This Article is a guide for law faculty and staff who want each student to build a tent of professional relationships––a professional network––that both supports the student and trusts the student to do the work of a lawyer. The importance of professional networks for work performance and career opportunities has been well-established in hundreds of empirical studies. In addition, a growing research literature is documenting that the creation of a professional network requires pro-active networking behaviors–defined as an individual’s efforts to develop and maintain professional relationships with others who can potentially assist them in their career or work.
For some students (and lawyers), “networking” with a clear purpose of strengthening support for the student’s professional goals feels inauthentic, impure, and perhaps even dirty. To avoid this negative connotation, this Article uses “building a tent of professional relationships who support the student and trust the student to do the work of a lawyer.” This framing, in the author’s experience, fits within students’ natural understanding of the importance of social support for each person, including the student, and feels authentic and less instrumental to students.
Even though the skill of building a tent of professional relationships is so foundational to a student’s success in the profession, as of January 2022, only six of the 199 ABA-accredited law schools had adopted a learning outcome requiring this important skill. Villanova University School of Law has the strongest learning outcomes on building a tent of professional relationships. For example, Villanova’s Learning Outcome 6 includes: “Graduates will possess competency to communicate and build professional relationships, especially across cultural differences,” and Learning Outcome 8 states that “Graduates will possess competency in professional networking.”
