Transactional law clinics, focused on teaching business law and skills, provide a unique lens for rethinking lawyers’ roles during these times of intense changes in legal markets, declining law school enrollments, and a down market for law graduates. This concurrent session will explore the role of leadership coaching (also known as executive coaching), a personalized form of professional and personal development, which helps leaders weather storms, and embrace new knowledge and transformation. Indeed, leadership coaching has been available to some graduate business school students as a core part of their professional development and is widely used as a professional development tool in corporations, nonprofit organizations, and government. As clinicians consider their leadership roles in the new normal of legal education, leadership coaching is a palpable opportunity.
This session will explore: 1) basic principles of leadership coaching and 2) why leadership coaching is useful to law students, graduates, and lawyers undergoing change and uncertain markets. Using focused powerful questions, participants will witness a coaching conversation and will consider: What can law schools learn about coaching from business schools? Why should law schools make leadership a core part of the curriculum? What does it mean to be a leader? How can leadership coaches support emerging leaders?