Professional Identity Formation And The NextGen Bar Open Opportunities For Law Student And Law School Success

Neil W. Hamilton (St. Thomas-MN; Google Scholar), Professional Identity Formation and the NextGen Bar Open Opportunities for Law Student and Law School Success, 3 J.L. Teaching & Learning ___ (2025): 

All law faculty, staff, and students want students and graduates to be successful with respect to: (1) academic performance; (2) bar passage; (3) meaningful post-graduation employment; and (4) excellent service to clients and the legal system. Both the 2022 changes to ABA accreditation Standard 303 and the ongoing implementation of the NextGen Bar starting in five states in 2026 and ten more states in 2027 open substantial opportunities for law students and law schools to achieve more success at these four goals.

The 2022 revision to accreditation Standard 303 requires that each law school must provide substantial opportunities each year for students to explore the core values of the profession that are foundational to successful legal practice. The National Conference of Bar Examiners and many state supreme courts, based on empirical evidence, are now moving to the NextGen Bar that encompasses a broader range of skills necessary for newly licensed lawyers successfully to practice law than the current bar examination.

These two changes are asking law faculty and staff to think about legal education in two fundamentally different ways to help students achieve greater success at the four goals above. The first fundamental change is that the organized bar through accreditation and the state supreme courts through the bar examination are signalling that law schools must give more attention (1) to each student's reflective exploration of the professional values foundational to successful legal practice, and (2) development of a wider range of  foundational lawyering skills beyond the thinking like a lawyer skills including client counseling, client relationship, negotiation and dispute resolution, and investigation skills. 

The second fundamental change is that an effective curriculum to foster each student's growth toward later stages of development regarding both exploration of the professional values foundational to successful legal practice and the four new foundational NextGen Bar skills will happen principally together in authentic professional experiences (that are or mimic actual professional work) combined with coaching, feedback, guided reflection, and an action plan for the student to go to the next level on a skill.  The thinking like a lawyer curriculum and the authentic professional experiences curriculum must be coordinated to foster each student's growth step by step towards being a newly licensed lawyer. 

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