![](http://blogs.stthomas.edu/holloran-center/files/2024/07/pexels-cottonbro-7516556-1024x816.jpg)
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.
Contact
Law Student Well-Being Updates
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.
Holloran Center News
St. Thomas Law's Holloran Center receives gift to establish endowment - National Jurist
What best prepares you for the practice of law? - National Jurist
Keynote Speaker David Grenardo (State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting 2024) - Texas Bar Blog
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.
Explore Our Tools and Resources
See Our Research and Training
The Holloran Center offers research and training in professional development formation.
Roadmap for Employment
Coach Training
Professional Formation Research
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.
Holloran Center News
St. Thomas Law's Holloran Center receives gift to establish endowment - National Jurist
What best prepares you for the practice of law? - National Jurist
Keynote Speaker David Grenardo (State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting 2024) - Texas Bar Blog
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.
Explore Our Tools and Resources
See Our Research and Training
The Holloran Center offers research and training in professional development formation.
Roadmap for Employment
Coach Training
Professional Formation Research
![Tom Holloran](../../../_media-library/images/holloran-center/holloran-images/110103mej172_004.jpg)
A lifetime of service and leadership
Remembering Tom Holloran (1929-2024)
“The School of Law that we know today would not exist without Tom Holloran,” said University of St. Thomas President Rob Vischer. “His stature in the Twin Cities community gave it instant credibility, and his dedication to cultivating meaningful relationships shaped its culture. Tom was a remarkably effective and beloved teacher because he taught the same way he lived: with unmistakable authenticity and integrity. The model of leadership he offered was a great gift to the world.”
![L to R: Jerry Organ, David Grenardo, Steve Tourek, and Neil Hamilton](../../../_media-library/images/holloran-center/240416mrb239_007.jpg)
Holloran Center Receives Major Gift to Support Professional Formation Among Law Students
The Holloran Center is grateful to have received a major gift from Jake Marvin, former CEO of Marvin Companies, to establish the Steve Tourek and Jake Marvin Scholars Endowment. The fund will be used to engage students in interdisciplinary research and professional identity formation endeavors.
Professional Identity Implementation Blog
![](http://blogs.stthomas.edu/holloran-center/files/2024/07/pexels-cottonbro-7516556-1024x816.jpg)
-
An Introduction to Attorneys’ Mental Health & Wellbeing – Identifying that a Problem Exists (…and so does the Stigma)
By: Stephanie E. Kupferman, Assistant Professor of Law, Vermont Law and Graduate School Colette Schmidt, Assistant Director of Career Services, Vermont Law and Graduate School “It is okay to not be okay,” even in the legal profession.[1] The law is one of the only professions dedicated to righting wrongs, ensuring fairness, and striving to ensure that all people are treated equally. However, with great fulfillment comes monumental responsibility. Lawyers are consequently more vulnerable to stress, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse than nearly any other profession.[2] Anne Brafford, Vice President of Programming and former equity partner at Morgan, Lewis, & Bockius LLP, opines in her Well-Being Toolkit for Lawyers and Legal Employers that being a lawyer is an immense privilege, allowing our law degrees to provide opportunities to contribute to the vitality of government, the business sector, community safety, and individual lives.[3] But with these grave responsibilities come concomitant stressors that need to be managed. Given that August is wellness month and discussions of mental health are still stigmatized in the legal profession, it feels like propitious timing to address a series of blog posts to wellness topics within the practice of law. Within the past decade, the ABA Commission on […]
-
Inclusive Socratic Teaching: Why Law Schools Need It and How to Achieve It
By: Jamie R. Abrams, Professor of Law & Director of Legal Rhetoric Program, American University, Washington College of Law As scholars and teachers working in professional identity formation, blog readers may be interested to check out my recent book, titled Inclusive Socratic Teaching: Why Law Schools Need It and How to Achieve It, published by the University of California Press. The book issues a call to action squarely centered in the Socratic classrooms that still dominate so much of legal education’s curricular core. The book’s premise is that existing legal education reforms, including ABA Standard 303(b) governing professional identity formation, are happening around the architectural and structural core of Socratic classrooms. The book traces enduring scholarly critiques over the past fifty years of Socratic teaching’s professor-centered and power-centered approaches. It layers onto these critical perspectives the alarming wellness concerns facing modern law students and lawyers that scholars, such as the Holloran Center’s Co-Director Jerry Organ, have been documenting for years. With this body of literature outlined, the book ponders why we continue to innovate in legal education around the dominant Socratic classrooms. It notes how these traditional classrooms are often in tension with professional identity formation to the extent they […]
-
Lessons Learned from PIF Course Year One as a Career Services Advisor
By: Sarah Dylag Beznoska, Assistant Dean for Student and Career Services, Cleveland State University College of Law 2023-2024 was the first year that Cleveland State University College of Law launched our one credit, required-for-graduation professional identity formation (PIF) course for all in-person first-year students. I was the primary instructor and, at the end of the year, it became clear to me that themes of resilience, growth mindset, resourcefulness, and curiosity had emerged from the experience. Resilience, growth mindset, resourcefulness, and curiosity for the instructor, of course. As a career advisor and having served in a wide variety of student, academic, and career services roles during the course of my career, I went into 2023-2024 with the assumption that teaching this course would be straightforward. Panel discussions about career paths, small group work about lawyering skills, and one-on-one coaching about values and goals were things I had done repeatedly while working with law students. It did not seem, in my mind, a huge stretch to bring that to the classroom and I thought myself to be something of an expert, ready to share what I knew. To say that it did not go quite as pictured in my mind is an […]
-
1L Success: Becoming a Lawyer, a Professional Identity Formation Workbook
By: Sara Berman, Professor of Lawyering Skills & Director of the Academic Success Program, USC Gould School of Law 1L Success: Becoming a Lawyer, a Professional Identity Formation Workbook (West Academics, 2024) is an interactive workbook designed to infuse professional identity formation (PIF) content and an array of reflection opportunities for law students in a variety of settings including, but not limited to, orientations, ABA Standard 303(b) workshops, doctrinal courses (such as Professional Responsibility), skills classes, Academic Success Programs (ASP), and individual student counseling. 1L Success was intentionally created as a brief volume and written in straightforward language to promote accessibility. In schools with West Academic subscriptions, your students may access the electronic version for free with their West login. If you are working with 1Ls –in a faculty or administrative position– or you’ve been tasked with programming on professional identity formation to satisfy ABA Standard 303(b), then this book is for you –well, for your students! The reflection exercises in the workbook will help students find strategies, tools, and meaning as they move along their success journey and begin developing their identity as future lawyers. The book’s Foreword, written by the Holloran Center’s Co-Director Jerry Organ, gives additional perspectives […]
![Hands type on a laptop.](../../../_media-library/images/holloran-center/1200x800/holloran-hands-on-laptop-with-legal-icons-in-3d-sol.jpg)
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.
![The word "competence" is circled on a board.](../../../_media-library/images/holloran-center/1200x800/holloran-female-circles-competency-word-on-screen-sol.jpg)
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.
![Pixel art of a laptop showing the scales of justice.](../../../_media-library/images/holloran-center/1200x800/holloran-laptop-book-visual-sol.jpg)
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.
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 Thomas Holloran (1929-2024) as our inspiration and namesake. Holloran, who was a lawyer, a CEO, and a teacher, among other things, exemplified a unique model of servant leadership that combined excellence in business with a talent for mentoring