Critical Lawyering Skills

Critical Lawyering Skills: A Path to Professional Identity is a fully vetted curriculum for teaching professional identity. Data-driven and grounded in principles of positive psychology and adult learning theory, Critical Lawyering Skills builds upon a strong foundation by providing activities that personalize a student's path to professional identity. The book enables students to take charge of their own professional development while strengthening the lawyering skills that legal employers have identified as necessary for lawyers to succeed.

Critical Lawyering Skills is formatted as a workbook so that students practice the skills necessary to build their professional identity rather than simply reading about them. The workbook is a complete experiential curriculum with learning objectives, rubrics, and assessment tools. It satisfies both ABA Standards 303(b)(3) and (c), with modules addressing personal and professional values, well-being, cultural competence, ethics, and more.

The text fosters each student's transformational growth from passive student to proactive owner of the student's professional identity formation. Unlike most aspects of the traditional law school curriculum, the exercises in the chapters push students out of the classroom and ask them to think critically about the professional world of lawyering and their place in that world. The book will help close the gap between law school and career and the gap between thinking like a lawyer and becoming one.