Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership
The Holloran Center’s mission is to provide innovative interdisciplinary research, curriculum development, and programs focusing holistically on the formation of both law students and practicing professionals into ethical leaders in their communities.
The Center is at the forefront of a growing national movement focused on greater intentionality in the professional formation of law students. The Standard 303(b) and (c) accreditation changes approved by the ABA House of Delegates on February 14, 2022, are a major step forward for the national social movement.
Our goal is to help every law school take gradual and effective steps to foster each student’s growth to develop a professional identity.
How to Get Started
Get to Know the Holloran Center
Holloran Center professors and fellows provide national leadership on empirical research to assess which pedagogies are most effective to help students with formation of an ethical professional identity.
Since its founding in 2006, the Holloran Center has focused on this mission of helping the next generation of lawyers form professional identities grounded in a deep commitment of service to others.
Review Changes to Standard 303
The Standard 303(b) and (c) accreditation changes approved by the ABA House of Delegates on February 14, 2022, are a major step forward for the national social movement.
About Standard 303
Explore Our Tools and Resources
See Our Research and Training
The Holloran Center offers research and training in professional development formation.
Research and Training
Get to Know the Holloran Center
Holloran Center professors and fellows provide national leadership on empirical research to assess which pedagogies are most effective to help students with formation of an ethical professional identity.
Since its founding in 2006, the Holloran Center has focused on this mission of helping the next generation of lawyers form professional identities grounded in a deep commitment of service to others.
Review Changes to Standard 303
The Standard 303(b) and (c) accreditation changes approved by the ABA House of Delegates on February 14, 2022, are a major step forward for the national social movement.
About Standard 303
Explore Our Tools and Resources
See Our Research and Training
The Holloran Center offers research and training in professional development formation.
Research and Training
Professional Identity Implementation Blog
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Open Conversations: Building Culture, Developing Discourse, Nurturing Democracy
By: Jeffrey R. Baker, Clinical Professor of Law, Associate Dean of Clinical Education and Global Programs, Director of the Community Justice Clinic, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law Tanya Asim Cooper, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Restoration and Justice Clinic, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law In 2015, as the Ferguson uprisings swelled in Missouri, we felt a rising tension, anxiety, anger, and discord among our law students at Pepperdine (now Pepperdine Caruso School of Law). Students had organized demonstrations for justice at the law school, and they were seeking other outlets and means to engage. Like much of the nation, they wanted to talk about it, but the law school did not have a ready forum for them to process this controversy together. Professors are often reluctant or unable to pause their regular teaching to engage in wide debates on current events, especially when they are trying to cover significant material in class. But the need persisted, and intensifying frustration created and deepened divisions within the school. The dean of students and diversity council conferred with each other and with students, and a student suggested regular, simple lunches and conversation for the student body on the potent questions […]
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The Curse of Coverage and Professional Identity Formation
By: Barbara Glesner Fines, Dean and Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law, UMKC School of Law In any conversation about integrating greater opportunity for professional identity formation pedagogy into the curriculum, particularly when suggesting that this be part of the required doctrinal curriculum, one will hear an objection that there is no room.[i] For many doctrinal teachers, incorporating professional identity formation opportunities or focus into classes would require sacrificing critical doctrinal content and analytical skills. The pressures toward coverage as a course goal are not insubstantial. Textbooks grow exponentially each year, reflecting the growing breadth of the law and legal resources. If a faculty member assigns only a small portion of a textbook, or their syllabus identifies far fewer topics than those contained in the syllabi of other professors teaching the same course, then students feel cheated. The “mile-wide, inch-thick” bar exam looms over all. The pressures toward broad coverage of doctrine as the primary goal of course design are premised on a number of false premises about student learning. First, faculty presume that coverage means learning, when research tells us that more content does not mean more learning. “If learning is to endure in a flexible, adaptable way for […]
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Transitioning from Student to Lawyer: Infusing Professional Identity Formation into the Required Curriculum
By: David A. Grenardo, Professor of Law and Associate Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law On April 20 and 21, 2023, the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal hosted a symposium/workshop that focused on incorporating professional identity formation (PIF) into the required curriculum, namely 1L courses and Professional Responsibility (PR). The speakers consisted primarily of casebook authors who include PIF in their textbooks and corresponding courses. Orchestrated and led by Jerry Organ, Co-Director of the Holloran Center, the symposium/workshop offered one impactful speaker after another. The presentations provided a wide array of means to include PIF in the required curriculum. Each panel is listed here, and the following are just snippets of what professors presented: Role-playing exercises, which included an inter-disciplinary dental malpractice deposition simulation in Torts in which law students work directly with dental students as purported expert witnesses; team-based approaches to learning in first-year and PR courses; the use of technology to aid in PIF; the importance and use of reflective journaling; methods to address well-being; and details of a required 1L PIF course. The panelists […]
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Training Law Students to Converse Respectfully: Public Discourse Workshop
By: Leah Teague, Professor of Law & Director of The Leadership Development Program, Baylor Law School As previously discussed, amendments to ABA Standard 303(b) (development of a professional identity) & (c) (education to law students on bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism) did not require major adjustments to our programming at Baylor Law. Still, we created a faculty committee to document our compliance and consider enhancements. The committee confirmed numerous ways in which Baylor Law already complies and then considered additional opportunities to enhance their training. This post highlights one of those enhancements. Beginning with the Fall 2022 entering class, students in each entering class are required to participate in a public deliberation workshop in their second week of law school. What is public deliberation and why should law students learn how to do it? The public expects lawyers to be zealous advocates for their clients, but sometimes a lawyer’s conduct goes beyond zealous advocacy and crosses the line of civility. Not only does ill-mannered conduct reflect poorly on our profession, but it also contributes to the normalizing of disrespectful, uncivil, and polarizing reactions to viewpoints and statements with which a person does not agree. Lawyers’ professional obligations extend beyond individual clients to our system of […]
Learning Outcomes Database
This database contains all of the learning outcomes available on law school webpages. We have identified those law schools with “basic” learning outcomes as well as schools with more robust learning outcomes than required by the language of Standard 302.
Holloran Competency Milestones
The Holloran Center Milestones are stage-development rubrics that describe the stages of development associated with each learning outcome. The Milestones for each learning outcome were developed by national working groups of faculty and staff from different law schools. A few were also developed internally at the Center.
Professional Development Database
This database identifies all the law schools with required first-year courses or programs focused on professional formation categorized by type of course or program. It also includes a searchable set of syllabi from those courses or programs when available.
Research and Training
Roadmap for Employment
Professor Neil Hamilton has developed and published a groundbreaking template for law students to use during all three years of law school in order to be fully prepared to find meaningful employment upon graduation.
Professional Formation Research
See data on topics like professional identity formation, developing fiduciary mindsets, increasing student well-being, and more.
See the Research
Coach Training
One-on-one coaching is the most effective curriculum to foster a student’s growth toward later stages of development on both legal education’s foundational learning outcomes and the student’s post-graduation goals.
The Thomas Holloran Legacy
The Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions is honored to have as its inspiration and namesake, a person whose leadership qualities combine excellence in business with a talent for teaching and mentoring. These qualities make Thomas Holloran a unique role model for the Holloran Center.