Race/Bias/Cultural Competence – Holloran Center Professional Identity Implementation Blog - Page 2

Holloran Center Professional Identity Implementation Blog

Browsing Tag

Race/Bias/Cultural Competence

David Grenardo

Breaking Down Siloes and Building Up Students: The Transformational Possibilities of 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

Three national leaders in professional identity formation—Lindsey P. Gustafson, Aric K. Short, and Robin Thorner—came together to author an exceptional article focused on professional identity formation. Their article, Breaking Down Siloes and Building Up Students: The Transformational Possibilities of Professional Identity Formation, will be part of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal’s spring 2023 symposium issue that will explore pedagogies relating to professional identity formation.

Here is the abstract of the article:

Under the ABA’s sequenced approach to implementation of Standard 303(b)(3), schools should now have developed plans for providing opportunities for professional identity formation and should be implementing them. These plans must provide students with an “intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” In addition, these plans should provide for frequent opportunities for development, “during each year of law school and in a variety of courses and co-curricular and professional development activities.”

Because Standard 303(b)(3) is necessarily tied to the unique character, existing structures, and available resources of a law school, each school’s plan will be different. That has been our experience as we have worked as professional identity formation leaders in different roles with varying perspectives: Lindsey Gustafson at the William H. Bowen School of Law, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, is a current Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and a skills and doctrinal professor; Aric Short at the Texas A&M School of Law is a former Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, a doctrinal professor, and currently serves as the Director of the Professionalism and Leadership Program; and Robin Thorner at St. Mary’s University School of Law is an Assistant Dean for Career Strategy, a teaching adjunct, and the current Director of Professional Identity Formation.

In this essay, we hope to emphasize that professional identity formation efforts can occur all across the law school’s operations, from administrative offices to classrooms to voluntary student activities. We also provide specific examples of how schools can be more intentional and explicit as they weave together multiple professional identity formation opportunities for their students. This process takes time and attention, but it creates a powerful whole-building approach to identity formation that not only complies with 303(b)(3), but also best positions our students for a successful, fulfilling, and impactful career in law.

A link to the article can be found here.

Should you have any questions or comments about the article, please feel free to contact any or all of the authors at lpgustafson@ualr.edu, ashort@law.tamu.edu, and rthorner@stmarytx.edu.

 

September 5, 2023 by
David Grenardo

Professional Responsibility and Professional Identity Formation in a Community of Practice with Alumni

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

Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings…and Neil Hamilton finishes another article. Neil Hamilton, the Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, has completed a new professional identity formation article. Hamilton wrote his latest article for the University of St. Thomas Law Journal’s spring 2023 symposium on professional identity formation. Hamilton’s article explores a new approach to the required Professional Responsibility course that provides reasonable coverage of the law of lawyering, legal analysis, and compliance, but also helps each student understand and participate in a community of practice focused on all the discretionary calls of lawyering in the area of the student’s ultimate practice interest. The student sees that legal ethics knowledge and capacities are not just doctrinal knowledge and legal analysis but are also social and situated in a community of practice. The student also sees that many alumni of the law school are successful in the practice of law while living into the values of the law school and the profession, not just compliance with the minimum floor of the law of lawyering. The student will also understand that in any practice area, the experienced lawyers know who can be trusted and who are the jerks. It will be the student’s and new lawyer’s choice which path to take.

Part II(A) of the article first outlines that the ABA Model Rules of Professional Responsibility (adopted by all 50 states with some variation) codify some values of the profession (like competence, diligence, confidentiality, and loyalty) into the law of lawyering with which licensed lawyers must comply. Part II(A) also explains that many of the Rules give discretion to practicing lawyers with respect to choices about conduct above the floor of the Rules. Part II(B) then analyzes the core values in the mission and learning outcomes of some law schools, and in the Preamble to the Model Rules, that help guide each lawyer’s discretionary decision-making. Part III analyzes how communities of practice influence lawyers in making the discretionary calls of lawyering in a way consistent with the profession’s core values. Part IV explores empirical evidence on whether practicing lawyers think their legal education was an effective community of practice fostering their understanding of these core values in making the discretionary calls of lawyering. Part V discusses Hamilton’s own Professional Responsibility course that creates communities of practice with students and alumni to help students understand the importance of the law school’s and the profession’s core values in making the discretionary calls of lawyering.

A link to Hamilton’s article can be found here.

David Grenardo is a Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

August 9, 2023 by
Neil Hamilton

INTRODUCING THE STREAMLINED (AND EVEN MORE LAW-STUDENT FRIENDLY) THIRD EDITION OF NEIL HAMILTON’S AWARD-WINNING BOOK, ROADMAP: THE LAW STUDENT’S GUIDE TO MEANINGFUL EMPLOYMENT (2023)

By: Neil Hamilton, Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law

The learning outcome for the ROADMAP is that each student takes ownership (self-direction) over the student’s professional development toward the student’s goals of bar passage and meaningful post-graduation employment.  Students at later stages of self-direction demonstrate higher academic performance and planning and implementation skills that increase bar passage and post-graduation employment outcomes. The ROADMAP is empowering each student to perform at the student’s highest capacity. The ROADMAP is also meeting ABA Standard 303(b) and (c) requirements regarding the development of each student’s professional identity.

This third edition of the ROADMAP is a complete revision of the second edition.  Since the first edition was published in 2015, and the second edition in 2018, the Holloran Center and I have continued to learn how more effectively to go where the students are developmentally to help them achieve their goals (and the Law School’s goals) of bar passage and meaningful post-graduation employment.

The entire book is now 50 pages at a price of $19.95 (ABA’s website indicates ordered books will ship on August 15 at the earliest).  In this edition, the students read 21 pages and then do the template plan which is 5 pages.  The reading and the template plan focus on using the student’s time inside and outside of the building to gain experiences that will achieve three goals:

  1. Thoughtfully discern the student’s passion, motivating interests, and strengths that best fit with a geographic community of practice, a practice area and type of client, and type of employer;
  2. Develop the student’s strengths to the next level; and
  3. Demonstrate evidence of the student’s strengths that employers value.

The book then has a chapter on building a tent of professional relationships that helps each student achieve these three goals plus a professional relationship tent-building template plan.  This chapter also includes cross-cultural skills addressing ABA Standard 303(c).

A number of law schools already use the ROADMAP, and the hope is that other law schools will discover its incredible value in helping law students with their professional identity formation.  To discover what the ROADMAP can do for your law students, you can find the book here.

Neil Hamilton is the Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minnesota.

August 2, 2023 by
Dawn Figueiras

One Year Later: An Update on One Law School’s Faculty-Approved Implementation Plan

By: Dawn Figueiras, Assistant Professor of Law, Associate General Counsel, Chair of the Curriculum Committee, Appalachian School of Law

A year ago, the Curriculum Committee of Appalachian School of Law (ASL) was diligently creating an Implementation Plan for complying with the ABA’s revised Standards 303(b) and (c).  After adoption by ASL’s Faculty on August 16, 2022, the Plan was published in the first post of the Holloran Center Professional Identity Implementation Blog.  One year later, we report on our progress.

Our Implementation Plan, to be deployed in academic year 2023-2024, included retention of several existing aspects of ASL’s curriculum, including administration of the Professionalism Oath to incoming students during orientation and participation in an Externship placement during the summer following 1L year with journaling to document experiences and self-reflections.  Additions to ASL’s program included a new “Professionalism, Leadership, and Transition to Practice” (PLT) program designed, respectively, for 1L, 2L, and 3L students. Programs already scheduled for the upcoming Fall semester include a two-day visit by Virginia State Bar President Chidi James and a joint visit by executives of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association and Virginia Association of Defense Attorneys who will conduct talks with 1Ls about professionalism and with 2Ls about leadership.

The Implementation Plan included re-working ASL’s 1L “Introduction to Community Service” course into “Building a Professional Identity,” which would focus on professional identity development, well-being, and incorporating community service/pro bono service into a law career.  This new course will be included as a required 1L course beginning Fall semester, 2023.

One aspect of ASL’s Plan proved more difficult to implement.  A visit to a federal court during/near orientation hasn’t been accomplished yet.  But even though ASL couldn’t bring the students to a court, we brought a court to the students! In April 2023, ASL hosted a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for oral arguments, comprised of then-Chief Judge Roger Gregory, Judge Albert Diaz (now Chief Judge), and Judge Stephanie Thacker.[1]  ASL students watched attorneys argue two civil cases and one criminal case before the panel, and had several opportunities for interaction with the judges and their clerks.  Spring semester, 2024, will see ASL hosting the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims for oral arguments, dinner with students and faculty, and a networking social event with the judges and their clerks.

ASL’s Implementation Plan called for faculty to incorporate aspects of revised Standard 303(b) and (c) into their courses whenever possible.  ASL conducted a curriculum survey[2] of all full-time and adjunct faculty at the conclusion of Spring semester, 2023, for all courses taught during the 2022-2023 academic year.  This survey included specific questions about the inclusion of activities, discussions, and exercises that provided opportunities related to revised Standard 303(b) (“to engage in thoughtful self-reflection on the development of a professional identity that utilizes the student’s unique aptitudes and capacities” or “PIF”) and 303(c) (“demonstrating the ability to effectively build professional relationships across racial and cultural differences and to engage in culturally competent interactions” or “cross-cultural competency”).

Of the fourteen required 1L courses, 50% reported already incorporating PIF elements (including Intentional Torts and Criminal Law), and 43% reported already incorporating cross-cultural competency elements (such as Introduction to Externships and Legal Process II).  66% of the six required 2L courses incorporated PIF (e.g., Constitutional Law II and Criminal Procedure) and 33% incorporated cross-cultural competency elements (including Constitutional Law I and Professional Responsibility).  Of the three required 3L bar preparation courses, 66% incorporated PIF elements but none incorporated cross-cultural competency elements.  The Implementation Plan anticipated that several elective courses would incorporate PIF and/or cross-cultural competency elements, but the survey revealed higher results than expected.  Of the 40 elective courses surveyed, 24 courses (60%) incorporated PIF elements (such as Administrative Law; Conflicts; and Employment Law) and another 24 courses (60%) incorporated cross-cultural competency (e.g., Poverty, Health & Law; Marijuana Law; and Information Privacy Law); 23 courses incorporated both (including Family Law; Sentencing; and History of Race & the Law).  Notably, of the eleven elective experiential learning courses, ten (91%) incorporated PIF (such as Criminal Practice and The Law of Starting a New Business) and nine (82%) incorporated cross-cultural competency (e.g., Estate Planning and Trial Advocacy).

Even before the full deployment of its Implementation Plan, ASL “provid[ed both] substantial opportunities to students for the development of a professional identity” and also “education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism.” ASL is pleased with its progress on meeting revised ABA Standard 303, and looks forward to fine-tuning and fully-employing its Implementation Plan for even greater integration of PIF and cross-cultural competency into its J.D. program.

Should you have any questions or if you would like to discuss the implementation of ASL’s plan, then please contact me at dfigueiras@asl.edu.

[1] See https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/oral-argument/oral-argument-calendar/earlier-court-terms.

[2] This Curriculum Mapping Survey was primarily designed to gauge how ASL is meeting its Learning Outcomes and secondarily to assess the curriculum’s readiness for the NextGen Bar Exam.

Dawn Figueiras is an Assistant Professor of Law, the Associate General Counsel, and Chair of the Curriculum Committee at Appalachian School of Law.

July 26, 2023 by
David Grenardo

Leveraging Professional Identity Formation in the Doctrinal Law School Class

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

Lou Bilionis, Dean Emeritus and Droege Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, also serves as a Holloran Center Fellow. He has written extensively on professional identity formation, including an open access book published by Cambridge University Press titled Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals. His most recent article on professional identity, which is forthcoming in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal, demonstrates how law professors can effectively incorporate professional identity formation into doctrinal classes. He presented this article at the University of St. Thomas Law Journal’s spring 2023 symposium that explored pedagogies to support professional identity formation.

American law schools are paying increased attention to the professional identity formation of their students. The trend should grow now that the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has revised its accreditation standards to prescribe that “a law school shall provide substantial opportunities to students for … (3) the development of a professional identity.”

As law school faculty and staff proceed, professors who teach traditional doctrinal classes may doubt they can do much if anything differently in their courses to support professional identity formation. Questions about course coverage and their own competency to focus on professional identity formation understandably arise and may give professors pause. Bilionis’ article illustrates how purposeful focus on professional identity formation in a doctrinal course can be done to enrich the educational experience for students. Rather than detracting from the doctrinal work, professional identity formation features can be a multiplier. They can be leveraged to promote the doctrinal learning and the sharpening of cognitive skills traditionally expected in the course, while also contributing positively to the student’s development as a professional in other ways. Importantly, doing so is not difficult and requires no special expertise of the professor.

Bilionis’ article reports on his personal experience since 2016 teaching a basic constitutional law course with professional identity formation as a central feature. The reader will find a model that has delivered positive results for students and the professor alike, and which any professor can employ in any typical doctrinal course. In addition to reviewing strategic considerations, the article digs into the details of what to do and how to do it. It identifies and walks through various components that can be introduced to accent professional identity formation concepts while advancing traditional learning objectives. The components are easily adaptable to suit the needs and preferences of the professor, and faculty interested in experimenting can select one or more for a test run in their classes.

A link to Bilionis’ article can be found here.

David Grenardo is a Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

July 6, 2023 by
David Grenardo

If You’re Looking for Professional Identity Formation Resources, Then You’ve Come to the Right Place

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

The Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota) strives to share as many resources with others as possible. In an effort to make resources even more accessible, the Holloran Center has revamped its website to deliver those resources in a user-friendly manner.

The home page of the Holloran Center website begins with links (on the right side of the page) to (1) short, useful definitions of professional identity and professional identity formation, (2) three articles that explain the ABA’s changes to its standards 303(b) and (c), and (3) two groundbreaking articles on law students’ well-being.

As you scroll down the home page, four major links can be found under the heading “How to Get Started”: (1) Get to Know the Holloran Center, (2) Review Changes to Standard 303, (3) Explore our Tools and Resources, and (4) See Our Research and Training. Each of these four major categories is discussed below.

The first major link, Get to Know the Holloran Center, takes the user to a page that features the leadership team of the Holloran Center, including its Co-Directors Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ, along with me, and the Holloran Center Fellows, Barbara Glesner Fines, Kendall Kerew, and Lou Bilionis. It also includes links to pages about Tom Holloran, who is the inspiration and namesake of the Center, along with a Donors and Partners page.

The second major link, Review Changes to Standard 303, leads to a page that includes (1) a list of existing entry ramps for schools to incorporate professional identity formation and (2) a link to an open access book – Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals – that provides a straightforward and detailed look at the changes to 303(b) and (c) and suggestions regarding how to comply with those standards, and (3) the introductory materials mentioned above (short definitions of PI and PIF and three short articles about the changes to the ABA standards).

The third major link – Explore our Tools and Resources – brings up three more links on that topic: Learning Outcomes Database; Holloran Competency Milestones; and Professional Development Database.

The Learning Outcomes Database contains a searchable list of all law school learning outcomes that were available on law school websites as of January 2022. The Holloran Center identified those law schools with “basic” learning outcomes – those that recite the language of Standard 302 and nothing more. The Holloran Center also identified those law schools with more robust learning outcomes than required by the language of Standard 302.

The Holloran Competency Milestones are rubrics that describe the various stages of development associated with learning outcomes. In other words, they provide a tool to assess whether (and to what extent) law students are reaching learning outcomes in a variety of areas, including the following:

The Professional Development Database list includes 62 first-year, required, law school professional development initiatives based on information from law school websites as of November 2019. This list, as well as the Learning Outcomes Database, are currently being updated by research assistants for the Holloran Center. The updates should be available by September 1, 2023.

The fourth major link, See Our Research and Training, consists of three links itself. The first is the Roadmap for Employment, which is the award-winning book that provides a template for law students to use throughout all three years of law school to be fully prepared to find meaningful employment upon graduation. ABA Books will publish the substantially revised third edition of Roadmap on August 1st of this year; the latest edition is streamlined and even more law-student friendly at 51 pages total.

The second link under Research and Training, Coach Training, offers coaching tips and a guide to perform one-on-one coaching with law students, which is the most effective method to foster each student’s professional growth. The third link contains extensive Research on Professional Formation in multiple areas, such as professional formation overview, the importance of professional formation, promoting student self-direction, fostering a fiduciary mindset, assessing student professional development, legal education observations, and law student well-being and satisfaction.

As you scroll down the home page, there is a link to the Holloran Center Professional Identity Implementation Blog, which features useful and creative articles by contributors from law schools across the entire country.

Scrolling down further on the home page one will find several of the four major links described above.

We are thankful for the excellent work of Carrie Hilger at the University of St. Thomas School of Law and the University of St. Thomas IT Department in revising the Holloran Center website. We are particularly grateful to Skylar Peyton, a rising 3L at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, whose attention to detail, work ethic, and dedication helped to vastly improve the website.

The Holloran Center hopes that its website continues to serve as a valuable hub for free and accessible professional identity resources that can benefit law schools across the nation.

Should you have any questions or needs, please feel free to contact us.

David Grenardo is a Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

June 28, 2023 by
David Grenardo

Student Professional Identity Formation and the Foundational Skill of Building a Tent of Professional Relationships to Support the Student

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

Neil Hamilton, who is the Holloran Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, has authored yet another influential and practical article on professional identity formation. Hamilton’s latest article, which is forthcoming in the Wake Forest Law Review, is a guide for law faculty and staff who want each student to build a tent of professional relationships – a professional network – who both support the student and trust the student to do the work of a lawyer. The importance of professional networks for work performance and career opportunities has been well-established in hundreds of empirical studies. In addition, a growing research literature is documenting that the creation of a professional network requires pro-active networking behaviors, which are defined as an individual’s efforts to develop and maintain professional relationships with others who can potentially provide assistance to them in their career or work.

For some students (and lawyers), “networking” with a clear purpose of strengthening support for the student’s professional goals feels inauthentic, impure, and perhaps even dirty. To avoid this negative connotation, Hamilton’s article uses “building a tent of professional relationships who support the student and trust the student to do the work of a lawyer.” This framing, in Hamilton’s experience, fits within the students’ natural understanding of the importance of social support for each person, including the student, and feels authentic and less instrumental to the students.

A link to Hamilton’s article can be found here.

David Grenardo is a Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

June 21, 2023 by
Barbara Glesner FInes

Bryan Stevenson’s Transformative Moment of Professional Identity

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

Award-winning attorney and scholar Bryan Stevenson begins his book Just Mercy[1] with a story of his experience in law school and the transformative moment when he understood what it meant to be a lawyer and the kind of lawyer he wanted to be.

Stevenson recounts his first-year experience at Harvard where “the courses seemed esoteric and disconnected from the race and poverty issues that had motivated me to consider the law in the first place”[2] and he was “left feeling adrift.”[3] This is precisely the challenge raised by William Sullivan in the Carnegie study of the professions in which he notes legal education’s neglect of “the third apprenticeship.”[4]

The transformative formation experience for Stevenson occurred in the summer after his first year of law school when he participated in a month-long field experience with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The experience combined three of the core pedagogies of professional identity formation: mentoring, acting as an attorney, and reflection.

First, Stevenson met the director of the SPDC on the flight to Atlanta and immediately found a mentor and role model. As Stevenson recounts that initial meeting, “He showed none of the disconnect between what he did and what he believed that I’d seen in so many of my law professors.”[5] The disconnect between the academy and law practice Stevenson felt is one that still bedevils law schools today and is an important lesson in the necessity for collaboration in developing professional identity formation opportunities in law schools.  Guest speakers in the classroom and practice panels or networking opportunities outside the classroom are not just a way to enliven our curriculum or help our students find jobs. These are opportunities for students to consider models of lawyering and connect with mentors.

In this field experience course, Stevenson had the opportunity to engage with a client in his role as a student attorney. He entered that experience unprepared for its impact.  “I wasn’t prepared to meet a condemned man. In 1983, I was a twenty-three-year-old student at Harvard Law School working in Georgia on an internship, eager and inexperienced and worried that I was in over my head…. When I signed up for this internship, I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that I would actually be meeting condemned prisoners. To be honest, I didn’t even know if I wanted to be a lawyer.”[6]

Stevenson was given a simple task in this encounter – tell the client that he would not have an execution date in the coming year. Placing students in roles as attorneys, no matter how well prepared they are, generates intense emotion for most students – excitement, fear, anxiety, insecurity – and this emotion heightens the impact of the experience. This was true for Stevenson, who entered the prison convinced that he had nothing to offer his client.

Like many transformative formation experiences, the visit was full of surprises for Stevenson: the client’s unexpected gratitude, the personal connection he found with the client, the experience of the brutality of the prison guard’s treatment of his client and his guilt that his visit had contributed to that treatment, and the client’s strong, faith-filled reaction to sing the hymn “Higher Ground” as he was taken away from the visitor room. Stevenson left “completely stunned”[7]  and transformed. He became an attorney and the experience in turn changed his entire motivation and approach toward law school:

I finished my internship committed to helping the death row prisoners I had met that month. Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person’s humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own. I went back to law school with an intense desire to understand the laws and doctrines that sanctioned the death penalty and extreme punishments. I piled up courses on constitutional law, litigation, appellate procedure, federal courts, and collateral remedies. I did extra work to broaden my understanding of how constitutional theory shapes criminal procedure. I plunged deeply into the law and the sociology of race, poverty, and power. Law school had seemed abstract and disconnected before, but after meeting the desperate and imprisoned, it all became relevant and critically important.[8]

In Bryan Stevenson’s recounting of this first experience with a client on death row, we can see the power and impact of providing opportunities for students to engage with role models and act in the role of attorney. We see how, especially combined with a reflective lens to focus on the meaning of these experiences, these formation experiences help to focus and shape a student’s learning and provide the foundation for their career.

[1] BRYAN STEVENSON, JUST MERCY: A STORY OF JUSTICE AND REDEMPTION (2014).

[2] Id. at 4.

[3] Id. at 5.

[4] William M. Sullivan et al., Carnegie Found. for the Advancement of Teaching, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (2007).

[5] Stevenson, supra note 1, at 5.

[6] Id. at 3.

[7] Id. at 12.

[8] Id. at 12-13.

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

Barbara Glesner Fines is
the Dean and Rubey M. Hulen
Professor of Law at the
University of Missouri-Kansas City
School of Law.
June 8, 2023 by
Jeffrey Baker, Tanya Asim Cooper

Open Conversations: Building Culture, Developing Discourse, Nurturing Democracy

By: Jeffrey R. Baker, Clinical Professor of Law, Associate Dean of Clinical Education and Global Programs, Director of the Community Justice Clinic, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law

Tanya Asim Cooper, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Restoration and Justice Clinic, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law

In 2015, as the Ferguson uprisings swelled in Missouri, we felt a rising tension, anxiety, anger, and discord among our law students at Pepperdine (now Pepperdine Caruso School of Law). Students had organized demonstrations for justice at the law school, and they were seeking other outlets and means to engage. Like much of the nation, they wanted to talk about it, but the law school did not have a ready forum for them to process this controversy together. Professors are often reluctant or unable to pause their regular teaching to engage in wide debates on current events, especially when they are trying to cover significant material in class. But the need persisted, and intensifying frustration created and deepened divisions within the school. 

The dean of students and diversity council conferred with each other and with students, and a student suggested regular, simple lunches and conversation for the student body on the potent questions surfacing around race and racism, policing and police violence, and our national convulsions toward justice. 

This was the provenance of our first Open Conversation. Over fifty students attended, and we set out some simple guidance. This was not a teaching moment for the faculty, and it was not a debate. It was a conversation, discourse to share perspectives, an opportunity to speak and listen, to engage across difference, to give voice to pain and anger, to explore paths forward, all from the students’ perspectives and experiences. With general prompts and light moderation while breaking bread together, the conversation was rich, critical, vibrant, heartfelt, and serious. It did not fix all of the issues or resolve all the tension within our school, but it was a moment of genuine community struggling with itself but refusing to alienate each other. 

The students expressed gratitude for the time and the opportunity to speak and listen. Afterward, a member of the diversity council wrote: 

My fear going into it was that either no one would come or no one would engage in conversation. I was pleasantly surprised that my fear was unfounded. If anything, I thought the hour felt too short for the full conversation. Which I think just goes to show how necessary these open forums are and how glad I am that we are starting this. The other thing I noticed is how sad some of the comments made me. I consider myself very aware of racial tension happening across the country but to hear the struggles from some of our own students was tough.

A senior administrator reported, “We held a very intense, but positive open forum on Monday at which our students were very responsibly and respectfully engaged.  It was well attended and, in my opinion, very worthy of good lawyers discussing hard topics.” 

After that first Open Conversation, we continued to offer them when controversies erupted nationally or locally, refining the approach. In time, they became so important to our community that the law school began offering them monthly during the school year. Now, they are a permanent project of the diversity council, and the law school prioritizes them with “black out” dates once per month so that there is no competition from other events during the lunch hour. And, as an essential ingredient of the experience, the law school provides great food for all comers. (Typically, it’s burritos from Lily’s in Malibu, the best breakfast burrito in Los Angeles County.) 

The broad objective for Open Conversations is to build a healthy culture within our law school community. It is not to resolve every issue or to engage in antagonistic debate; there are plenty of other opportunities for that during law school. Rather, it is to enrich our discourse with care, respect, and dignity, even over the most contentious issues. Moderation and centrism are also not the aims; students advocate and argue in Open Conversations with conviction but within a framework that aims to hold our shared life at the heart of our discussions. In our current national season of extreme polarization, brutal partisanship, personal antagonism, and so-called “cancel culture” (all of which have been topics of our discussions), the Open Conversations are counter-cultural exercises in democratic engagement.  

To these ends, we developed a practice of lightly-moderated discussions over lunch around curated topics with important ground rules for the conversation. We typically have fifty to sixty students and another ten staff and faculty in the room. The ground rules are “conversational harnesses” to preserve the objectives of discourse and engagement, and we share them at the top of each open conversation:

  • Open Conversations are for discourse, not debate.
  • Listen; don’t try to win.
  • Share the airspace equitably; speak only when you have the mic.
  • Be respectful; address ideas, not people.
  • Speak from your own experience and perspective; do not question or attack others for theirs.
  • Do not broadcast, record, or disseminate anything from the conversation on social media.

We pass a microphone around the room to ensure that one person speaks at a time (like the conch rule in the first, happier part of Lord of the Flies) and to promote accessibility and clear communication. On very rare occasions, the moderator may intervene if a student transgresses a ground rule or if the conversation turns personally confrontational. Sometimes the moderators, faculty, or staff in attendance will participate in the conversation itself, but we try to keep our comments limited to asking follow up questions, providing factual or historical context, or identifying constructive threads running through the students’ contributions.  

After everyone gets their food and we have explained the ground rules, we introduce the topic for the day with a few general prompts to get the conversation started. We take real care in selecting topics; the diversity council meets monthly, usually the week before the Open Conversation, to consider the hot topics of the day. We do not necessarily pick topics that are divisive on partisan lines, but we pick topics that are immediately controversial, critically interesting, or universal to the law student experience. Among many others over eight years, topics have included school shootings and the Second Amendment; #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings; human rights at the Olympics; impeachments and January 6; faith in the law; the Dobbs decision and reproductive justice; “cancel culture” and free speech in the academy; Trump indictments and the Tennessee 3; the nature of justice; police violence and procedural reform; and family conversations at Thanksgiving (which has been hilarious).

Good food is a critical element for the success of Open Conversations. We almost always hold them during the lunch hour, and it is a specific discipline to eat together while discussing hard, divisive topics. Across all cultures, breaking bread together, especially with adversaries, is a mark of intentional hospitality and peacemaking. During the pandemic, we saw our various student groups polarizing before our eyes as they launched invectives at each other online while otherwise alienated from each other. But we have seen constructive engagement, even healing, across our school culture when the community eats together while looking at each other directly to talk about intense controversies. 

People talking together over a meal is not novel or revolutionary, but it is ancient and radical. Of course, we’ve had mixed results. Some conversations are vibrant, energetic, critical, and creative. Some are chilled and reticent; some veer into personal confrontation. Our hope is that merely holding Open Conversations and attempting the exercise signals the values and aspirations of our community. We aim to contribute to a robust, generous, and vital culture of engagement within the law school, and we hope that this models the best kind of culture possible in our diverse communities. If our students can experience the work of hard conversations together with constructive advocacy and critical, benevolent disagreement, we hope it will equip them for this work as public citizens in their career.


Jeffrey R. Baker                                        Tanya Asim Cooper
Pepperdine Caruso School of Law            Pepperdine Caruso School of Law
May 30, 2023 by
Leah Teague

Training Law Students to Converse Respectfully: Public Discourse Workshop

By: Leah Teague, Professor of Law & Director of The Leadership Development Program, Baylor Law School

As previously discussed, amendments to ABA Standard 303(b) (development of a professional identity) & (c) (education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism) did not require major adjustments to our programming at Baylor Law. Still, we created a faculty committee to document our compliance and consider enhancements. The committee confirmed numerous ways in which Baylor Law already complies and then considered additional opportunities to enhance their training.

This post highlights one of those enhancements. Beginning with the Fall 2022 entering class, students in each entering class are required to participate in a public deliberation workshop in their second week of law school.

What is public deliberation and why should law students learn how to do it?

The public expects lawyers to be zealous advocates for their clients, but sometimes a lawyer’s conduct goes beyond zealous advocacy and crosses the line of civility. Not only does ill-mannered conduct reflect poorly on our profession, but it also contributes to the normalizing of disrespectful, uncivil, and polarizing reactions to viewpoints and statements with which a person does not agree.

Lawyers’ professional obligations extend beyond individual clients to our system of justice and to society. As stated in the preamble to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct: A Lawyer’s Responsibility, “[a] lawyer is a representative of the clients, an officer of the legal system, and a public citizen having a special responsibility for the quality of justice.” Since the beginning of this nation, lawyers have recognized that their special status comes with a professional responsibility to address pressing issues facing society. A lawyer’s legal education and training provide the opportunity to be change agents and difference makers not only for their clients but also in their communities and across the nation. These professional obligations and opportunities for influence call for lawyers to model civil discourse and to be able to facilitate deliberation in a calm and respectful manner.

The Public Deliberation Workshop teaches our students a different way to approach advocacy – one that helps them embody professionalism, model civility, and advocate more effectively. The following excerpt (from Baylor University’s website) succinctly summarizes the Baylor Public Deliberation Initiative:

“Deliberation involves the best parts of dialogue (conversational) and debate (argument) to offer an experience where participants can learn from one another by talking through different perspectives and approaches to local and global issues and working together to come up with community action steps.”

We want this experience to occur early in law school, so students recognize that civility and professionalism are not antithetical to zealously representing a client. We also hope the experience will inspire and enable students to approach some of the most potentially heated issues debated in the public square (e.g., race, religion and its role in society, sexual orientation, gun rights or gun control, among others) with a desire to build community through shared values, solve problems, and build a better tomorrow.

Public Deliberation Workshop Required for Baylor Law Students

Beginning with the Fall 2022 quarter, each entering student at Baylor Law is introduced to a model for civil discourse through a workshop developed in partnership with Baylor University’s Public Deliberation Initiative. Dr. Joshua Ritter, former Director of the Public Deliberation Initiative, leads the workshops and describes it as a “partnership for training law students as active deliberative citizens with democratic skillsets they can implement within their own communities and leadership.”

The 1½ hour workshop begins with a video from our dean to explain the importance of the effort and to give some context. After some initial remarks and instructions by Dr. Ritter, the law students are divided into groups of 10-12 and given an issue for discussion. Different topics can be used but it needs to be one that elicits a wide range of differing views. We use food insecurity in our workshops to provide a less controversial topic but one with which students have a wide range of understanding and personal experience. The goal is not to change anyone’s mind on the issue, but simply for each participant to hear and to be heard on the issue. Topics incorporated into the training include active listening, cultural competency, and emotional intelligence.

Through this interactive exercise, we hope to demonstrate to students that individuals with diametrically opposed positions often share common values, but they may prioritize those values differently. We are already seeing the benefit to the law school environment as well. Creating a culture of respect for colleagues with different life experiences and perspectives enriches our classrooms and programs.

The workshops provide additional opportunities for second- or third-year law students as well. Law students in our Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) course are trained by Dr. Ritter to be the small group facilitators for upcoming workshops. As facilitators, their job is to keep the group on task while remaining neutral. After training and participation, the law students receive certificates as public deliberation facilitators.

Teaching students about expected behavior as legal professionals is baked into the DNA of a Baylor Law education. With that said, we recognize more can and should be done. Nine years ago, we made significant strides to be more intentional in our professional development training. In 2014, we created our Professional Development Program and our Leadership Development Program to better equip students for the modern challenges of being a member of our time-honored profession. The Public Deliberation Workshop is our newest addition to what we are now calling Baylor Lawyer Pathways, which will be described in a future post.

Please contact me at Leah_Teague@baylor.edu  for more information on any of our programs. 

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

May 9, 2023 by