Developing Your Professional Identity: Creating Your Inner Lawyer - Paperback

by E. Scott Fruehwald (Author)

Second Edition, 2020. Who will I be as a lawyer? This is the most important question any law student can ask. Yet, in traditional legal education, this question rarely comes up. The purpose of this book is to change this.Professional identity is a lawyer's personal legal morality, values, decision-making process, and self-consciousness in relation to the practices of the legal profession (legal culture). It provides the framework that a lawyer uses to make all a lawyer's decisions. This book takes a variety of approaches to help you develop your professional identity. Chapter One asks you to take a close look at yourself by asking questions about your childhood, your college years, and who you are today. It is important to know who you are before you can fit into a profession. Chapters Two (Becoming a Self-Regulated Learner), Six (Overcoming Cognitive Biases), Seven (Behavioral Legal Ethics), and Eight (Attorney Well-Being) give you the tools you will need to develop your professional identity. Chapter Two introduces you to "practical wisdom," an important approach to understanding and solving ethical problems. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 deal with professional identity within certain topics-the attorney-client relationship, the lawyer and society, and attorney advertising and solicitation of clients. Chapter Nine presents the legal profession's and society's views on lawyers and the legal profession. Chapter Ten focuses on your role as a lawyer. It asks you what area of law you want to practice, how you will deal with clients, your place in the legal profession, standards of civility in the legal profession, and working with subordinates. Finally, Chapter Eleven contains a variety of extended problems to help you further develop your professional identity. The revised edition adds a chapter on behavioral legal ethics, focusing on ethical blindness.

Author Biography

Professor Scott Fruehwald has taught at the law schools of the University of Alabama, Roger Williams University, and Hofstra University. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Louisville School of Law, where he was editor in chief of the Law Review. He also has an S.J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York. He has published articles on law and behavioral biology, conflicts of law, federalism, and legal education. His book, Choice of Law for American Courts: A Multilateralist Method, received Hofstra University's Stessin Prize for Outstanding Scholarship in 2002. He has also written an introduction to law book, Think Like a Lawyer: Legal Reasoning for Law Students and Business Professionals (2013).