Exploring Lawyering Process Maps as a Tool to Promote Professional Identity Formation and Integrate Clinical Lessons

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Session Type: Lightning Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: Marriott St. Louis Grand

Room: Landmark 3

Floor: Ground Floor, Conference Plaza

Presenters will share a lawyering process map developed in a clinic devoted to deep exploration of client relational skills in a litigation setting. The map serves as a tool that facilitates visualizing stages in the lawyer-client relationship and key points in case trajectory. It provides a location to graph attorney work product, data, observations and experiences occurring throughout the representation. The map provides orientation points for classroom discussion devoted to the social location of the lawyer and client; diversity, equity and inclusion; cultural competence; professional identity formation; and professional responsibility. Clinical faculty can also link commonly used clinical strategies, such as methodological doubt and belief; the Five Habits; implicit bias material; and storytelling exercises, to key moments in case development. Presenters will share versions of the map used in two clinical settings–Domestic Violence and Prisoner Reentry and Child Support–as well as student assignments associated with the map. Attendees will be invited to consider how the map might be revised to suit other clinical settings or pedagogical objectives. With new emphasis on professional identity formation opportunities in law school, the map has been useful in identifying lawyer characteristics and values that are critical to success in practices where social justice, racial and structural equity, access to courts, and human dignity are core priorities. This opportunity provides a useful counterpoint to professional identity formation conversations that are often driven by the well-developed empirical and descriptive studies of professional values relevant to private firm and government practice settings.