Professional Identity Development In The 1L Legal Writing Curriculum

Charles Oldfield (Akron), Entertaining and Embracing Professional Identity Development in the 1L Legal Writing Curriculum, 59 Tulsa L. Rev. 415 (2024): 

Because of their already heavy workload, legal writing faculty sometimes resist taking on new curricular responsibilities, including calls to incorporate ethics and professionalism training in the first-year legal writing curriculum. But the ABA now requires law schools to provide students with opportunities to develop their professional identities throughout their time in law school. This requirement means that faculty will need to add professional identity development to their courses. Rather than resist this change, firstyear legal writing faculty should embrace the opportunity by using the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to incorporate concepts of ethics and professionalism in their firstyear courses.

Legal writing faculty can use the Model Rules to incorporate professional identity development into their courses without making significant changes to the content or structure of their courses. Further, the cases where lawyers are disciplined or sanctioned for violating the Rules of Professional Conduct often involve absurd and entertaining facts— which make for interesting class discussion.

Using the Model Rules to incorporate professional identity development in the first-year legal writing curriculum benefits students in at least two ways. It helps them in their first summer employment by exposing them to the ethical obligations of lawyers— something that they usually do not learn until they take Professional Responsibility in their second or third year of law school. It also helps them in their Professional Responsibility course because they have begun to learn how ethical rules work in the daily practice of law.

Using the Model Rules to incorporate professional identity development in the first-year legal writing curriculum benefits students in at least two ways. It helps them in their first summer employment by exposing them to the ethical obligations of lawyers— something that they usually do not learn until they take Professional Responsibility in their second or third year of law school. It also helps them in their Professional Responsibility course because they have begun to learn how ethical rules work in the daily practice of law.

Editor's Note:  If you would like to receive a daily email with links to legal education posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.