By: Mary Walsh Fitzpatrick, Assistant Dean for the Career and Professional Development Center at Albany Law School
Background
I attended a workshop on professional identity formation
sponsored by the Holloran
Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions last June. In preparation
for the workshop, I read a number of articles on professional identity
formation, including “Self-Directedness
and Professional Formation: Connecting Two Critical Concepts in Legal Education.”
The article posits “[f]or law students to move towards real professional
identity formation in their career, they must be self-directed.” Self-directedness,
some of the hallmarks of which are self-reflection, goal setting, seeking and
receiving feedback, and using sound judgment, is integral to finding meaningful
employment and career satisfaction. I know from first-hand experience working
within law school career development for the past 13 years, students who are
most successful in gaining meaningful employment take ownership of their
experiences and make intentional choices early in law school. I believe self-directedness
more than any other factor, including grades, leads to meaningful careers for
law school graduates. The challenge is to cultivate self-directedness in all
law students by creating an ethos of self-directedness with regard to career
development beginning in the first year.
While at the Holloran Center workshop, I devised a career
development program to introduce first-year students to professional identity
formation with emphasis on self-directedness. I subsequently shared the
proposed program with my team at the Albany Law School Career and Professional
Development Center and we collaborated on the program presentation and
exercises. At Albany Law School, students are assigned an individual career
counselor with whom they work one-on-one over the entire course of law school.
Thus, in planning and implementing the program my colleagues and I chose to each
lead the program for our sections separately, beginning individual relationships
with our students and setting expectations.
We decided upon a method of teaching that would allow
students to practice self-reflection, seeking and receiving feedback, and using
good judgment in the context of career development. The overarching goal of the
program was to help students recognize self-directedness as a key component for
successful professional identity formation leading to meaningful careers.
The Program – Setting
the Stage
We communicated the program as a mandatory one-hour program and emailed to first-year students several weeks before the program the Individual Career Plan (ICP), a self-assessment tool we created several years ago, and our handbook for developing a legal resume. The students were asked to complete their ICPs and draft their legal resumes in preparation for the program.
We began the program by introducing professional identity
formation and self-directed learning, emphasizing curiosity, initiative,
feedback, self-reflection, resilience, judgment and ethics. We provided
students with the Holloran
Competency Milestones Assessment of Student’s Ownership of Continuous
Professional Development (Self-Directedness) and asked them to take a
moment to reflect upon and identify their current stage of development on the continuum.
Recognizing each student comes to law school at a different stage of
self-directedness we did not ask students to share their findings with the
group, rather we called attention to law school providing students with the
opportunity to move along the continuum with the goal of graduating competent
learners who take full ownership over their careers by setting goals and seeking
resources to meet those goals.
Next, we asked students to form small groups and to reflect
upon and share with each other why they chose to attend law school, skills they
hope to build, and experiences they hope to gain during law school. After this
breakout session we asked one student from each group to report back some of
the group’s findings. Two distinct motivations for attending law school emerged
from this exercise, students: wanting to utilize existing strengths they
identify as befitting a legal career; and wanting to acquire the skills
necessary to be catalysts for change. Notably, both motivations evidence
students’ strong desire to align their skills and values with meaningful
employment.
- Seeking and Receiving Feedback
In the second portion of the program we focused on seeking
and receiving feedback in the context of career development. We began by
educating students on critical thinking skills sought by legal employers, such
as analyzing, evaluating, reasoning, and problem solving. We then asked students
to provide peer-to-peer feedback on their resumes utilizing the resume handbook
we provided before the program and tools we discussed during the program.
Students worked in couples or groups of three to seek and provide each other
with constructive feedback on how to better formulate existing resume
descriptions for a legal audience. After the exercise we asked students to
contribute one piece of valuable feedback they received.
In the final portion of the program students were divided into
groups and provided three different hypotheticals related to career development
decisions. Each group was asked to analyze the issues and report back how they
would address the situation presented. The hypotheticals included issues of
reneging on a job offer, misrepresenting grade point average on a resume, and
failing to follow up with a professional connection. Through dialogue following
the exercise we emphasized the importance of reputation, impact of reputational
damage, building professional relationships, and the imperative of follow-through.
Many students acknowledged although no
single hypothetical scenario would necessarily determine success in finding
meaningful employment, the decisions made with regard to these issues could impact
one’s professional reputation and future opportunities.
Conclusion
We hope to have initiated student appreciation for the impact
of self-directedness on professional identity formation that is integral to
beginning meaningful careers after law school. The next step is for each
student to take the initiative to complete an online strengths assessment, the VIA Character Strengths Survey, make
a first career counseling appointment where they will receive individualized
feedback on the ICP and legal resume and identify next steps in planning their
careers.
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