3.2 Professional Identity Formation
Gemma Smyth; Tania Sleman; and Yasmina Aldohan Aboudaba
Professional Identity Formation
One of the benefits of externships and clinics is that students are typically exposed to a wide range of lawyers and other legal professionals. Many students enter law placements assuming that lawyers will be reminiscent of those in “Suits” or “Law & Order”. In reality, lawyers range widely in their areas of interest, personality traits, strengths, and approach to practice.
As discussed earlier, clinics and externships present many opportunities to learn substantive law, problem solving, and other knowledge and skills “on the ground”. There is also ample opportunity to learn about professional identity through observation, discussion, experimentation, emulation, and other means.
Empathy as a Key Lawyering Skill
“Before my externship, I viewed lawyers as predominantly money-hungry people. I also saw them as elitists, who were unable to relate or create meaningful relationships with people who existed outside of their socio-economic circles. Being in law school has challenged my thinking, however, engaging in my externship placement has completely dismantled my belief systems regarding lawyers’ attitudes. I have learned that not only does empathy exist in the legal profession, but that it is an essential part of lawyering.
In my placement, I have seen lawyers make clients their coffee, get them water, bring them pillows to prop up their backs for added support, and ground them when they become emotional by sharing encouraging words. During a recent hearing, a client began crying. The lawyer reached over and quickly rubbed the client’s back, showing care, concern, and support all while giving her closing remarks. Although no words were exchanged between the lawyer and the client, the client seemed to be comforted by the lawyer’s gesture and began to calm down.
In law school, I have been taught the importance of academic success, professionalism, and the preservation of one’s reputation. In my experience, however, the topic of empathy has not been brought up when discussing the practice of lawyering, formally or informally. But empathy is a skill that is required for lawyers to be successful in their practice. Clients are people with complex issues and emotions, who come to lawyers to obtain support. For lawyers to be able to assist effectively they must “stand in the shoes” of the other person. This allows lawyers to translate the point of view of their clients when advocating for them. The successful outcomes the Clinic wins for clients signifies that effective advocacy is in part due to the empathy they extend to their clients.”
What is professional identity?
Before diving into professional identity, we can think about identity more generally. Many theorists have engaged with construction of identit(ies), drawing a complex picture of the shifting and highly contextual nature of identity.
James Paul Gee writes about the complex and changing nature of identity and what “kind of person” we might be in certain times and places:
“When any human being acts and interacts in a given context, others recognize that person as acting and interacting as a certain “kind of person” or even as several different “kinds” at once… A person might be recognized as being a certain kind of radical feminist, homeless person, overly macho male, “yuppie,” street gang member, community activist, academic, kindergarten teacher, “at risk” student, and so on and so forth, through countless possibilities. The “kind of person” one is recognized as “being,” at a given time and place, can change from moment to moment in the interaction, can change from context to context, and, of course, can be ambiguous or unstable. Being recognized as a certain “kind of person,” in a given context, is what I mean here by “identity.” In this sense of the term, all people have multiple identities connected not to their “internal states” but to their performances in society. This is not to deny that each of us has what we might call a “core identity” that holds more uniformly, for ourselves and others, across contexts… Different societies, and different historical periods, have tended to foreground one or the other of these perspectives on identity… In a rough way, Western society has moved historically from foregrounding the first perspective (we are what we are primarily because of our “natures”), through the second (we are what we are primarily because of the positions we occupy in society), to the third (we are what we are primarily because of our individual accomplishments as they are interactionally recognized by others). The fourth perspective (we are what we are because of the experiences we have had within certain sorts of “affinity groups”) is, I argue here, gaining prominence in the “new capitalism”… It is crucial to realize that these four perspectives are not separate from each other… Rather than discrete categories, they are ways to focus our attention on different aspects of how identities are formed and sustained. Another way to put the matter is this: They are four ways to formulate questions about how identity is functioning for a specific person (child or adult) in a given context or across a set of different contexts. Yet another way to put the matter is this: They are four strands that may very well all be present and woven together as a given person acts within a given context. Nonetheless, we can still ask, for a given time and place, which strand or strands predominate and why.” (“Identity as an Analytic Lens for Research in Education” (2000-2001) 25 Review of Research in Education 99 at 99).
“The fact is, our identities are like icebergs. The large bulk of them lies invisible to us below the surface of consciousness, while only a small part of them are perceptible to our conscious minds. Sociologists refer to the nonconscious bulk of identity as ‘habitus’, a medical term imported into sociological usage by Pierre Bourdieu (1990, 1997). According to the standard definition by Loic Wacquant, habitus is constituted by ‘cognitive and corporeal schemata of perception, appreciation and action that agents engage in their practice’ (1990; 401)…. Formal identifying schemes, while simple to apply objectively, often fail to capture the subjective reality of identities. Asking individuals to identify themselves reveals conscious identity, which is open to agentic manipulation. This is important… But it is equally important to remember that the bulk of identity lives below the level of consciousness… The invisibility of habitus and its resistance to conscious manipulation create a problem for people working to alter their identities-such as students at professional schools…. “
Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about the conflict that occurs when we take on roles that are closer to or further from our perception and experience of self. For Goffman, humans are constantly taking on performative roles to control how others view them. This will always require presenting certain parts of one’s self and hiding or de-emphasizing others – as Goffman called it, “impression management.”
Both Gee and Goffman’s ideas are highly relevant to a professional environment. Goffman would argue that humans adapt to a professional environment in certain ways, but that no one presents all of themselves in every situation, including in the workplace. In short, people are always performing. However, the degree to which a student or lawyer feels they must “perform” and manage their public impression has significant impacts on the congruency between their personal and professional identities.
A work informed placement will ask students to reflect on themselves and their relationship to a burgeoning professional identity. Reflective questions (such as those found throughout this text) might require digging into ideas that are – as Costello notes – both open to manipulation and also below conscious understanding. Entering a placement in a professional role requires a significant shift in a student’s identity. Indeed, many students report that only a short time in law school alters how they think about the world: a dangerous crack in a sidewalk raises questions of municipal law and limitation periods; whether to intervene in a bar fight leads to a complicated analysis of risk and liability. This new way of thinking is one step in the path to professional identity formation.
However, beginning to “think like a lawyer” is often insufficient in being accepted and acknowledged as a “lawyer”. Again, Costello writes:
“Formally, all a student need to is to acquire a professional identity is graduate from the appropriate professional school and pass any required certifying exam. Being formally certified… is still insufficient for acceptance by employers, peers, and clients…. A certified professional school graduate who cannot ‘walk the walk and talk the talk’ will not seem like a true professional to others and will not be successful. Consider whether you would be likely to return to a therapist who giggled during your confession of sexual difficulties… Professional labor requires… a suitable, subjectively internalized professional identity…. Individual agency in working to become a successful professional is limited by structural forces that are internalized in the form of habitus… Agency is real and important, although constrained, and many students succeed despite the structural forces arrayed against them. Moreover, identities are not uniform and there is a great deal of individual variation in how people experience their genders, religious identities, ethnicities, and the like, and thus in how their identities will interact with a new professional identity.”
In a qualitative study of law students’ professional identity formation, Professor John Bliss builds on Goffman’s work by interviewing students going through the job search process during law school:
“Among the law students interviewed for this study, experiences of professional identity varied strongly by students’ job-decision paths during law school. Students who pursued public-interest careers generally maintained a central conception of lawyer identity, which often overlapped with political, racial, religious, and gender roles. In contrast, students who pursued positions in large firms tended to describe substantial distancing from professional identity in their 2L interviews. For students who had initially stated a preference for positions in the public-interest sector but later decided to pursue large firms, this distancing was often accompanied by a distressing sense of temporariness and fraudulence in their professional identities. This raises questions as to whether we can—and whether we should—foster a more integrated conception of professional identity among new corporate lawyers.”
In an externship placement, students might be working in a context that is very closely aligned to their personal identit(ties), including one’s burgeoning professional identity. However, students might also have moments (or many moments) where their personal and professional identities feel incoherent and conflicting. Conversely, some students who experience law school as alienating to their identities might find support in an externship context.
Finding Purpose and Meaning at Work
“Prior coming to law school, I had the experience of working with a vulnerable population – low-income individuals who struggled with finding affordable housing. I had a purpose of why I applied to law school and wanted to become a lawyer. It was to help people. Those feelings got lost in the classroom. This experiential learning opportunity allowed me to work with an organization outside of the University, working on a project that will impact future generations and has true meaning. It provided opportunities for mentorship, it allowed for the creation of relationships and re-iterated how important it is to maintain those relationships. It is not about winning or losing. It is about helping someone on their worst day.
Through this opportunity, my imposter syndrome began to slowly dissipate. This became the most valuable part of my education as I become confident in my skills, a valuable meaning was brought to my education, a new profound purpose. This opportunity showed a different area of law where it was shown how we can use our skills. Experiential learning also gives students the choice to determine how they want to experience working with the law. It engages students and cultivates their passion. This type of work helps students reconnect with their initial inspirations – reminding them why they entered law in the first place. This is why the experiential learning opportunities are imperative to professional identity formation. It helps students realize their potential and re-discover what ignites their inspirations. It helps address the imposter syndrome and gives a new meaning to their education and their future careers in law.”
Entering a Placement as a Mature Student
“One of the benefits of gaining work and life experience between my first stint at university and my time at law school is that I have a firm understanding of my own moral compass. As I am sure is true for most, much of my early years in my career was about figuring out personal boundaries for work/life balance and what feels acceptable for me as an employee and a person. Having a sense of self and the confidence that comes with this type of experience is so important to the formation of professional identity. I often wonder how different my legal career path would have been if I had gone to law school at the age of 23 instead of 33. At my core, I was the same person then that I am now in terms of values, morals, and work ethic – but I would have not had the benefit of experience understanding of what makes a positive work environment to rely on during the job search process. I also do not think that I would have had the same understanding of the formation of my professional identity and its importance and relation to connections with colleagues or other professionals.
Learning in place is a unique opportunity to begin (or continue) to shape a professional identity within the “safety” of an internship program and its corresponding feedback on professionalism, communication and other competencies from the placement supervisor and professor.”
Access to Justice In Action
“When I came to law school, I really wanted to help people. I had spent a good portion of my life volunteering, particularly with children and youth, and I was looking specifically for ways to help with this demographic. When I learned more about the ways our legal system has specifically been ignoring the rights of Indigenous parents and children, I was heartbroken. I am very thankful for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, and the focus here on child welfare. But it was not enough for me to just learn about this, as these calls to action still have a long way to go before they are implemented. Being able to spend the last semester working on something that will hopefully help families going forward was such an amazing experience. I got to learn and see first-hand the work that lawyers are doing to close the access to justice gap for Indigenous families and children. I also got to be involved in creating resources that these families can use in the future; I get to know that what I did is going to have an impact on real people. As students, we are constantly told about the access to justice crisis, but there are not too many ways to get involved while in law school. An externship like this is one way that we can help before we graduate and begin practicing law. I genuinely feel like I was able to do something meaningful, and it reminds me of why I wanted to practice law and be in law school in the first place.”
It is important to remember that one’s personal identity and its relationship to professional identity can and will shift over a lifetime. We may become parents, we will become disabled, we will deal with loss and grief, success and failures. All these mean that self-exploration and growth is not a one-time event but a lifetime of experience.
Reflection Questions
- Students begin forming professional identity in their earliest days of law school (and perhaps before). What assumptions and conceptions did you have about being a lawyer? Thus far, have those ideas changed?
- Have you experienced any moments of professional identity congruence or dissonance in your placement thus far? What messages do you receive about professional identity that resonate with who you are why you wanted to be a lawyer?
