stage. If we “meet them where they are” with understanding and kindness, we can help move them to where they need to be. Neil Hamilton taught me that. For this and so much else – thank you, Neil.

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

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

March 31, 2023 by hami3258

Greg Miarecki

How Can You Increase Connection and Engagement with Students in a Professional Identity Formation Class You Teach? Be Vulnerable

As I discussed in a prior article, the University of Illinois College of Law has taught a required 1L professional identity formation class in since early 2015 – known as Fundamentals of Legal Practice. I teach the class each spring semester, and we cover a wide variety of topics, including the business of law, professional communications, personal branding, relationship building, client service, the importance of pro bono service, and leadership. Each year, usually sometime in February, I get some backlash from students. Some of them tend to be overwhelmed with the demands of the profession I discuss, and express some frustration and exasperation. Once in a while, students will complain that I “don’t get it,” because I went to law school a while ago, went to a T-14 school, and was a litigation partner in a large law firm for many years.

A year or so ago, I was discussing the topic of personal branding, and related a story about how I brought a sleeping bag to my first trial site, believing that I might need it given the long hours. I shared that, while I never actually used the sleeping bag during the trial, the act of bringing it had established me as someone who was willing to work hard. One of my students actually chastised me for taking such an extreme measure. To be honest, I’d never actually thought about why I brought that sleeping bag to the trial site – a trucking facility in Akron, Ohio – in the cold winter of 1999. And in the moment, it came to me why I had – I really didn’t know any better. I had never been part of a trial team before, and I didn’t have anyone in my family who was a lawyer to ask, “What’s a trial like?” So I told my students exactly that – I was new to the legal profession. No one had ever told me what a big trial was like. All I knew is that I’d have to work a lot, and I had a sleeping bag, so I brought it with me. My students’ response was surprising – many of them commented that they had no idea I was a “first generation law student” who didn’t really know my way around at the time. Several of them thanked me for making this “admission.” The act of showing some vulnerability seemingly allowed me to connect with students in a different way.

So this year, I decided to double down on the concept of vulnerability. At the outset of the class, I told my students about some of my foibles in the legal profession, including my highly inefficient 1L job search (sending out 250 form letters), a C in a constitutional law class my second year, a rough summer internship experience the same year, and terrible interviewing skills/habits during both OCI seasons. And I referred back to those “war stories” repeatedly during the course. In the end, I found it helpful to share some of my vulnerabilities with the students, and found most of them to be more engaged than previous classes. If you’re looking to engage your students in professional identity formation discussions, try telling them about some of your worst failures and how you recovered from them using the concepts you’re teaching. You might be pleasantly surprised!

Please feel free to contact me at miarecki@illinois.edu if you have any questions or comments.

March 9, 2023 by hami3258

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

Practice Areas of Interest
Geography of Interest
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:

Practice Areas of Interest
Type of employer
Geography of Interest
Students self-identified and peer-affirmed strengths/competencies
Quick Assessment of whether student understands concept of having to communicate a persuasive story of value and has good stories to tell
Quick Assessment of Self-Directedness
Identified goals for summer
Identified interests for registration for next year
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 hami3258

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 hami3258

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.

February 9, 2023 by hami3258

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 hami3258

Patrick Longan

Developing Professional Identity By Aligning Personal Values and Professional Life and Following the Four Steps of Discernment: Using A Distinguished Judge’s Life as a Guide

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

All of us who teach professional identity are constantly on the lookout for useful resources. A new book that you will find to be valuable is The Significant Lawyer: The Pursuit of Purpose and Professionalism, by the Honorable William S. Duffey, Jr. (Mercer University Press (2022)).

Judge Duffey comes to the topic of professional identity with long and varied experience in the law. He served in the Air Force JAG Corps, as a private practitioner for 22 years with King & Spalding, as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and as a United States District Judge. Judge Duffey has reflected deeply on his experiences in the profession and provides powerful insights into how lawyers can find meaning and satisfaction in their careers.

The central thesis of the book is that lawyers must align their lives in the law with their personal values. When lawyers allow their careers to become misaligned with their values, they sacrifice their integrity, with the result that they find themselves unhappy, even lost, in their professional lives. In Judge Duffey’s experience, such misalignment is all too common. For lawyers in private practice, especially at the large law firms whose “profits-per-partner” metrics are routinely published, Judge Duffey blames the misalignment on the pivot of law firms away from service toward the pursuit of more and more profit.

In his reflections, Judge Duffey does not spare himself. For example, he notes that one of his personal values is not to be overly concerned with money or status. He describes how he and his wife, acting consistently with that value, resolved not to change their lifestyle when he became a partner. Yet soon he was driving a new BMW “partner kind of car” and moving to a new house. He had the self-awareness to know he was being pulled out of alignment by money and status. To try to counteract that tendency, and to put his professional life back into alignment with his personal values, one year he resolved not to compare his share of King & Spalding’s profits with those of his partners. He resolutely looked only at his own compensation and decided it was fair. A few days later, he succumbed to the temptation to know what the other partners made. Then his compensation seemed less fair. Judge Duffey found himself less satisfied when he kept score of his professional success by comparing his compensation to the compensation of others.

Judge Duffey also describes the effects of misalignment on his personal life. His personal values include deep love for his family. But when he had reached the litigation “fast lane” at King & Spalding, he realized that the priority he gave to his professional life had caused deterioration of his marriage and estrangement from his children. He carefully reviewed his calendars for the past few years and discovered to his surprise very few entries related to events with his family. Judge Duffey resolved to realign his professional life so that he could give “equal dignity” to his commitment to his family.

There came a point when Judge Duffey decided that he needed a change. Although the work at King & Spalding was complex and challenging, he found that his professional life was significantly misaligned with his personal values. He made the courageous decision to leave a lucrative private practice for public service. As he writes, he then found his professional life to be “abundantly satisfying.”

Judge Duffey’s book is an excellent primer on the cultivation of a healthy professional identity. When we teach our students about professional identity, we ask them to take four steps of discernment. Judge Duffey’s story illustrates all four.

First, students need to reflect on their personal values and motivations and define their personal ethos. One cannot align one’s personal values with professional practice without knowing what those personal values are. Taking the time to reflect is far too rare these days. It takes effort, self-awareness, honesty, and humility. Judge Duffey is an inspiration in this regard. As his book reveals, he is a deeply introspective man who has throughout his life regularly examined and reexamined his most important beliefs and values.

The second step of discernment is to question whether one’s personal values and motivations are likely to be associated with happiness. Not all personal values are created equal. Positive psychology has shown that work that is done for intrinsic rewards rather than extrinsic ones is more likely to yield satisfaction. One is intrinsically motivated to engage in activities that are fulfilling for their own sake or that serve a fundamental purpose. Extrinsic motivations seek rewards that are external to the activity, such as the money one earns for it. Judge Duffey appears to have learned this lesson early in life. As he describes his personal values, over and over he writes about things that are intrinsically rather than extrinsically rewarding. He notes that what he enjoyed about his high-stakes civil litigation private practice was that it was complex and challenging. That is an intrinsic reward of that type of work. When Judge Duffey writes of the rewards of service as a prosecutor or a judge, he describes the fulfillment of fundamental purposes such as fairness and justice. Despite his honest descriptions of the allure of money, status, and power, Judge Duffey never adopted those extrinsic values as his own.

I should note in this regard that Judge Duffey does not contend that lawyers should not seek material success. There is nothing inherently wrong with prosperity. Especially at this time of year, I am reminded of one exchange in the Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey, desperate because his Uncle Billy has lost $8,000, hears from his guardian angel that they don’t use money in heaven. George’s response is, “Comes in pretty handy down here, bub. I found it out a little late.” Money does come in handy, and material success is not inconsistent with a meaningful life in the profession. Judge Duffey makes that point several times. But when an extrinsic motivation such as the accumulation of money predominates over intrinsic ones, the lawyer is on a path to dissatisfaction in the law and in life. Law students need to appreciate that. It is not obvious, or even intuitive, but Judge Duffey somehow internalized that lesson early in life.

The third step of discernment is to consider how one’s personal values can be integrated with the non-negotiable norms of the legal profession. It is necessary, but not enough, for lawyers to be able to say that their personal values align perfectly with how they practice law. But what if those values and the conduct that flows from them violate the shared values of the profession? For example, imagine a young lawyer whose personal values include winning at all costs; that goal might be served by ignoring the rules of conduct. Cheaters sometimes win. That lawyer would enjoy a perfect alignment of personal values with his mode of practice, yet of course it is unacceptable. The legal profession exists to serve public purposes and not just the happiness of its members. Judge Duffey’s book shows a deep appreciation for the shared values of the profession. He writes about the eight oaths he has taken over the course of his career. Judge Duffey understands, and appears always to have understood, that lawyers must align their conduct not just to personal values but also to professional standards.

The fourth step of discernment is for lawyers to find the place in the law where their values and the practice can align. No one is born knowing what it is like to be a lawyer in different parts of the profession or how to conduct oneself in all contexts to align personal and professional values. Judge Duffey’s book helps here in several respects. First, he describes his wide range of experiences in the law and provides insights for his readers about life as a prosecutor, a big firm litigator, and a judge. He also relates how the lives of lawyers he has known sharpened his understanding of how to be a happy and successful lawyer. I am pleased to report that two of the lawyers he describes—Griffin Bell and Frank Jones—were proud alums of the Mercer University Law School. More generally, those passages of the book alert law students and young lawyers to the importance of role models and mentors as they find their places in the profession.

This spring, for the 20^th year, all first-year Mercer Law students will take a course on professional identity. A generous alum has purchased copies of Judge Duffey’s book for all those students, and we will be using the book in the course. Judge Duffey has made a major contribution to the emerging field of professional identity instruction in law schools, and I commend his book to all readers of this blog. You will find it, as I did, both instructive and inspirational.

Should have you any questions or comments about this post, please contact me at longan_p@law.mercer.edu.

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.

December 15, 2022 by hami3258

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 hami3258

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 hami3258

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