We posit that the term “practice-readiness” begs a narrow construction that limits our understanding of essential learning outcomes. We suggest that legal educators should seek to ensure that students are “prepared for the profession” rather than simply “prepared for practice.” The distinction is more than semantic. The term “prepared for practice” risks communicating a fundamental misunderstanding about the goals of experiential education, because it often invokes simply the transfer of technical skills necessary to perform as a practicing lawyer. Establishing as a goal ensuring that our students are “prepared for the profession” not only embraces the “whole lawyer”, it connects with established learning theory that undergirds clinical teaching methods, and thus includes conscious
engagement with the professional identity formation that is traditionally a significant component of clinical pedagogy.
With the call to legal education reform, the focus has shifted to the need for experiential education. But in supporting and advancing this “new normal”, efforts must be made to ensure that legal educators embrace the necessity of a pedagogy that engages and reflects upon professional identity formation, including, for example, values, norms, ethics-in-context and personal/professional autonomy and accountability. Because engagement with professional identity formation should not wait for (or be exclusively dependent upon) traditionally experiential elements of the curriculum, clinicians can and should lead the way in educating students and faculty in this regard.