Foundations for Practice: The Whole Lawyer and the Character Quotient

Gerkman, Alli; Cornett, Logan

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2823835

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…For example, a recent survey of competency expectations for associate development indicates that many law firms expect their associate lawyers to develop skills in three general areas: traditional legal and communication skills, character traits and relationship skills, and a client-focused orientation [ 23 ]. Similarly, a large, multiyear survey of lawyers throughout the U.S. revealed that most believe that character traits such as integrity, trustworthiness, and conscientiousness are of primary importance for lawyers to succeed early in their careers, more so than their ability to generate business [ 24 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

People, Professionals, and Profit Centers: The Connection between Lawyer Well-Being and Employer Values

Krill¹,

Degeneffe

Ochocki

et al. 2022

Behavioral Sciences

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Concerns about the well-being of lawyers are rising against the backdrop of a transforming legal profession, one which many observe to be operating more like a business in recent decades. However, aspects of this change, such as lawyers perceiving that their employers value financial performance and productivity above all else, could be associated with unhealthy work practices detrimental to lawyer well-being. The objective of the present study was to determine whether the perceived values of employers were differentially associated with lawyer well-being, stress, and work overcommitment. To this end, 1959 participants from a random sample of attorneys completed a survey designed to assess well-being. Participants were separated into one of three groups based on what they perceived their employer to value most about them: (1) Professionalism/Individual (professionalism and skills), (2) Financial Worth/Availability (revenue generation and availability), and (3) No Value/No Feedback (feeling unvalued or lacking feedback) and compared on measures of mental and physical health (SF-12), stress (Perceived Stress Scale), and work over commitment (Effort–Reward Imbalance Questionnaire). MANOVA results indicated that mental health, stress, and work overcommitment significantly differed between groups in the following rank order: Professionalism/Individual > Financial Worth/Availability > No Value/No Feedback. Overall, our findings paint a compelling picture of a health hierarchy within legal work environments, one that appears to be linked to employer values.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

People, Professionals, and Profit Centers: The Connection between Lawyer Well-Being and Employer Values

Krill¹,

Degeneffe

Ochocki

et al. 2022

Behavioral Sciences

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“…14 In its survey of 24,000 lawyers, the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) found that many professional judgment skills are ranked above technical competence in importance. 15 As shown in Table 1.1, attorneys consider the abilities to exercise independent judgment and make decisions under pressure to be slightly more important than substantive legal knowledge and the ability to research the law. The skills of decisiveness and big-picture thinking, moreover, are regarded as substantially more important than expertise in a particular area of law.…”

Section: Importance Of Professional Judgmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Principles and Challenges

Kiser¹

2023

Professional Judgment for Lawyers

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Sound judgment is a universally admired but curiously elusive skill. Attorneys, judges, and clients extol the virtues of sound judgment, but they hesitate when asked to define it, describe how it is developed, and identify who consistently displays it. 1 The popular quip that "good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment" reflects our confusion and unease about the origins, elements, and development of sound judgment. 2 The quip is neither instructive nor genuinely funny because we all know people whose judgment did not improve with experience, and, in law practices and fiduciary relationships, the consequences of bad judgment are far too severe to allow haphazard, trial-and-error training. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in fact, has expressed concern that the development of professional judgment in law has been "abandoned to chance" and "the vagaries of curricular accident." 3 The development of sound judgment eludes many people because they cannot conceptualize it as a body of knowledge and a set of practices to be applied prospectively to multiple problems. Instead, they regard sound judgment as a skill that can only be understood retrospectively and singularly. Unless a decision has already resulted in an advantageous outcome, they cannot discern the attitudes, elements, and processes that demarcate sound judgment. In their view, sound judgment is defined by outcomes and has no characteristics independent of those outcomes. This view reflects a tautology -sound judgment means a good outcome and a good outcome means sound judgment -that hinders a thoughtful analysis of the perspectives, habits, and methods that promote sound judgment. Good outcomes, in reality, are not always preceded by sound judgment, and sound judgment does not invariably result in good outcomes. 4 And when we focus on a specific decision that apparently produced an advantageous result in a single event, we fail to identify principles and practices that have a broader application in the exercise of judgment. By concentrating on single episodes of sound judgment, we contribute to decision-making folklore but fail to build a discipline of decision making.

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“…The concept of competency goes back centuries and millennia. Modern professions, such as teaching [243], medical [100], and legal [111], have used competency and have a well-developed understanding of it. These are discussed in detail in Section 3.…”

Section: Meaning Of Competencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Professional accreditation has existed for more than a century in disciplines such as business [2], law [111] medicine [154], and teaching [243]. Accreditation informs the public that an entity (a program, a school, or an institution) has satisfied certain quality assurance expectations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward Competency-Based Professional Accreditation in Computing

Raj

Impagliazzo

Aly

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the 2022 Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

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Program accreditation in medical or religious professions has existed since the 1800s while accreditation of business and engineering programs started in the early twentieth century. With this long history, these disciplines have focused on ensuring the competence of their graduates, as modern society demands appropriate expertise from doctors and engineers before letting them practice their profession. In computing, however, professional accreditation started in the last decades of the twentieth century only after computer science, informatics, and information systems programs became widespread. At the same time, although competency-based learning has existed for centuries, its growth in computing is relatively new, resulting from recent curricular reports such as Computing Curricula 2020, which have defined competency comprising knowledge, skills, and dispositions. In addition, demands are being placed on university programs to ensure their graduates are ready for entering and sustaining employment in the computing profession.This work explores the role of accreditation in the formation and development of professional competency in non-computing disciplines worldwide, building on this understanding to see how computing accreditation bodies could play a similar role in computing. This work explores the role of accreditation in the formation and development of professional competency in non-computing disciplines worldwide, building on this understanding to see how computing accreditation bodies could play a similar role in computing. Its recommendations are to incorporate competencies in all computing programs and future curricular guidelines; create

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Foundations for Practice: The Whole Lawyer and the Character Quotient

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

People, Professionals, and Profit Centers: The Connection between Lawyer Well-Being and Employer Values

People, Professionals, and Profit Centers: The Connection between Lawyer Well-Being and Employer Values

Principles and Challenges

Toward Competency-Based Professional Accreditation in Computing

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