Publication Date
1-1-2024
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
Sturm College of Law
Keywords
Professional identities, Law students, Legal education, Law school
Abstract
When the ABA approved a requirement that law schools offer opportunities for the formation of professional identity, there were already several courses on the topic that had been developed in numerous law schools. But those are limited to the students who take them, and do not - even taken together - fulfill the ABA rule. Instead of trying to teach a course on professional identity—as if that were teachable in the didactic sense—we should instead create exercises (or modules if you prefer) in which students may practice making these decisions. We must do that in virtually every course a student takes in law school. This way, they can have multiple opportunities to form an identity that is consonant with the identities they brought to law school, their developing understanding of their duty to uphold the rule of law, and their own decisions about what kind of lawyer they want to be. The approach recommended by this article is a Guided Sequence for Formation of Professional Identity, or a "GSFPI." It is so named because it starts with a legal question that would likely come from one (or more) of the substantive legal subjects being studied in the course. In this way, a GSFPI can be inserted in any course. It is a five-step process, fully described in this article.
Publication Statement
Copyright held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Originally published as David I. C. Thomson, The Guided Sequence for Formation of Professional Identity, 20 St. Thomas L. J. 869 (2024).
Recommended Citation
David I. C. Thomson, The Guided Sequence for Formation of Professional Identity, 20 St. Thomas L. J. 869 (2024).