scholarly journals Divided Selves: Professional Role Distancing Among Law Students and New Lawyers in a Period of Market Crisis

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 855-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bliss
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Professional Role ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Political Values ◽  
The Public ◽  
Student Cohorts

In the terms of Erving Goffman's classic role-distancing analysis, newly admitted law students often aspire to an “embraced” lawyer role that directly expresses their personal and political values. Empirical research has suggested that during law school these students are instructed in an amoral and apolitical vision of professionalism. The literature has paid less attention to how students internally experience these norms within their continual processes of self-construction. This article takes an exploratory micro-dynamic look at professional identity formation drawing on longitudinal interviews and identity mapping with three student cohorts. Over the course of their legal education, students bound for large corporate law firms tended to report increasing professional role distancing. In contrast, students who pursued jobs in the public-interest sector tended to sustain a more proximate conception of professional identity, overlapping with racial, gender, political, and other centrally constitutive roles. The article concludes with normative and theoretical implications.

scholarly journals Professional Identity Formation in Health Promotion Practitioners: Students’ Perspectives during an Undergraduate Program in Switzerland

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (20) ◽  
pp. 10754
Author(s):  
Verena Biehl ◽  
Frank Wieber ◽  
Denise Abegglen ◽  
Andrea Glässel
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Professional Role ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Undergraduate Program ◽  
Student Cohorts

The health promotion (HP) community advocates for capacity building, quality assurance and political awareness of HP. Professional identity (PI) is of great relevance to these goals as persons who strongly identify with their profession better adopt their professional role, raising the quality, competence and common values within a professional group. However, investigations on the HP workforce are missing. In order to investigate PI formation in HP professionals, a longitudinal study was conducted with two student cohorts of a Swiss HP and prevention undergraduate program. Using a qualitative approach, focus groups were conducted at the beginning and end of the undergraduate program. Data were transcribed verbatim and condensed using thematic analysis. The results highlight the complexity of the HP’s professional profile. While students experienced difficulties to capture the profile at the beginning of the program, at the end they developed an understanding of it. The practical experience within work placements helped students to grasp the profile and specify their future professional role. Several behavioral, cognitive and motivational aspects were identified that influence HP students’ PI formation and can be fostered. For instance, universities can commit to public relations for HP practitioners and support the PI formation throughout the study program.

Socialisation in a Space of Law: Student Performativity at ‘Coffee House’ in a University Law Faculty

10.1068/d4205 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 761-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Turner ◽  
Desmond Manderson
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Social Event ◽  
Canadian Law ◽  
Law Faculty ◽  
Mcgill University ◽  
Law Student ◽  
Academic Year

Working with ideas of performance and performativity, the geographies of law, and the sociology of the legal profession, this paper reports on a study of the microgeography of a social space in a major Canadian law school, and, more specifically, questions what it means to be a law student there. ‘Coffee House’ at McGill University Faculty of Law is a weekly social event sponsored for half the academic year by prominent Canadian law firms who supply free alcohol and food to the students attending in an effort to ‘brand’ their firm. These events contribute in different ways to the socialisation and identity of the law students present. We argue that a performativity of what it is to be a McGill law student heading towards corporate success begins to be structured through the repetition of a range of performances undertaken in this space.

scholarly journals Bringing Purposefulness to the American Law School’s Support of Professional Identity Formation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis D. Bilionis
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Law School ◽  
Professional Identity Formation ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
American Law ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Staff Experiences

Ten years after the publication of Educating Lawyers, a growing number of American law schools are taking initiative to better support their students in the formation of professional identity. There is widespread recognition that success in these efforts requires an element of “purposefulness” on the part of law faculty and staff. Experiences, environments, and pedagogies that actually work for professional identity formation must be crafted and promoted with intentionality. Bringing the requisite purposefulness to the effort, however, will take a mindset about the education of a lawyer that will be new to many in legal education. This article explores that mindset and the habits of the mind that will best serve law schools as they move forward in this area. Schools need not abandon prevailing approaches to the cognitive and skills dimensions of a law student’s education that Educating Lawyers called the first and second apprenticeships, respectively. But when it comes to the third apprenticeship of professional identity and sense of purpose, a reorientation in thinking about law students, their law school, and the educational process is necessary. That change in the way of thinking can be invigorating and empowering, revealing opportunities with time, talent, space, and experiences that have been underexplored by American legal education.

Strong Vocational Interest Blank Patterns Associated with Law School Achievement

1976 ◽  
Vol 39 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1343-1346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Reich
Keyword(s):  
School Achievement ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Office Worker ◽  
First Year ◽  
Religious Activities ◽  
Vocational Interest ◽  
The Public ◽  
Purchasing Agent ◽  
Production Manager

106 first-year male law students ( Mage = 24 yr.) completed the Strong Vocational Interest Blank. Those students who finished in the top half of their first-year class scored higher on the Physician, Psychiatrist, Psychologist, Biologist, Artist, Musician-Performer, Lawyer, and Author-Journalist scales, while those who finished in the bottom half of their first-year class scored higher on the Public Speaking, Business Management, Merchandising, Office Practices, Mechanical, Religious Activities, Production Manager, Accountant, Office Worker, Purchasing Agent, Banker, Pharmacist, Funeral Director, Salesman, President-Manufacturing, Credit Manager, and Business Education Teacher scales. There is thus great variance in the interest patterns of these groups.

Coffee House: Habitus and Performance Among Law Students

2006 ◽  
Vol 31 (03) ◽  
pp. 649-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Desmond Manderson ◽  
Sarah Turner
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Educational Aspirations ◽  
Fluid Dynamic ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Canadian Law ◽  
And Performance

Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Judith Butler, we develop a detailed ethnography of a social space in a major law school and explore its socialization of the students there. “Coffee House” is a weekly social event sponsored by Canadian law firms and offering free drink and food to the students present. We argue that this event and the actors involved profoundly change student identities and alter educational aspirations. Although the students themselves insist that “nothing is going on,” our ethnography suggests that in “Coffee House” identity is developed through performances, and in the accumulation of symbolic capital, until ultimately students come to feel their future career path is not a matter of choice, but destiny. We explore the important work of Bourdieu through this setting, but ultimately we resist his determinism, and suggest instead that, following the work of Butler, identity is a more complicated and fluid dynamic between space, repetition, and performance. It appears that a personal unconscious transformation among law students attending Coffee House is underway; yet opportunities to change the meaning of this space and these performances remain.

scholarly journals Pericles Should Learn to Fix a Leaky Pipe – Why Trial Advocacy Should Become Part of the LLB Curriculum (Part 1)

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Willem Hendrik Gravett
Keyword(s):  
Professional Competence ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Law School ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Law Schools ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Law ◽  
Trial Advocacy ◽  
The University

It is a sad fact that at most university law schools in South Africa, a student can graduate without ever having set foot in a courtroom, and without ever having spoken to, or on behalf of, a person in need of advice or counsel. The past several years have witnessed a swelling chorus of complaints that the current LLB curriculum produces law graduates who were "out of their depth" in practice. My purpose is to make a case for the inclusion in the LLB curriculum of a course in trial advocacy. This endeavour of necessity invokes the broader debate over the educational objectives of a university law school – a debate memorably framed by William Twining as the two polar images of "Pericles and the plumber". My thesis is that the education of practising lawyers should be the primary mission of the university law school. The first part of this contribution is a response to those legal academics who hold that the role of the law school is to educate law students in the theories and substance of the law; that it is not to function as a trade school or a nursery school for legal practice. With reference to the development of legal education in the United States, I argue that the "education/training" dichotomy has been exposed as a red herring. This so-called antithesis is false, because it assumes that a vocational approach is necessarily incompatible with such values as free inquiry, intellectual rigour, independence of thought, and breadth of perspective. The modern American law school has shown that such so-called incompatibility is the product of intellectual snobbery and devoid of any substance. It is also often said that the raison d'être of a university legal education is to develop in the law student the ability "to think like a lawyer". However, what legal academics usually mean by "thinking like a lawyer" is the development of a limited subset of the skills that are of crucial importance in practising law: one fundamental cognitive skill – analysis – and one fundamental applied skill – legal research. We are not preparing our students for other, equally crucial lawyering tasks – negotiating, client counselling, witness interviewing and trial advocacy. Thinking like a lawyer is a much richer and more intricate process than merely collecting and manipulating doctrine. We cannot say that we are fulfilling our goal to teach students to "think like lawyers", because the complete lawyer "thinks" about doctrine and about trial strategy and about negotiation and about counselling. We cannot teach students to "think like lawyers" without simultaneously teaching them what lawyers do. An LLB curriculum that only produces graduates who can "think like lawyers" in the narrow sense ill-serves them, the profession and the public. If the profession is to improve the quality of the services it provides to the public, it is necessary for the law schools to recognise that their students must receive the skills needed to put into practice the knowledge and analytical abilities they learn in the substantive courses. We have an obligation to balance the LLB curriculum with courses in professional competence, including trial advocacy – courses that expose our students to what actually occurs in lawyer-client relationships and in courtrooms. The skills our law students would acquire in these courses are essential to graduating minimally-competent lawyers whom we can hand over to practice to complete their training. The university law school must help students form the habits and skills that will carry over to a lifetime of practice. Nothing could be more absurd than to neglect in education those practical matters that are necessary for a person's future calling.

Catch ’em Early: Making a Lawyer

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-60
Author(s):  
Emma Jones ◽  
Neil Graffin ◽  
Rajvinder Samra ◽  
Mathijs Lucassen
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Law Students ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Training And Support ◽  
Difficult Situations ◽  
And Training

This chapter explores how a number of the issues around mental health and wellbeing faced by the legal profession can be traced back to the legal education and training provided. Drawing on an international evidence-base relating to the wellbeing of law students, it considers how the professional identity formation of many professionals begins at an early stage and often involved the absorption of potentially unhealthy norms and expectations. In particular, it explores the notion that studying and practising law has a certain status and thus those who follow this route are in some way special or different – one of the key themes identified in this study. The chapter also considers the challenges which can arise when individuals enter the profession but are not provided with adequate training and support, often facing harrowing and difficult situations and cases, but being expected to simply carry on regardless.

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT SPECIALISTS: MEASUREMENT OF ASSOCIATIONS (SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS)

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 52-56
Author(s):  
П. Бакланов ◽  
P. Baklanov
Keyword(s):  
Professional Identity ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Personnel Management ◽  
Brand Management ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Professional Identity Formation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
Workforce Capacity ◽  
Insight Into

The article presents the results of the comprehensive sociological research devoted to branding and brand management of professional development obtained during the assessment (2015) of the procedure to measure individual andgroup imagery and symbolic concepts regarding personnel management (asanoccupation) via visual mediators. The research is basically devoted totheanalysis of geometric shapes images (traces) chosen by respondents (1,083persons) as those which they most clearly associate with personnel management. On the ground of psychogeometry interpretations of visual mediatorsbasic principles of personnel management in diff erent enterprises are defi ned, particularities of specifi c HR policies and procedures implementation in the public sector and commercial bodies are denoted. The conclusion and summary provide an insight into the role and signifi cance of factors and conditions which infl uence personnel management specialists’ professional identity formation, professional identity impact on national workforce capacity.

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