The Formation of Professional Identity: The Path from Student to Lawyer

Becoming a lawyer is about much more than acquiring knowledge and technique. As law students learn the law and acquire some basic skills, they are also inevitably forming a deep sense of themselves in their new roles as lawyers. That sense of self – the student’s nascent professional identity – needs to take a particular form if the students are to fulfil the public purposes of lawyers and find deep meaning and satisfaction in their work. In this book, Professors Patrick Longan, Daisy Floyd, and Timothy Floyd combine what they have learned in many years of teaching and research concerning the lawyer’s professional identity with lessons derived from legal ethics, moral psychology, and moral philosophy. They describe in depth the six virtues that every lawyer needs as part of his or her professional identity, and they explore both the obstacles to acquiring and deploying those virtues and strategies for overcoming those impediments. The result is a straightforward guide for law students on how to cultivate a professional identity that will allow them to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others and to flourish as individuals.

Patrick Emery Longan is William Augustus Bootle Chair in Ethics and Professionalism in the Practice of Law at the Mercer University School of Law and Director of the Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism. Professor Longan is a graduate of Washington University, the University of Sussex, and the University of Chicago Law School. Professor Longan’s work relating to professionalism and professional identity has been recognized by his receipt of the 2005 National Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching Professionalism and by the Mercer Law School’s receipt of the 2014 E. Smythe Gambrell Professionalism Award.

Daisy Hurst Floyd is University Professor of Law and Ethical Formation at Mercer University School of Law, where she served as Dean from 2004 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2017. Her teaching and research interests include Ethics, Legal Education, Civil Procedure, and Evidence. She has a particular interest in the ways in which higher education shapes students’ ethical development and in cross-disciplinary collaborations. Professor Floyd was named a Carnegie Scholar by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 2001 in support of her research on the development of professional identity among American law students. She received her BA and MA from Emory University and her JD from the University of Georgia School of Law.

Timothy W. Floyd is Tommy Malone Distinguished Chair in Trial Advocacy and Director of Experiential Education at Mercer University School of Law. In addition to supervising clinical and externship programs, he has taught courses in legal ethics, criminal law, civil procedure, legal skills, law and religion, and human rights. He has published two books and is the author of numerous articles in the area of legal ethics, law and religion, criminal law, and the death penalty. While teaching at several law schools in his career, he has represented persons facing the death penalty and worked to insure access to justice for all in civil cases. He received his BA and MA from Emory University and his JD from the University of Georgia.