Law Commons^™

Divided Selves: Professional Role Distancing Among Law Students And New Lawyers In A Period Of Market Crisis, John Bliss

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

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 microdynamic look at professional identity formation drawing on longitudinal interviews and identity mapping with three student cohorts. I find that over the course of their legal education …

Skills & Values: Lawyering Process, David I.C. Thomson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This legal writing text is unlike others in that it is a hybrid text, with a smaller portion in print and the rest available to professors as supplemetary materials. This offers several advantages over other books. First, it is somewhat less expensive than a traditional text, and with the significant burden of textbook costs on our students, this is an advantage they appreciate. Second, it is based on the belief that students today need to read less and do more, and be active, rather than passive, in their learning.

It is no secret to educators that our students are changing, …