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The Formation of Professional Identity: The Path from Student to Lawyer

2nd Edition
Patrick Emery Longan | Daisy Hurst Floyd | Timothy W. Floyd
ISBN: 9798887861036
Subject: Professional Identity Formation
Format: Print - Softbound
Page Count: 219
Copyright: 2024 | Status: In Stock
Other Formats Available
Available in the Study Aids Collection Your school may already provide your students with access to this title through a school-wide subscription.

Becoming a lawyer is about much more than acquiring knowledge and technique. As law students learn the law and acquire some basic skills, they are also inevitably forming a deep sense of themselves in their new roles as lawyers. That sense of self—the student’s nascent professional identity—needs to take a particular form if the students are to fulfil the public purposes of lawyers and find deep meaning and satisfaction in their work. In this book, Professors Patrick Longan, Daisy Floyd, and Timothy Floyd combine what they have learned in many years of teaching and research concerning the lawyer’s professional identity with lessons derived from legal ethics, moral psychology, and moral philosophy. They describe in depth the six virtues that every lawyer needs as part of his or her professional identity, and they explore both the obstacles to acquiring and deploying those virtues and strategies for overcoming those impediments. The result is a straightforward guide for law students on how to cultivate a professional identity that will allow them to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others and to flourish as individuals.

This book is a resource that can be used in a number of ways to help law schools meet the requirement of revised Standard 303 to provide substantial opportunities for the development of professional identity. It is appropriate for use as a text for a stand-alone course focused on professional identity or as supplementary reading in other courses, including Professional Responsibility and experiential education seminars. It can also be used to prompt discussion in orientation and other non-credit opportunities. The book includes a rich array of problems for discussion, and there will be an accompanying teacher’s manual.


Imprint: West Academic Publishing
Series: Academic and Career Success Series
Publication Date: 12/21/2023
Related Subject(s): Career Success, Clinics and Externships, Lawyering Skills, Legal Clinic, Professional Resp/Ethics

Patrick Emery Longan, Mercer University School of Law

Daisy Hurst Floyd, Mercer University School of Law

Timothy W. Floyd, Mercer University School of Law

CasebookPlus™

This title is available in our CasebookPlus format. CasebookPlus provides support beyond your classroom lectures and materials by offering additional digital resources to you and your students. Anchored by faculty-authored formative self-assessments keyed to our most popular casebooks, CasebookPlus allows students to test their understanding of core concepts as they are learning them in class – on their own, outside of the classroom, with no extra work on your part. CasebookPlus combines three important elements:

  • A new print or digital casebook
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  • 12-month access to a digital Learning Library complete with:
Multiple-choice self-assessment questions, including:
  • Chapter questions keyed to the casebook
  • Black Letter Law questions (available in select subjects)
  • Subject area review questions for end of semester use
Essay and short answer questions with sample answers and expert commentary, in 1L and select upper-level subjects

Leading digital study aids, an outline starter, and audio lectures in select subjects

Students can still utilize CasebookPlus digital resources if they’ve purchased a used book or are renting their text by purchasing the Learning Library at westacademic.com.

With CasebookPlus, you can customize your students’ learning experience and monitor their performance. The quiz editor allows you to create your own custom quiz set, suppress specific quiz questions or quiz sets, and time-release quiz questions. Additionally, the flexible, customized reporting capability helps you evaluate your students’ understanding of the material and can also help your school demonstrate compliance with the new ABA Assessment and Learning Outcomes standards.

The book has been substantially updated with new materials across all chapters. Specifically, the authors have: (1) added discussions of the application of behavioral ethics to the cultivation of professional identity; (2) updated the data and discussions about the gap between the demand and supply of legal services; and (3) updated the discussion of current problems relating to civility with new data and survey results. The book has also been reorganized to include a new introductory chapter and a new stand-alone chapter on the relationship between professional identity and well-being, with expanded emphasis on the lessons of positive psychology. The problems in each chapter have been revised, and there will now be an accompanying teacher’s manual.

Learn more about this series.