Introduction
The American Bar Association (“ABA”) is now requiring all ABA-approved American law schools to provide “substantial opportunities to students for . . . the development of a professional identity,” in turn interpreted to “involve an intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” The ABA Interpretation does not define either what well-being practices should be intentionally explored or how to go about it. This Article is designed to help fill that gap by drawing on my experience in teaching multiple upper-level courses, as well as a new one-credit first-year course, all of which to some degree involve “intentional exploration . . . of well-being practices.” An objective of these courses has not only been to help the students form a professional identity that includes well-being practices, but also to help that identity be a positive one by trying to bring out the best in them. In the process, I have drawn on some of the insights from the science of applied positive psychology, which can be described simply as the evidenced-based study of how people can thrive.
While admission to law practice in almost all states requires passing an examination, such states also require applicants to meet minimum standards of character and fitness. The pedagogical idea is to encourage law students to use these standards as aspirations, not just minimum requirements that they must satisfy upon graduation. Also, as a way of moving toward those goals, the students can also draw upon the professional skill of self-evaluation, which other provisions of the ABA Standards specifically reference, as discussed below.
It is important to acknowledge at the outset that this is not the only framework available for what well-being involves, especially for lawyers, if not explicitly law students. For example, Professor Larry Krieger and Dr. Kenneth Sheldon have done pathfinding work by looking at lawyers through the lens of self-determination theory in which autonomy, competence, and relatedness are key indices of well-being. Also, in 2017, the National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being focused on six dimensions of well-being for lawyers: Emotional, Intellectual, Occupational, Physical, Social, and Spiritual. This is a broader set, which has been well elaborated by Professor Heidi Brown.
The advantage of the Character and Fitness framework is that it helps students not only explore well-being practices, but also begin to explore the “values” and “guiding principles . . . considered foundational to successful legal practice” as ABA Interpretation 303-5 provides. Specifically, I believe the Character element allows student exploration of their and others’ positive character. The Fitness aspect allows student exploration of what might be the best fit in terms of a preferred professional role, as well as six dimensions of well-being that have been used principally by psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman and others to describe a flourishing life: Relationships, Engagement, Vitality, Achievement, Meaning, and Positive Emotion, explored in more detail below. (These six dimensions are summarized for ease of remembering by putting the first letters into an acronym: “REVAMP.”) Both Character and Fitness are important for law students’ positive professional identity development, as lawyers who could be strong in all six domains of flourishing could still be engaged in morally blameworthy conduct.
I initially explored the REVAMP Character and Fitness framework in the context of leadership education. More recently, I expanded this framework to include the six REVAMP aspects of Fitness in examining the life of Boston lawyer, and later U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Louis D. Brandeis. For those unfamiliar with his legal career, he is the only lawyer in American history listed as among both the top five lawyers and top five U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Without repeating that article here, it is remarkable to look retrospectively at his life and work through this Character and Fitness lens. He was and is esteemed not only because of his consummate legal skills, but also because of his character—especially his compassion and courage. His life also modeled the elements of Fitness mentioned earlier—relationships, engagement, vitality, achievement, meaning, and the positive emotions he brought to his work. Viewed through these lenses, his life provides a positive example for law students to undertake an “intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” Helping students choose other positive exemplars is also discussed in more detail below.
The balance of this Article will elaborate on this Character and Fitness pedagogical framework. This Article will also quote from some student writing for or related to my courses, with the students’ consent, reporting how such well-being practices have been helpful. However, I recognize that not all such well-being practices have been, or will be, worthwhile for all students to explore. Nonetheless, my hope is that these positive student responses can still be instructive in helping other legal educators respond to the requirements of Section 303(b)(3), and perhaps even going beyond them in shaping their own law students’ exploration of well-being practices in developing a positive professional identity. But before going into these well-being practices, it may be helpful to first provide more background on the new ABA standards to put the well-being aspects of the new professional identity requirement in an appropriate educational context.
