UND Law student Santana Royer quoted in ABA Journal article discussing Professional Foundations

Document Type

News Article

Publication Date

7-9-2016

Campus Unit

School of Law

Abstract

UND Law 2L student Santana Royer is quoted in an article published in the September 2016 issue of the ABA Journal, which discusses the growing movement for law schools to incorporate a curricular focus on the formation of their students’ professional identity.

Royer is quoted in the portion of the article that discusses the UND School of Law’s innovative, team-taught first-year course Professional Foundations (“ProfFound”), which was first offered in Spring 2014. Originally developed by the inaugural course coordinators Professors Patti Alleva and Michael McGinniss with input from a team consisting of numerous members of the faculty, ProfFound explicitly asks students to engage in studied self-reflection about twelve core professional qualities of a “good lawyer,” including attributes such as adaptability, diligence, courage, honesty, humility, integrity, loyalty, and patience. The course explores these qualities through life-like lawyering scenarios that implicate their meaning and application, and ask students to confront the questions “What would I do or how would I feel as a lawyer dealing with those issues in these particular situations?” ProfFound is primarily designed to provide students with intentional, interactive opportunities to either work in role or to discuss realistic lawyering situations where they must consider (1) first, what it means to act as a fiduciary on someone else’s behalf and (2) second, within that context, what it means to square personal and professional values. From these main course goals flow two subsidiary goals of helping students to envision their own career paths, and then of demonstrating, through group work, the power and importance of collaborative skills and idea-sharing in professional settings.

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