Holloran Center Conference: Professional Identity Formation – Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Megan Bess is an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Externship Program at UIC Law School in Chicago. In addition to externship courses, she teaches Professional Responsibility and a leadership seminar. Her research and scholarship focus on professional identity formation, legal ethics, and the future of legal education. She serves on the Executive Committees of the AALS Sections on Professional Responsibility and Balance and Well-Being in Legal Education. She is a member CLEA’s Best Practices Committee and an editor of the upcoming new edition of Building on Best Practices. Prior to joining the UIC Law faculty in 2019, she served as a Clinical Assistant Professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she oversaw online degree programs and six graduate degree programs. Before entering academia, she practiced in the litigation department of an Am Law 50 firm in Chicago. She earned her B.S. from the University of Arizona and J.D. from Vanderbilt University. 

Louis D. Bilionis is Dean Emeritus and Droege Professor Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.  He regularly teaches constitutional law, and his scholarly work in the area has been published in leading law journals.  He also is a leader in efforts to strengthen legal education and its support of the professional identity formation of law students, with publications in the field that include “Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals” (Cambridge University Press 2022) (with Neil W. Hamilton).

Barbara Glesner Fines is the Rubey M. Hulen Professor of Law and Dean Emerita of the University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1986.  Glesner Fines received her master of law degree from Yale University and her J.D. (cum laude) from the University of Wisconsin Law School. 

Professor Glesner Fines is an expert on professional ethics, legal education and the professional identity formation of law students. She has authored numerous articles and books on these subjects and is a fellow in the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership. She has created several innovative programs at the School of Law.  She helped to found the UMKC School of Law Child and Family Law Program, which is currently ranked as one of the top four programs of its kind in the United States.  She is also one of the founding faculty members of the School of Law’s Center for Law, Entrepreneurship and Innovation. 

Glesner Fines currently teaches Professional Responsibility, Client Interviewing, and Family Violence.  She also directs the Self-Help Legal Clinic.  Students in the clinic provide instruction, referral, brief advice, and limited scope representation to self-represented litigants in a variety of subject areas.  Students learn technology skills to build self-help resources and community education skills in pro se classes. 

Leanne Fuith is a Professor of Law at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, where she teaches courses in professional identity formation, business law, and civil litigation. Her scholarship and presentations focus on professional identity formation, access to justice, lawyer leadership, and law firm and business management.

Professor Fuith is licensed to practice in Minnesota. She previously practiced as an employment and commercial litigator and continues to practice as an advisor to small and mid-size businesses. She serves as a member of the American Bar Association House of Delegates, the Minnesota State Bar Association Assembly, and the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Alternative Pathways Implementation Committee, and she is chair of the MSBA Legislative Committee.

Daisy Hurst Floyd is Dean and Professor of Law Emerita at Mercer University School of Law, where she served on the faculty from 2004-2025 and as Dean from 2004-2010 and 2014-2017. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Emory University and a J.D. from the University of Georgia School of Law. Before joining Mercer, Professor Floyd was on the faculties of the University of Georgia School of Law and Texas Tech University School of Law. Her teaching and research interests include Ethics, Legal Education, Civil Procedure, Evidence, and Remedies.

 Professor Floyd has particular interest in the ways in which higher education shapes students’ ethical development and in cross-disciplinary collaboration.  Her early interest in professional identity was supported when she was named a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2001, and she continues to be a leader in the professional identity movement in legal education. Professor Floyd has written a number of law review articles and book chapters on matters relating to professional identity, is the co-author of The Formation of Professional Identity: The Path From Student to Lawyer (2d ed. West 2024), and a contributing author to Learning from Practice, (2d ed. West, forthcoming). During the Fall 2025 semester, Professor Floyd served as a part-time faculty member at Georgia State University College of Law.

Timothy W. Floyd is Professor Emeritus at Mercer University School of Law. He retired from full-time teaching in June 2025 after serving as Tommy Malone Distinguished Chair in Trial Advocacy and Director of Experiential Education at Mercer. During the 2025-26 academic year, he has taught as a part-time faculty member at Georgia State University College of Law.  

Floyd has taught variety of courses in criminal law, civil procedure, international human rights, legal skills, and legal ethics, including professional identity formation. He has published three books and is the author of numerous articles in the areas of legal ethics, law and religion, and criminal law and the death penalty. His most recent book is The Formation of Professional Identity: The Path from Student to Lawyer (with Patrick Longan and Daisy Hurst Floyd; second edition 2024). He devotes much of his service to access to justice issues, and he has represented several defendants in death penalty cases, including the first person convicted under the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994.  

He received a B.A and M.A. from Emory University and his J.D from the University of Georgia, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Georgia Law Review. He previously taught at the University of Georgia School of Law, where he was Director of the Legal Aid Clinic, and at Texas Tech University School of Law, where he was the J. Hadley Edgar Professor of Law and Co-Director of Clinical Programs. Before entering academia, he served as a law clerk to Judge Phyllis Kravitch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, was a commercial litigator at a large firm in Atlanta, and served as a public defender. 

Neil W. Hamilton is Holloran Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. He served as Interim Dean in 2012 and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs twice at St. Thomas. From 1980-2001, he served as Trustees Professor of Regulatory Policy at William Mitchell College of Law. He has taught Professional Responsibility and an ethics seminar to law students and professionals for over 30 years.

He is the author of seven books, over 100 law journal articles, and over 100 shorter articles as a bi-monthly columnist on professionalism and ethics for the Minnesota Lawyer from 1999-2012. He published Roadmap: The Law Student's Guide to Preparing and Implementing a Successful Plan for Meaningful Employment (ABA Books 3rd edition, 2022), which received the American Bar Association's Gambrell Award for excellence in professionalism. His most recent book is Law Student Professional Development and Formation: Bridging Law School, Student, and Employer Goals (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2022), co-written with Lou Bilionis.

Among other awards from the practicing bar, the Minnesota State Bar Association gave him its highest honor, the Professional Excellence Award, in 2004. He received the University of St. Thomas Presidential Award for Excellence as a Teacher and Scholar in 2009. And in 2012, Minnesota Lawyer honored him again for outstanding service to the profession and placed him in its Circle of Merit for those who have been honored more than once.

The Holloran Center, which Professor Hamilton directs, focuses on interdisciplinary research, curriculum development, and programs to help the next generation form professional identities with a moral core of responsibility for self and responsibility and service to others. Hamilton's research and scholarship likewise focuses on the professional formation of new entrants into the ethics of the professions, particularly the legal profession.

Erika N. Pont is an Associate Professor in the Fundamentals of Lawyering (FL) Program at The George Washington University Law School and currently serves as the Program's Acting Co-Director. She is also FL's liaison to GW Law's Gambrell award-winning Inns of Court Program and is responsible for incorporating principles of professional development and professional identity formation into the FL curriculum.