The Transformation of Corporate Clients Around New Purposes, Values, Stakeholders, and Work Modes: What Is Happening and What This Means for Our Externships

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Our externship students in corporate counsel (for-profit and nonprofit) and law firm placements are encountering business/organizational clients that are transforming, in many cases quickly and permanently, around conscious priorities of: purpose over profits; stakeholders beyond shareholders; employee values and freedoms; flexible workplaces and open cultures; generation-based values; consumer rights and protections; antiracism; social justice; environmental impact; and sustainability. Close observers agree that, due to lasting generational forces, we may be on new ground as to what a corporation is, and what it exists to do and for whom. Many corporations are responding in new ways to a web of complex forces that require them to do much more than serve shareholders and profits. This has led to an elevated leadership role for counsel on all of these priorities, and to job descriptions requiring counsel to be multi-disciplined, innovative, adaptive, culturally competent, social impact-minded, and tech-savvy. All the while, corporations are creating a new ecosystem of work-from-anywhere employees, and reimagining what it means to work, go to work, and earn a living.

In the spirit of embracing our externship faculty community in 2022, this is a great moment to explore together what is happening, from all our perspectives and experiences in the field. To ensure we are relevant, this is a great moment to share what client transformation means for our students and their careers; our externship goals, structures, and courses; our placement selections; and our client-centered practice lessons. Lest we forget, law schools are pipelining students into the very leadership, strategic, ethical functions of corporate clients that are defining this transformation. Our opportunity to nurture these leaders is here!