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Well-Being

Better Conversations? Let’s Talk About It. (Part 2)

By: Christopher Corts, Professor of Law, Legal Practice, University of Richmond School of Law

Hello, again, readers! Today I am writing the second of a two-part series devoted to the art of facilitating better conversations about controversial topics. When we convene these kinds of conversations, we need to be especially attentive to the possibility that some number of listeners are likely to hear perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and values that are in tension with, and sometimes oppositional to, their own—and that some speakers will need to feel comfortable uttering those kinds of polarizing comments, too.

Last month, in Part I, I explained why I think new ABA Standards 303(b) and (c) present an important opportunity for law schools to have some hard but necessary public conversations about racism, bias, and inter-cultural competency. I suggested that, if we are going to effectively teach students how to internalize a professional responsibility for clients and the integrity of the legal system [as we must, under Standard 303(b)], we will necessarily need to help students learn how to detect, address, and overcome the pernicious effects of racism and bias [Standard 303(c)] in our own profession. And: in our own institutions, which collectively help to constitute the state of “the profession” that we are all obligated to critically assess, strengthen, and reform.

All of this means that we will need to facilitate a different kind of conversation within our communities—one that does not involve debating, arguing, or problem-solving. We need conversations that can help to clear the air, establish the state of things as they are (and not as we hope or wish them to be), and give public voice to important, deeply held viewpoints that some stakeholders might be reluctant to share, especially if they perceive those viewpoints to be at odds with official messaging or apparently-prevailing sentiments within the group.

When I facilitate these kinds of hard conversations, I have four primary, process-oriented goals in view (which, astute readers will notice, could also be read as value statements):

give every person an opportunity to speak about a given subject (or: to decline to speak on that subject);
elicit candid and forthright comments about things that are most meaningful to the speaker, especially the kinds of statements about deeply-held personal perceptions, opinions, values, and convictions that are at odds with official messaging or prevailing opinions in a group (which may not ordinarily be heard in public, community-wide conversations that are efficiently managed to meet the aims of organizers running an agenda that they set);
strive—with curiosity, compassion, and non-attachment to any particular outcome—to discover the full, true range of views that constitute the community as it just-is;
create opportunities to be together as a community through periods of shared silence (rather than defaulting to treating silence as something to be feared, avoided, or filled with noise).

All of this takes a lot of time to do well. Without giving adequate time, we cannot hope to let everyone speak, cannot build trust within the group, cannot elicit comments about the deepest and most meaningful things, cannot fully hear and appreciate the true state of things, especially when the true state of things includes profound, meaningful disagreements.

Today, in Part II, I want to give some concrete suggestions for how to plan, stage, and facilitate these kinds of public conversations to achieve the goals outlined above. We need rules and norms to keep everyone invested in the same process. And to do that we need tools and techniques to help us make these conversations slower, less reactive, more intentional, more inclusive, and personally-meaningful to each individual present.

Birthed in my own experiences with inter-faith and ecumenical dialogues while completing my seminary education prior to law school, the suggestions that follow have been refined and further developed during my past decade in legal education and service to the broader community that goes with it. These suggestions reflect communication principles and practical techniques that will be familiar to anyone who has ever experienced non-violent communication, mindful communication…or a Quaker meeting.

Whenever I approach these kinds of difficult conversations, my aim is to try and find a way to facilitate mutual compassion, respect, and trust among participants. Trust makes broader participation more likely, and it makes deeper participation more likely, too. In my experience, when trust exists, it can improve the quality of conversation by improving the likelihood that candid, authentic, contrarian points of view will be voiced—and heard.

Here are a few ideas for how you might facilitate these conversations in a more inclusive and meaningful way. In addition to increasing the likelihood of quality participation from the greatest number of participants (as speakers and listeners), the rules in this list are designed to improve access to the conversation by (a) reducing the costs of speaking for socially-anxious and marginalized participants, while also (b) reducing the possibility that socially-confident participants will be able to grandstand or dominate the discourse.

Consult with experts. The suggestions I am offering are process-oriented. But, especially when it comes to matters of racism, bias, and inter-cultural difference, in the interest of pursuing institutional-level policy reforms—as we must—we all benefit from expert help. There can be no substitute for the wisdom and guidance of experts who have dedicated their professional lives to helping institutions address and fix the wide range of complex problems caused by bias, racism, and a lack of inter-cultural fluency in our organizations.And, at the individual level, we can all benefit from consulting books written by experts. I recommend Rhonda Magee (a lawyer and law professor) and Ruth King (founder of the Mindful of Race Institute, LLC). Both are well-published and write in an accessible way that is especially helpful for deftly navigating the intersection of mindful communication and race in a way that invites maximum participation and deep, compassionate engagement.
Facilitate small group conversations. Public conversations that elicit maximum participation and candor are not possible in mass groups. The smaller the group, the more questions that can be asked and the more topics that can be covered in the same amount of time.How small do the groups need to be? In my experience, six to eight is optimal (for reasons that I hope will become more obvious as you keep reading). Ten to twelve is doable. More than twelve will severely undercut your ability to realistically include all speakers and invite them to contribute with depth and authenticity. This takes many facilitators for many groups, potentially, but one organizing facilitator can come up with the question prompts and guidelines for all of the groups to use and then just leave it to a number of volunteer facilitators to implement at the small-group level. If they can read and follow directions, then they can facilitate.
Seat each small group in a circle. Staging matters. When you facilitate a hard conversation, you have the ability to stage it in a way that can make participation easier—or more burdensome. By creating a circle for conversation, you can help speakers speak and listeners hear.This is not just about achieving a certain form; it is more than just staging and optics. It is also a show of values. And it enhances superior functioning in the group. Sitting in a circle eliminates hierarchies that exist when a podium, stage, microphone, or another arrangement that confers a superior position to one person (the speaker, usually) distinct from all others. In a circle, everyone is seated side-by-side. There is no privileged place for the facilitator, no privileged place for any speaker. There is no person drawing focus in the center of the circle, and no person is (literally or figuratively) outside of the circle. Everyone can see everyone else as an equal within the same circle of concern.
Create rules that make candid participation possible for the most people. To achieve maximum participation, we need to create conditions that make it more likely that everyone, wherever they sit, will feel comfortable offering statements of deeply-held conviction, personal experience, and subjective perception. Some people may be more inclined to do this than others by nature, culture, or socialization, but we want to make it easier for everyone to feel safe bringing hidden things to light—especially sincere statements of personal perception, value, opinion, or belief.Setting rules for equitable, inclusive discourse from the outset of your conversation can help. I will reserve a future blog post to explore the fine art of crafting a beautiful reflection question. But for now, the basic idea is that you want to create questions that are open-ended enough to elicit feedback that is most meaningful to each speaker, but targeted enough to elicit the kinds of hidden opinions and contrarian points of view that you, as facilitator, have designed this conversation to expose.At a minimum, you need rules about speaking and listening that can (1) establish confidentiality, (2) prevent interruption and cross-talk, (3) prevent a small number of participants from dominating the discourse, (4) prevent certain other participants from hiding or refraining from speaking (when they would be willing to do so, given the chance), (5) create a clear order of conversation that each participant can follow, (6) encourage speakers to speak freely and respectfully, (7) encourage listeners to hear charitably, and (8) invite everyone to strive for respectful, compassionate conversation that you can collectively (as a group) define for one another.[In my next blog post, I will give more detail about specific rules you can institute to make the achievement of these goals more likely. These rules are good rules for all kinds of public conversations you might convene in the ordinary day-to-day life of teaching or leading organizations. But they are especially helpful for achieving the goals of hard conversations as we have defined them in this series.]
From start to finish—in your heart, and in your public expressions—keep seeking and valuing contrarian statements of difference and disagreement. This one might be counter-intuitive. There is a strong bias that pervades professional contexts in favor of being positive, constructive, and helpful. But if we are to successfully convene and facilitate a public conversation where the broadest number of people speak and hear the rawest, truest, most polarizing, controversial, and divisive opinions, we need to expect, accept, and normalize expressions of disagreement. Even better? We need to welcome We cannot bring divisions to light and begin a process of growth, healing, repair, and restoration unless we do. Dissent is by its nature disruptive; expressions of it always slow down the ability of the majority to get stuff done, and it always threatens to impede the ability of the majority to get everything they want. In a public conversation, we need to take special care to successfully welcome (and keep welcoming) dissenting viewpoints.As facilitator, by (a) helping to establish shared rules, norms, and values at the outset of the conversation and then (b) posing open-ended questions prompts that are designed to elicit frank feedback on targeted topics, you have tremendous power to help set the social-cultural conditions that are necessary for individuals to speak, hear, and hold disagreement about the things that matter most.It is possible—perhaps likely—that you will be trying to normalize dissent within the context of a community that, in the day-to-day order of things, does not always do a great job of seeking, hearing, and holding dissent? Whatever intended by officials in a community, or by the prevailing majority on a given issue, in practice, the expression of dissent can be impliedly vilified as an enemy of progress. Dissent upsets people. It slows things down. It frustrates decision-making. It destabilizes things. It hurts feelings. And, if we are not extra careful, dissenters can feel as if they are being vilified as enemies of progress…unless we figure out how to sincerely welcome and bless them in our circle of discourse.I think this concern for dissenters is especially important as “well-being” rhetoric becomes increasingly mainstream in law schools (and other legal environments). There are dissenters, laggards, and resisters to that movement, and—for a variety of very important reasons—they might not wish to perform mental health, positivity, or happiness in public spaces. As we try to create a “culture of well-being”, we may unwittingly coerce some into performing positivity in public spaces. These dynamics are at play whenever we try to have a hard conversation across deeply-held differences within a community of common concern.

So: what is the solution? Well, against the noble-seeming bias toward positivity and agreement, we can lead by example.

Use your power as facilitator to model the courageous, vulnerable behavior you seek to elicit. You do not need to pretend to be neutral. You can do more than strive to be positive/affirming; or, to put it another way: you can use your positivity and affirmation to welcome, endorse, and affirm dissent. Actively look for opportunities to express your own statements of dissent, difference, disagreement, criticism, objection, or resistance. Don’t be afraid to express negativity, skepticism, or pessimism about something. And, when you do, do it without apology. You can thus model the important truth: those kinds of statements are not a problem, and bringing them to light is one of the most important reasons for having this kind of conversation.
After someone expresses a criticism or a contrarian view, sincerely thank them for the comment. With curiosity, ask a follow-up question that doesn’t challenge their view (or a premise upon which it is based); instead, use your follow-up question to give the speaker an opportunity to further develop and voice that same line of thinking. With sincerity, ask questions designed to help yourself and other listeners try to better understand that dissenting point of view with more precision and detail.
As facilitator, take care to monitor and enforce the rules of conversation established by the group in unbiased ways. Those rules are in place to ensure that all speakers have the opportunity to express dissenting opinions in the clear, without being countered, corrected, interrupted, debated, disputed, or otherwise managed or controlled. You might be tempted to suspend the rules in order to “handle” or “manage” a certain kind of rogue message that threatens harm to institutional goals. Resist the urge to shut-down dangerous, disruptive comments (which can be distinguished from other kinds of harmful, violent comments that are directed towards individual persons; those kinds of comments can fairly be rebuffed without running afoul of your goal to encourage good faith dissent, criticism, disagreement, etc. in a non-personal, non-violent way).
As facilitator, you also have power to create question prompts that are designed to elicit criticism, dissent, or disagreement in indirect, less burdensome ways for your listeners and speakers.For example: you could invite speakers to imagine themselves as having absolute power to take action and fix something in the community—and then ask them to describe the change they would make, and why. Like this:If you had absolute, unilateral, god-like power to take action and change one thing about the way this law school handles [insert controversial topic that you hope to learn about]—what would it be? Why is making that change so important to you? How do you imagine the law school community would be better after you made that change? What would it look like?Notice: by identifying the thing that most needs to change, you are likely to find out about something that angers/frustrates/demoralizes the speaker, something the speaker wants to change. And you are able to discover the speaker’s preferred solution to the problem, including their reason for the solution. And you will help everyone catch a glimpse of the way the reformed world would look like, from the speaker’s perspective, once that thing the speaker wants to change gets fixed.In my experience, this question can elicit some surprising, thoughtful, deeply-felt responses. This kind of question can be applied to many different topics, and refined so that it is posed in a broad or narrow way.There are many other ways to directly or indirectly ask questions that can get people talking about things that, if not actively sought-out, would just remain hidden. Have courage! Get creative. See if you can find an easier way for someone to bring something they might ordinarily keep hidden to light.

End with silence. When I facilitate, I like to close a hard conversation by leading everyone in a minute or two of silence. It creates a sense of ritual. It creates an ending. It gives space for everyone’s brain to transition away from the rigor of dialogue to whatever comes next. It also reinforces the value of slowness, which has permeated every aspect of the conversation circle.Sometimes, I make the silence symbolic. For example: I might tell everyone that we are going to observe the silence as a way of bringing our collective attention to the reality that, for all that has been shared today, there remains a number of true and meaningful things that have yet to be articulated. Silence helps us hold those mysteries in our collective consciousness.Or: I might invite everyone to sit together for two minutes in silence to show that, despite all of the differences expressed today, the silence we share is still big enough to hold us together in unity—despite whatever differences or disagreements we voiced and heard.Or: I might say that we will observe the silence by filling it with thoughts of gratitude for contributions made—by showing up, by speaking, by hearing, by caring.Or: I might say that we are observing the silence as a way of respecting the mystery of human existence. Like the ties that bind a community, the silence between us is fragile. And, like silence, the gift of community can be easily, thoughtlessly broken if we do not take care, give our attention to it, and hold it in our concern.Or: I might say nothing. I just invite people to sit silently together for a minute (or two). And leave it to each individual to figure out how to live in their minds during that period.

We need to normalize silence as an important part of public conversations. Silence gives time to think, breathe, reflect, pray, seethe, ruminate, calm yourself, meditate, daydream, whatever. If we let it? It can speak to us. It can draw us into an experience of transcendence or mystery. It can be symbolic of the unknown, unspeakable, yet-undiscovered truths that help to define a community as surely as voiced commitments or grievances do. Silence is not something to fear, avoid, manage, or fill with noise. It is a blessing—part of what just-is—and it ought to be welcomed, with purpose, into our conversations. No shame or apology necessary.

So there you have it: six simple tips for facilitating public conversations that are explicitly designed to bring deeply personal, possibly-controversial opinions to light. Whenever I am privileged to facilitate conversations like these, my deepest hope is that every attendee will be able to head for the exit thinking something like: “I appreciate that I finally had the opportunity to speak from my heart. And I appreciate the opportunity to hear others speak from theirs.” I also hope they will be able to leave the circle saying something like, “Well, no one can accuse that of being an echo chamber!”

All of this might be exhausting, but it is nowhere near exhaustive of all that might yet be done. If you have any ideas, thoughts, concerns, or wisdom that you would like to share on the topic of facilitating hard conversations, please do not hesitate to email me at ccorts@richmond.edu. I would love to hear from you!

Christopher Corts, Contributor

October 11, 2022 by hami3258

Sarah Beznoska

Leveraging Staff Departments in Professional Identity Implementation Efforts

By: Sarah Dylag Beznoska, Assistant Dean for Student and Career Services,
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University

It’s a regular day in the Office of Student and Career Services at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. My day starts by meeting with a second-year student who is in tears because they did not receive any offers from our recent on-campus interview program. After reminding them that on-campus interviews are a very small segment of the legal market, I ask more questions than I answer: why they applied to the large law firms participating in on-campus interviews? Whether it is consistent with the conversations we had last year? What is their interest, if any, in public service? How they felt during the interviews? And what next steps they might take that are consistent with their strengths and values?

At noon, I moderate a panel discussion of site supervisors from our externship program, who talk about the learning opportunities available through the program. We focus on the skills that students develop on-site and the ways that the opportunities prepare students for employment goals. Throughout the program, I remind students about the deadlines for the program’s application process, noting that I understand they are busy, but I won’t waive the deadlines. If they are having trouble meeting deadlines, which is an essential lawyering skill, they can meet with a member of my team to talk about calendaring and time management.

After the panel, while eating lunch, I review a student’s cover letter for a new law clerk role. Knowing from conversations with the student that they have a lot more relevant experience than the cover letter demonstrates, I pull up their LinkedIn profile and send along some reflective questions to get them thinking about how they can leverage their past experience, even the non-legal experience, to demonstrate to this employer that they can do the work.

In the late afternoon, I meet with several first-year students, who are required to have an initial meeting with my office before the end of the semester. We cover everything from what brought them to law school to what experiences they have enjoyed most during their first semester to what steps they should be thinking about moving forward. We talk about graduation requirements, summer internships, and managing student debt, before I send them away with a Winter Break to-do list to advance their professional development.

As the day ends, I have a conversation with one of our third-year students, who has had a negative experience with a colleague in a student organization. We brainstorm some ways to address the issue, while remaining professional and consistent with their own values as a person. We also talk about taking some time for self-care and connecting with their personal support network to help process some strong emotions about the experience.

I close the day with an email from a recent graduate who has landed their first long-term post-graduate job. I congratulate them on success in what I know has been a long process, and I collect the ABA-required information for employment reporting before heading home.

This work—the day-to-day work I do in Student and Career Services, a combined department we launched in 2019 at Cleveland-Marshall—is built on some of the foundational premises of professional identity foundation. On a good day, I like to say that I help students, from day one, to assess and plan their entire law school experience with the goal of employability—coursework, student organizations and leadership, wellness support networks, externships, work experiences, and career outcomes. I meet students where they are at in their personal and professional development, and I talk with them about everything they are doing at the College of Law. Beyond that, I frequently hear about their personal life challenges, their families, their worries, and their successes. I hear students’ stories, I listen to their reflections on the experiences they are having in law school and the legal market, and I encourage them towards action items that move them along toward becoming the lawyers they want to be.

In other words, although we don’t do it all, we do a lot of professional identity formation in my office. In career services, we ask students to do self-assessment of their skills, strengths, and values during the fall semester of their first year. We offer practice area and industry panel presentations to allow students to explore the legal market. We help students to tell their own employability story through cover letters, resumes, and LinkedIn, in language that would resonate with legal employers. We support students on academic advising matters and the process of finding an experiential learning opportunity to fit their goals.

In student services, our focus is on developing responsible student leaders of our student organizations, empowering students to collaborate with their peers on events and programs, and developing wellness initiatives to create a culture of wellness and to help students embrace wellness as a part of their professional development.

It has been nothing but inspiring to see the professional identity formation (PIF) community embrace all of these things, and more, in developing implementation plans for the ABA’s professional identity standard. Inspiring to join a community of like-minded teachers and student-centered supporters, who are focused on helping students to build meaningful experiences towards successful outcomes. Inspiring to hear the creative ways that faculty engage students in PIF-related exercises and have conversations that don’t fit within the space of Student and Career Services. Inspiring to see institutional collaborations happening to benefit students.

So, when collaborating, don’t forget your staff departments! Engaging your talented staff team is as easy as reaching out to them to learn about their programs and offerings for students. Just ask! Build your PIF implementation plan to include Student and Career Services, to increase your employment outcomes for students, and to leverage all of the resources available in your institutions. I promise that your staff will be happy to hear from you!

If you have any questions or comments about this post, then please feel free to contact me at s.beznoska@csuohio.edu.

Sarah Dylag Beznoska is the Assistant Dean for Student and Career Services at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University.

October 7, 2022 by hami3258

Celebrating October 10, 2022: Mental Health Day, Indigenous People’s Day, and Professional Identity

By: Janet Stearns, Dean of Students, University of Miami School of Law
Chair, ABA COLAP Law School Committee

World Mental Health Day

October 10 has been declared as World Mental Health Day by the World Health OrganizationThe objective is to “raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and to mobilize efforts in support of mental health.” Just last week, the CDC announced that the suicide rates in the United States increased four percent from 2020 to 2021, showing that the demand for resources and education remains great.

For many years, the ABA Law Student Division and the ABA Commission on Lawyer Assistance Programs have partnered to bring Mental Health Day to our law students nationwide. While initially organized in March, the groups now celebrate October 10 as Law Student Mental Health Awareness. The ABA will partner to feature national programming to bring attention to law student mental health and reduce stigma so that resources are accessed. Many law schools will use Mental Health Day as a linchpin for law school wellness days or wellness weeks. Often, lawyer assistance programs around the country also use this opportunity to visit area law schools or do outreach through social media. I expect that many of the readers of this article are already on the path to organizing programming for the upcoming Mental Health Day. However, an excellent review of the range of opportunities is covered by Jordana Alter Confino in her 2019 article Where Are We on the Path to Law Student Well-Being?: Report on the COLAP Law School Assistance Committee Law School Wellness Survey.

The 2022 Mental Health Day is just around the corner. This year, at the request of the ABA Law Student Division leadership, we have recruited a group of thought leaders on well-being (among them bar leaders, law faculty, COLAP members, and law students) to record short videos sharing messages on well-being. An intensive social media campaign will continue over the next two weeks. In addition, on Friday, October 14, a number of law students, representing diverse initiatives around mental health, well-being, and mindfulness, will convene to discuss a number of topics in law schools and advocate for change. (Please contact the author for additional information if you have students who should be added to this invitation.) We anticipate that many law schools will be hosting their own programming, and encourage all to share your activities using #LawStudentWellBeing.

While this initiative predates the recent revisions to the ABA Standards, this is an opportunity to underscore that the ABA COLAP and Law Student Division advocated jointly for the inclusion of well-being in the Standards for many years. This year, now that ALL law schools must make resources available around well-being under Section 508, we expect that 2022 Mental Health Day will truly be a national event.

Indigenous People’s Day

Monday, October 10 coincides with the holiday now known as Indigenous People’s Day. Some history on this holiday: in 1934, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first designated October 12 as Columbus Day, commemorating the day when presumably a crew member of the ship lead by Columbus “sighted land.” Since 1971, this was recognized as a federal holiday, and then moved “officially” to the second Monday in October.

South Dakota was the first state to recognize Indigenous People’s Day in 1990, and since then a number of states have followed. While it is not yet a federal holiday, a movement is growing. In 2021, President Biden was the first U.S. President to issue a proclamation in recognition of Indigenous People’s Day.

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, our Nation celebrates the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples, recognizes their inherent sovereignty, and commits to honoring the Federal Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations….On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we honor America’s first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today.

Early in the planning for this year’s Mental Health Day, the organizers recognized that the coinciding of the two holidays provided a great opportunity for reflection and awareness. For one, we recognized that some law schools may be closed on Monday, October 10 and that we needed to be flexible with programming that would extend over the entire week. Further, in recruiting thought leaders for this year’s videos, we actively sought voices that would help us highlight the significance of the two overlapping dates. We invite you to pay particular attention to the contributions of Professor Rhonda Magee (University of San Francisco), and Siena Kalina, 3L at Colorado/ Boulder and President of the National Native American Law Students Association. We are grateful for their contributions.

The Intersection of Mental Health Day and Indigenous People’s Day: Lessons for Professional Identity Education

The significant changes in the ABA Standards in 2022 have created many opportunities in legal education. Among these is the opportunity to create new dialogue between the advocates for law student well-being and supporters of education addressing bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism. These two issues are closely intertwined on many levels, and we have a unique opportunity in the upcoming weeks to reflect and message on this.

In 2020, Mental Health Day featured the path-breaking work of Rhonda Magee and her book The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness. The recording of her presentation is still available on the ABA website. Professor Magee’s powerful work speaks to the role of mindfulness in our own lives and as an integral part of racial justice work.

In recent years, I have also become more attuned to the need for programming that speak directly to some of our students who may feel marginalized in our law schools. I wrote about this in the AALS Student Services Section Newsletter last year, exploring the integration of well-being and anti-racism programming.

As I have been pondering for myself the upcoming holidays, let me suggest a few very concrete but important steps towards well-being for our Native American Law Students:

Miami University and other institutions are using land acknowledgements to reframe our understanding of property and show respect for local indigenous peoples. My institution now has such a land acknowledgement on its Consider special messaging that should be shared for Indigenous People’s Day.
Read about the National Native American Law Students Association and whether your law school does or should have representation.
Reach out to graduates who may be able to teach and share wisdom…with us and with our students. I made such a call last week to a wonderful former student, Curtis Osceola, who now works as Chief of Staff to the Miccosukee Indian Tribe here in
South Florida. I have asked him to write a short message to be shared with Miami Law next week in recognition of Indigenous People’s Day. You can read his powerful message, which appears at the end of this post.

Janet Stearns is Dean of Students at the University of Miami School of Law and Chair of the ABA COLAP Law School Committee.
Recognize that all of the Mental Health and Well-Being challenges that we are highlighting are playing out in significant ways in the Indigenous community, and often with far fewer resources to support.

The author welcomes hearing from colleagues across the country as we all explore approaches to our commemoration of the dual holidays that will take place October 10, 2022. You can reach me at jstearns@law.miami.edu.

Curtis Osceola’s Reflection Re: Indigenous People’s Day

Columbus Day. I remember when I was a child sitting in an elementary school classroom and being told of the exploits of Columbus. How he traveled the world, explored the Caribbean, discovered America…

I raised my hand, “Miss, Columbus didn’t discover America, my people were here.” The teacher was taken aback. I doubt anyone had ever challenged the lesson plan, “Yes he did, Curtis. Columbus discovered America.” She replied. “No, he didn’t, he was lost and my people were here first.” I was sent to the office for insubordination. I felt humiliated, guilty, and stupid. How could I have been so wrong? Is my entire existence wrong? What can I do to be “right?”

Many Natives have expressed the same defiance to colonial history, but now that defiance has become a movement. The movement to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day was born out of the rejection of the lie that is the “Discovery” story of Columbus. But why such a strong rejection? America is great after all. We have the blessings of freedom and democracy. We are protected by laws and those who enforce those laws. We have courts and modern notions of substantive and procedural due process. So why fight the history?

Because the lie hurts. Not like a cut with a knife or a bullet through the flesh. It hurts the mind. Take, for instance, a Native child today. How many Natives before them endured racism, oppression, violence? What effect did those experiences have on the mental health of their predecessors? On their brain chemistry? What is the net effect of that experience through their progeny? The generational trauma of war, removal, and extermination have evolved into contemporary mental health issues like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and suicide. These are exacerbated by the social ills of poverty, unemployment, disenfranchisement, domestic violence, and constant bereavement.

Take the experience described earlier: Imagine if a young family member told their teacher about the history of their family member told their teacher about the history of their family, of their heritage. Imagine if the teacher said to that child that they were mistaken, that the history they learned from their family, your ancestors, was wrong. Imagine that child being punished for their expression of truth. And think for a moment—if that single incident was foundational for the formation of my personality and identity, then what further effect does the cumulative trauma mentioned earlier have on the mind?

This is a small window into the intersectionality between what is now Indigenous Peoples’ Day and World Mental Health Day. It is serendipitous that this year they both fall on October 10, 2022. Native Americans now celebrate the second Monday of October as one that is representative of their heritage, legacy, and identity. It seems that the healing has begun. Indigenous People have been subjugated and oppressed since the dawn of the New World. You can help make positive change for Indigenous people. It may not be easy, but it’s worth trying.

Curtis Osceola is an alum of Miami School of Law and now works as Chief of Staff to the Miccosukee Indian Tribe in South Florida.

So how can you make a difference? Make it personal. Become aware of the Indigenous people in your community. Ask them about their land, their history, their experiences. Empathize (or even sympathize) with them. We are the real legacy of the land—subject to the original sins of the American experiment. Remember that the experience of Indigenous people is not just a social experience, but a psychological one as well. Be a friend, be an advocate, be insubordinate avant-garde.

October 5, 2022 by hami3258

Jabeen Adawi

Clinical Pedagogy: Paving the Way for Professional Identity Formation

By: Jabeen Adawi, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law, Director of the Family Law Clinic, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

In response to the American Bar Association (ABA) revised accreditation standard 303(b) requiring schools to provide “substantial opportunities to the students for… (3) the development of a professional identity,” law schools around the country began to remedy a perceived gap in legal education: the formal and intentional development of a cohesive professional identity. Unlike other client-serving professions—such as medicine or social work—law schools are often critiqued as not doing enough to explicitly support the development of a cohesive professional identity for lawyers. Legal education seemed to rely heavily on the existence of the model rules of conduct and one class in legal ethics to ensure that new lawyers understood their fiduciary responsibilities as lawyers. However, all along clinical pedagogy has been equipping clinical programs to move students through identity formation. Below, I’ll explain how at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, the clinical faculty drew from well-developed tools and teaching approaches to synthesize a clinic-wide foundational orientation for clinic students that directly responds to standard 303(b).

The ABA standard states that professional identity is developed through an “intentional exploration of values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” In analyzing the new standard, three distinct elements have emerged:

Internalizing a deep responsibility and care orientation to others, especially the client,
Developing ownership of continuous professional development towards excellence at the major competencies that clients, employers, and the legal system need, and
Well-being practices.

The goal of our foundational orientation is to equip students with common skills and perspectives they will refine during their clinical experiences. Since this is our first pre-semester orientation, we are beginning with a half-day program of three sessions followed by a lunch and a small swearing-in ceremony. The skills we focus on meet the three elements of professional identity formation but are not exclusively the only ways we support student growth in our program.

Internalizing Deep Responsibility to Others

The first element promotes the fiduciary responsibilities of lawyers to their clients and society at large. It centers on developing and nurturing a mindset prioritizing a client’s interests above a lawyer’s self-interest. It also orients a law student to the profession’s commitment to pro bono services and developing a justice system that provides equal access and eliminates bias, discrimination, and racism.

To address the first element, our orientation begins with a session on “Understanding Your Responsibility Towards Clients and Society.” Clinic allows students to navigate the demands of real-life legal practice in a setting where clients are facing numerous odds in exercising their legal rights in the current system. However, I find that students need to be grounded in lived experiences of their clients first. For many of my clinical colleagues and me, a poverty simulation is one way to further perspective taking. This simulation will be followed up with discussion questions where students are reflecting upon the choices they were required to make, what circumstances influenced those choices, and what they may have done differently with a changed piece of their identity or additional resource.

The second step in orienting the students towards care of others requires a thoughtful discussion about one’s fiduciary responsibility as counsel. This can begin with a reflective exercise about a student’s own life where they look for experiences being in the care of another or taking care of someone else. These may be life experiences of seeking medical care, customer service, babysitting, caring for a sick relative, being a parent, or a prior career. Reflecting on their own life, a discussion can follow about lawyer’s specific responsibilities and how they relate to the fiduciary responsibility we take on for clients. This discussion will be grounded in the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct, specifically the preamble. This exercise should set the tone for their identity as lawyers who are in service of others.

I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that a one-time conversation is not sufficient to develop care orientation. After the perspective-taking exercises are introduced in orientation, students will be equipped to revisit these ideas as they move through their clinic work. Typically, clinic students carry lower caseloads than in practice, so it affords them the ability to connect on a deeper level with a client and gain empathy and understanding for a client’s unique lived experience and their actual needs. During the year, individual supervision conversations can revisit the orientation discussions and further reinforce their care towards others.

By the end of the year, students are well equipped to engage in conversations critically assessing the legal system, identifying shortcomings, and proposing solutions. For example, many clinics end the year with a seminar dedicated to reflecting upon challenges their clients faced in accessing the courts, coupled with a brainstorming session on potential solutions.[1] This allows students to connect what may be frustrating realizations about “justice” to tangible solutions, thus beginning to develop their capacity to effectuate systemic change.

Developing Major Competencies

The second element includes making students aware of major competencies that clients, employers, and the legal system need. These competencies include client-centered relational skills, problem-solving, and good judgment. The goal is not only to make students aware of these competencies, and their importance, but also to internalize ownership of their own development in these areas.

The second session in our orientation introduces the students to one core competency: client-centered lawyering. Through a thoughtful exercise called “the Rich Aunt” students begin to consider how personal values drive human decision making and students begin to reframe the role of a lawyer from just an advocate to also that of a client-centered counselor.[2] This exercise has students consider a hypothetical scenario where they are lined up to receive a substantial inheritance but have to evaluate if they want to settle for a lower amount or go to trial and potentially obtain more. The students evaluate what factors drove them to their decision, and then reflect on how personal the decision was. This is then connected to choices a client may make and the value in respecting the client’s ability to decide.

After orientation, this client-centered perspective is reinforced during deeper seminars on counseling and interviewing skills. In future years, we intend to broaden the pre-semester orientation to also cover these topics so the foundation to these core competencies is uniformly reinforced across the clinical program. Finally, during the semester or year, students will deepen these skills within a clinical methodology that is structured to engage a student in learning the why behind their choices, reflecting upon their choices, and drawing strategies to implement in their legal practice. This is often done in a non-directive supervision model that is designed to maximize their opportunities for developing into a self-reflective practitioner.[3] This supervision model is not often available in traditional internship or externship positions.

Establishing Well-Being Practices

The final element of well-being practices goes beyond teaching self-care practices but instead looks at three core needs of the being: “(1) autonomy (to feel in control of one’s own goals and behavior); (2) competence (to feel one has the needed skills, including physical and mental skills to be successful); and (3) relatedness (to experience a sense of belonging or attachment to other people).”[4] Autonomy requires a student to understand their values, be able to express those values, and hence know where they are in control of their goals and behaviors. Hence, developing one’s sense of self as a person becomes foundational to developing the other necessary identities of a lawyer.

The pre-semester orientation will target this element in a third session focused on “maintaining well-being in a live-client setting.” In this session, we will examine the two elements that make up one’s professional quality of life: compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue. Then, we will introduce a tool called the “Professional Quality of Life Survey” that allows students to self-evaluate the different aspects that affect their quality of life. The Professional Quality of Life Survey is a free tool developed and refined through years of research on what affects a helper’s ability to continue their work. The Center for Victims of Torture owns the tool and provides it free (along with incredible teaching resources) to help anyone working in a helper-oriented profession.

While the results of the survey may be very private, students will not be required to share the results with anyone but can if they choose. I’ve found that the more ways we can provide students a space to discuss boundaries and personal challenges affecting their lawyering, we can assist them in developing skills to navigate issues that are inevitably going to arise in their lives. In private supervision, if a student chooses to share the results of the survey, together we can examine their trends and explore ways to improve their holistic satisfaction. The reality is that no one ever works in a vacuum: our personal lives and experiences come with us to our jobs and influence our work more than we often realize.

Hopefully, like us at Pitt Law, many other schools can utilize the revised ABA standards to bring attention to the strengths of their clinical programs. If anything, there is a wealth of information in clinical pedagogy—it just needs to be tapped.

If you have any questions or comments in response to this post, then please feel free to email at JZA16@pitt.edu.

Jabeen Adawi is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the Family Law Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

[1] In “Teaching The Clinic Seminar” text by Deborah Epstein, Jane Aiken, and Wallace Mlyniec (three seminal clinical instructors from the Georgetown University Law Center), Chapter 21, “Exploring Justice” offers one thoughtful example of a framework for discussing justice in a clinical seminar. Another example is in Sue Bryant and Jean Koh Peters’ online repository for clinical law teaching materials “Talking about Race”, where they provide tools for facilitating conversations around racial justice.

[2] Deborah Epstein, Jane Aiken, Wallace Mlyniec, Teaching the Clinic Seminar 56 (2014) (describing the “Rich Aunt” exercise).

[3] See David Chavkin, Clinical Methodology in Clinical Legal Education: A Textbook for Law School Clinical Programs 7 (2002); Serge A. Martinez, Why are We Doing This? Cognitive Science and Nondirective Supervision in Clinical Teaching, 26 Kansas Journal of Law & Public Policy 24 (2016) (discussing the non-directive supervision model).

[4] Neil Hamilton, Louis Bilionis, Revised ABA Standards 303(b) and (c) and the Formation of a Lawyer’s Professional Identity, Part 1: Understanding the New Requirements (May 2022).

October 3, 2022 by hami3258

Louis Bilionis, Neil Hamilton

Latest Article from Bilionis and Hamilton on ABA Revisions of 303(b) and (c) Published by NALP’s Professional Development Quarterly

NALP just published the third and final installment of Louis Bilionis and Neil Hamilton’s three-part series on the Standard 303 revisions. Part 1 and Part 2 appeared in the May and June 2022 editions of NALP’s PDQ, respectively.

The last article in the series, which is titled “Revised ABA Standards 303 (b) and (c) and the Formation of a Lawyer’s Professional Identity, Part 3: Cross-Cultural Competency, Equal Access, and the Elimination of Bias, Discrimination, and Racism,” can be read here.

September 28, 2022 by hami3258

Neil Hamilton

Introduction to the Definition of Professional Identity and the Formation of a Professional Identity

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

This short Holloran Center definition of student professional identity and the formation of a professional identity is the result of a process of inquiry, dialogue within the Center and with others nationally, and reflection since the founding of the Center in 2006. Starting in 2006, the Center focused on synthesizing the core values of the profession from the Preamble to the Model Rules, the three ABA reports and the Conference of Chief Justice Reports on Professionalism, legal scholars’ definitions of professionalism, and our study of how exemplary lawyers defined the core values of the profession.

Providentially, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching published Educating Clergy, the first of its empirically-based studies of higher education for the professions in 2006, followed by Educating Lawyers in 2007, Educating Engineers in 2009, and Educating Nurses and Educating Physicians, in 2010. The Carnegie studies introduced “professional identity” and “professional formation” as central to each new entrant’s development in higher education for all of the professions including legal education.

By 2012, we thought that “professional identity” and “professional formation” were more useful than “professionalism” because: (1) they incorporated the same core values; (2) they were terms applicable across higher education for the professions which both increased their fundamental importance and meant that we could learn from higher education in the other professions; and (3) they avoided the narrow understanding of many practicing lawyers that “professionalism” was principally focused on respect for others.

Since 2012, the Center has been in a continuous process of further inquiry, dialogue, and reflection to create a short definition of professional identity and professional identity formation that emphasizes both the two most foundational core values of the legal profession (off of which all the other needed capacities and skills needed to practice law build), and also the journey for students to internalize and demonstrate the two foundational core values. Notably, the two foundational values are emphasized in every major faith tradition and nearly all of the major secular philosophies.

We have a consensus among the two co-directors, the associate director, and the three Holloran Center Fellows, and we offer this Holloran Center short definition of both professional identity and professional identity formation to inform your dialogue and reflection on the Standard 303 revisions.

What Is a Law Student’s Professional Identity and What Is Professional Identity Formation? — A Short Introduction
Holloran Center – September 2022

Generally speaking, professional identity is “a representation of self, achieved in stages over time, during which the characteristics, values, and norms of the … profession are internalized, resulting in an individual thinking, acting, and feeling like a … [member of the profession].”

For law students and lawyers more specifically, we can synthesize a succinct definition of professional identity from the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the four major reports on professionalism from the ABA and the Conference of Chief Justices, and Holloran Center research. For law students and lawyers, professional identity is grounded in two foundational norms and values that law students and lawyers must understand, internalize, and demonstrate:

a deep responsibility and commitment to serving clients, the profession, and the rule of law;
a commitment to pro-active continuous professional development toward excellence at all the competencies needed to serve others well in the profession’s work.

“Professional identity formation” is a developmental process beginning in law school and extending over a career that “should involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.”

Professional identity formation principally involves a process of socialization. The professional-to-be begins as an outsider to the professional community and its ways, values, and norms. Through experiences over time, inside and outside the classroom and the law school, the individual gradually becomes more and more an insider, “moving from a stance of observer on the outside or periphery of the practice through graduated stages toward becoming a skilled participant at the center of the action.”

The process continues throughout one’s career and features “a series of identity transformations that occur primarily during periods of transition” often marked by anxiety, stress, and risk for the developing professional. This process of socialization is a product of the developing lawyer’s social interactions and activities in environments authentic to the legal profession’s culture and enriched by coaching, mentoring, modeling, reflection, and other supportive strategies.

We hope this definition of professional identity and this description of professional identity formation can serve as a useful entry point for a law school’s faculty and staff interested in discussing and reflecting upon professional identity and professional identity formation in the context of the mission of the law school.

Please click below to view the definition with its endnotes.

Defining Professional Identity and Professional Identity Formation

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.

September 21, 2022 by hami3258

Kathryn Thompson

Normalizing Checking in with One Another and with Ourselves

By: Kathryn M. Thompson, Director of Academic Excellence and Teaching Professor,
Roger Williams University School of Law

Interpretation 303-5 states that “[t]he development of a professional identity should involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” Any of us who have struggled with our mental health understand that our first instinct is to isolate ourselves when the pangs of anxiety or the darkness of depression rear their heads. While society has come a long way since I first faced my own mental health challenges over twenty years ago, stigma and some shame still attach to these challenges, particularly in legal institutions where traditionally these challenges have been considered weaknesses.

Each year law school staff and faculty have an opportunity to choose what messages to prioritize in our early sessions with our incoming 1L students. I wrote this blog as I prepared for Orientation with our first-year students. We greet our 1Ls each year in mid-August. Their fresh faces, revealing equal amounts of excitement and anxiety, remind me of the vital role law schools play in our students’ well-being. So many opportunities exist at this early moment to fan their excitement and curiosity and to alleviate their anxieties as they enter their first year of law school. Accomplishing this task while also being candid about the demands of law school and its potential impact on their mental health is an important goal for law school faculty and staff each year. Every year I try to balance teaching skills like case briefing and reading with the less obvious but equally necessary concepts of growth mindset and self-care. Law students need both types of information and while I know how to teach someone how to read a case and I have a decent presentation on growth mindset, I have struggled helping my students embrace self-care in law school. I am like most lawyers who never learned about wellness in law school and was forced to do so after I suffered a depressive episode in my mid-30s. It was only then that I worked with a therapist who helped me to understand the importance of “checking in” with myself regularly regarding my own mental health and only then did I become more able to embrace wellness practices. I am still working on embracing them.

Several forces at play in the first year of law school inhibit a student’s willingness and ability to reach out for help. First, the sheer novelty of the legal casebook method of learning and the Socratic method (however modified it may be) creates a challenge to prepare for classes. Add the legalese in many casebooks and the need to learn a whole new foundational vocabulary and students are hard-pressed to manage their time particularly come October when legal writing papers and midterms first hit. The sheer pace of law school can prevent them from being aware of the impact their sleep deprivation or anxiety is having on their studies. And the shame associated with being “the only one” who isn’t thriving does not encourage wellness practices. Again, without awareness of our own mental health status and an intentional reflection on our mental health, students – and lawyers – continue riding the roller-coaster without seeking help in the early stages before crisis hits. Added to the workload is a law student’s concern (and misconception) that seeking counseling for their mental health challenges will lead to character and fitness issues when they seek to practice law. In this environment, helping students to embrace wellness practices requires an intentional effort to message to all students that the law school community values self-care and that wellness is a key component of a balanced life as a lawyer.

While the counseling center in a university (if a school is fortunate to have one), provides the expert counseling, efforts by law school staff and faculty in alliance with the student body can provide the fertile ground in which students embrace wellbeing practices such as meditation, exercise, deep breathing, therapy, and medication. There are steps that law schools can take early on in a students’ career to provide students “permission” and opportunity to incorporate wellness practices into their studies and, thus, their future legal practice. At RWU law over the past two or so years we have instituted some steps to foster our students’ awareness of their own mental health and to normalize pausing and reflecting on one’s own mental health at regular interviews throughout the course of the semester. One of these measures is called Early Alert: Proactive Check-Ins to Prevent Suicide/Violence and Promote Wellness. Through the initiative of Lorraine Lalli, Dean of Student Life and Operations, the law school partnered with Early Alert last year. Early Alert provides regular, confidential opportunities for students to pause and reflect on their wellness in various areas such as Sleep, Academics, Finances, Relationships, etc. Students who opt into the program report on their wellness on a scale of one to ten. A student who reports a score that shows the student is struggling in that area receives resources and a check-in over the next few days. Another measure the school has taken, which is more subtle but equally important is that we have intentionally prioritized wellness with our students early in the semester. During the first week of school, we bring all of our 1Ls together for a session on wellness. During this session we introduce our students to the Director of our Counseling Center who provides an overview of the counseling center’s services and also a brief explanation of the various reasons that students may seek counseling. 2L and 3L students attended that session this year to provide the message that the 1Ls have a network of support within the law school.

This year, Anna Arakelian, the President and founder of the RWU Law Mental Health Club spoke of an upcoming session the club had scheduled in September on Imposter Syndrome with Remmy Stourac, the author of “The Arsenal of Gratitude.” “Whatever you’re feeling, we felt it, too,” Anna told the 1Ls who listened intently to her and to the two Academic Excellence Teaching Fellows, 3L Nellie Large, and 2L Stefanie Fischer who came to connect with the 1Ls that day. All three upper-level students encouraged the 1Ls to use Early Alert and to be honest about how they were feeling. If the alert asked them to rate their sleep on a zero to ten scale and they had a zero, put zero. “At first I would usually put the higher number because I didn’t want to say that I wasn’t doing well, but one day I was honest and the Alert provided me with helpful resources,” Anna told the students. All upper-level students spoke of finding time (whether thirty minutes or a whole day) to take breaks from law school and how important those breaks are to their ability to thrive in law school. Each wished they had paused more often during the 1L year to provide time for maintaining some balance in their lives.

Forging human connections with our students provides opportunity for authenticity and vulnerability. If students feel free to voice their anxieties and their self-doubts, whether with another student, a staff member, or faculty member, students are much more likely to implement wellness practices as a meaningful part of their lives as students and future lawyers. As Anna said to me after the session, “We’re all humans before we become lawyers.”

Please contact me at kthompson@rwu.edu with comments or questions.

Kathryn M. Thompson serves as the Director of Academic Excellence and Teaching Professor at Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island.

September 14, 2022 by hami3258

Angela Schultz

Can Participation in Pro Bono Service Increase Student Well-Being? I’ve Seen It Happen

By Angela F. Schultz, Assistant Dean for Public Service, Marquette Law School

I have been at Marquette Law School for eleven years. Over the years, I have witnessed students become more willing and able to identify and discuss mental health challenges they have faced in their own lives—challenges the students themselves have described as stress, anxiety, depression, and sometimes as trauma. I remember one recent student who lost both parents during their first year of law school. Another student took a leave of absence and was hospitalized for severe anxiety. If you work with law students, you also know some of the challenges facing students’ well-being.

I can think of three recent conversations where students identified their involvement in pro bono service as being among the factors that ultimately aided them on a path towards wellness. These three students’ experiences are not unique. Each year, we evaluate student experience in pro bono clinics. Comments from a recent survey included: “This work reminds me why I came to law school in the first place.” “I was afraid of working one-on-one with a client because I didn’t realize I already had skills that could be helpful.” “I feel connected to the people served in the clinic. These are my people.”

Before I go on, let me acknowledge that pro bono service can come with a dose of fatigue, vicarious trauma, and feeling overwhelmed by the poverty, despair, and inequity in our legal system and in our world. But right now, in this brief blog post, I’m focusing on how serving others can contribute to one’s well-being.

According to Self-Determination Theory (SDT), all human beings require regular experiences of autonomy, competence, and relatedness to thrive and maximize their positive motivation. See Sheldon, Kennon M. and Krieger, Lawrence S., Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test and Extension of Self-Determination Theory (July 2006). Pro bono service opportunities regularly offer all three.

Autonomy: Pro bono service often involves a student making a choice to engage in something of interest to them; to do something they want to do or something they believe in; and the ability to take initiative and be self-directed. At many law schools (though not all), pro bono is a voluntary activity. Students choose whether to get involved in pro bono service and how much service to do. Students often choose what kind of service to perform and may enjoy increased autonomy as they develop skills.

Competence: Pro bono clinics tend to be places where volunteers all get a chance to feel good at what they do, or at least the opportunity to make progress towards becoming good at what they are learning to do. Pro bono clinics are an avenue where students can gain skills. Looking again at the pro bono evaluation I send to students each year, students indicated the following skills were practiced frequently during pro bono service work: listening; the ability to see the world from another’s perspective; client interviewing; time management; communicating legal information in an understandable way to a client; creative problem solving; and legal/procedural issue spotting.

Relatedness: Pro bono service often (if not always) offers students opportunity to relate meaningfully with others. In our pro bono clinics (called, not surprisingly, the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinics), law students are paired with volunteer attorneys to serve a client seeking civil legal aid. The lawyer/student pair gets to chat with each other and develop relationships. The client served by the lawyer/student pair typically brings a whole range of human experiences to the mix, from frustration and despair to hope and gratitude. The trio of lawyer, student, and client often laugh together, shake their heads in disturbance together, and sometimes experience victory together. For example, one team recently negotiated a $500 settlement during their time together with a creditor suing their client (a mother of three earning $16 per hour) when her cash loan of $250 ballooned quickly to $1,500. By the end of their two-hour shift, when victory had been achieved, the client asked me to take a photo of her with the law student and lawyer. Without a doubt, meaningful relatedness had occurred for everyone involved in that session.

Autonomy, competence, and relatedness are the experiences cited by research that lend to students’ feelings of positive motivation and well-being.

I’d like to suggest one more reason that pro bono involvement may lend to feelings of well-being: perspective.

Perspective: Pro bono service connects students to the community outside of law school. Law school takes up an extraordinary amount of time, energy, and money for months (and sometimes years) before the student even has their first day. Students sometimes live, drink, and breathe all things related to LSAT preparation. Then soon after they live, drink, and breathe all things related to the law school application process. Then the actual law school experience begins which often presents students with the most academically challenging materials they have seen throughout their education. And law school almost always involves a student’s first experience with a mandatory grading curve. Students’ social lives tend to fill quickly with other law students. The overall experience can be insular and leave students questioning their very identity: Who am I now? Who will I be once I graduate from law school?

Pro bono service is a quick and vivid reminder of the vast world outside of all-things-law-school. People seeking pro bono legal services are getting by (sometimes barely) while facing excruciating circumstances. A law students’ LSAT score is not even remotely part of the list of challenges facing a client in the legal clinic preparing to represent themselves in their eviction hearing tomorrow. The C- grade a law student received in civil procedure somehow seems miniscule once they are hearing directly from a survivor of domestic violence seeking a civil protection order.

The student who lost both parents during their first year of law school pointed to their experience in the pro bono clinics as a significant part of their path towards creating a “new normal” for themselves. And the student hospitalized for severe anxiety cited her work with “real people” in the pro bono clinics as part of her own journey towards wellness.

Please contact me at angela.schultz@marquette.edu with comments or questions.

Angela F. Schultz
Assistant Dean for Public Service
Marquette Law School
AALS Section on Pro Bono & Access to Justice, 2022 Chair

August 31, 2022 by hami3258

Janet Stearns

Postcard from Miami

By Janet Stearns, Dean of Students, University of Miami School of Law
August 24, 2022

We have just concluded our orientation week at the University of Miami School of Law. I thought that I would share some lessons learned from this year’s program as we all work to set the right tone on well-being and mindfulness.

This year, day 2 of orientation included rotating programs for all of our incoming JD students:
–Mindfulness & Well-Being
–Academic Integrity & Professional Identity
–Inclusion, Belonging & Professional Identity
–Panels of upper-level students sharing advice and insights with the 1L’s.

While we included some aspects of all of these themes in past years, the focus on ABA Standard 303 guided us to sharpen our message in some important ways.

The Mindfulness & Well-Being program was the culmination of a powerful collaboration throughout this summer between my colleagues Jack Townsend, a Miami Law graduate who joined our team one year ago as an Assistant Director of Student Life, Scott Rogers, Director of our Mindfulness in Law Program, and Marcia Narine Weldon, Director of our Transactional Skills Program, and a consultant on legal coaching particularly in the area of growth mindset and lawyer well-being.

We framed our presentation to address and respond to three concerns common to many 1Ls.

First, the feeling of overwhelm.

During this section, I spoke of the importance of managing time to balance school obligations and goals with self-care and other personal priorities. Drawing on the work of Steven Covey, in his book First Things First, I used a jar to demonstrate the importance of identifying our life’s big priorities (i.e., the “big rocks”) and find strategies for ensuring that all of the big rocks can fit into the jar. One goal is to identify the big goals during these next three years of law school. Another is to manage time so that we don’t waste it all on “little rocks” so that we can’t get to our “big rocks.” As you can see the jar also includes a tea bag (because we can never be too busy for a cup of tea with a friend.) All members of the panel reflected on our own valuable self-care practices and how we managed time to support these practices as well as our other life goals.

Next, concerns about fear.

To this, Marcia drew on a range of practices to manage fear, from breathing exercises, movement exercises, and tapping. She reflected on her own recent travels (to Machu Picchu) and her consulting with law firms and major corporations around professional coaching. She spoke also about the power of growth mindset to tame fears, enhance our brains and emotions, and develop confidence. All members of the panel reflected on tools that we used to address fears in law school and beyond.

Third, self-doubt in law school, including imposter syndrome. This provided the foundation for Scott to discuss and demonstrate the power of mindfulness practices in law school. Scott shares a powerful image from his book Mindfulness for Law Students that depicts the “Roller Coaster of E-Motion.” Scott spoke to the ways that mindfulness can train our mind to have awareness of the patterns that sabotage our “freeway of flow” where we can best focus on law school and our other pursuits. This section then led into a mindfulness exercise for all.

In between each of these three sections, Jack invited each student to reflect and write on a designed card; students had five minutes to journal. The goals were both to provide opportunity for self-reflection and also to document each student’s emotions and insights from the session. At the conclusion of the program, each student was asked to put the card in a sealed envelope with his/her/their name on the cover.

Our intention is to return the cards to the students in November near the end of the semester and before finals. We hope that this will provide a reminder of their own thoughts on tackling overwhelm, fear, and self-doubt as they gear up for the end of the semester “push.”

Measuring the efficacy of our interventions is a challenge for me, and one that I am striving to address in the upcoming year. Anecdotally, I will note that I attended a reception for one of our affinity groups four days after this program. Several students came up to me to tell me that they had been pondering their “big rocks.” Students have also approached me to obtain information on where I am practicing yoga (one of the self-care activities I spoke about) and how they could join. Each and every one of these encounters suggests positive steps as we build our community of well-being and model our own approaches to integrating wellness with our professional identities.

I welcome comments and opportunities to learn from others as to how you are addressing these important topics in Orientation 2022.

You may contact me at jstearns@law.miami.edu.

August 24, 2022 by hami3258

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