Faculty Retreat – and Legal Education in the 21st Century

The Regent Law faculty recently gathered for our annual faculty retreat. As always, we shared food and camaraderie. This is a group of men and women who greatly respect each other—and really like each other!

We also put some challenging and creative thinking into an important topic: moral and professional formation.

These are interesting days for legal education. More than I can ever remember, the legal academy has become quite introspective; we are evaluating everything we do and asking if we can do better. Influential in this evaluation has been the Carnegie Foundation’s release in 2007 of Educating Lawyers, a comprehensive review and critique of legal education in America.

Carnegie concluded that American law schools do one thing really well: teaching legal doctrine and analysis. But it argued that doctrine and analysis are not enough. It urged schools to spend much more time training students in (a) practical lawyering skills and in (b) moral and professional identity. Regarding the latter, Carnegie insisted that students must be challenged to practice law with integrity, compassion, respectfulness, and civility. Similarly, students must be challenged to view their role as a peacemaker, problem-solver, and seeker of justice—not just as a zealous advocate or hired gun. It called on schools to take on the role of moral and professional formation of their students.

Regent faculty reaction: Amen! The very mission of this school is to train lawyers who are not only excellent, but men and women of integrity, honor, and courage. Men and women who view law as a high calling to serve others.

Part of the faculty retreat was spent talking about the ways we already engage in moral and professional formation of our students. Here are just a few of many examples:

• Dean Gantt’s teaching on the moral counseling explicitly permitted by the rules of professional responsibility
• Dean Gantt’s and Professor Oates’ philosophy of lawyering project in professional responsibility
• Professor Madison’s book and class materials requiring students to grapple with the moral challenges that arise in a litigation practice
• Professor McKee’s ongoing personal mentorship in professionalism for students in our litigation clinic
• Annual student-faculty retreat on what it means—practically—to be a Christian lawyer
• Daily devotions exploring among other things how a lawyer can display the character of Jesus Christ

The faculty also discussed how we can do this moral and professional formation even better and in a more systematic way. We are devoting two additional meetings to the topic this spring, one related to teaching and the other to our scholarship.

The 21st century legal world has realized that engaging students’ minds is not enough. We must also engage students’ hearts. This engagement is a task for which Regent University School of Law is uniquely equipped.