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MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR – Winter, 2025

Dear AALS Leadership Section Members:

It hardly seems possible that I am completing my year as Chair of the Section on Leadership.  It has been a great experience interacting with so many of you over the course of the year.  The ideas all of you have shared in our sessions and by email have been so useful—even inspirational at times.  Thanks so much for your many contributions and collaborations this year.  I will write about only a few here.

I look forward to continuing to work with next year’s leadership team as we transition into the 2026 membership year.  Although our elections will not formally take place until the AALS annual meeting in January, the section’s Nominations Committee—chaired by April Barton (a former section Chair) with support from fellow section Executive Committee members Tania Luma (our Chair-Elect) and Aric Short (our Secretary)—has done a masterful job organizing our Executive Committee elections in accordance with our new bylaws, approved by the AALS in the spring.

Since I last wrote, the section has offered a number of programs.  Following the March webinar on Law Students Learning to Lead through Non-Profit Board Service (about which I wrote in the spring), our webinar series continued with programs in May (Advancing Lawyer Leadership: Why Scholarship Matters, organized and hosted by Executive Committee member Leah Teague), September (Adaptive Leadership Theory & Rule of Law as Resources in Challenging Times for Law & Legal Education, organized and hosted by Tania Luma), and November (Leadership Development and Professional Responsibility, hosted by Executive Committee member Kenneth Townsend).  These forums continue to bring thoughtful, engaged ideas to the fore.

In July, in lieu of an additional webinar over the summer, Leah Teague organized and coordinated programming at the 2025 annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS).  The discussion group on Leadership Development to Equip Lawyers for Success, Service, and Significance (moderated by Leah Teague) was quite lively.  Although I had to miss them due to conflicts with other programs, I understand that the panel presentation on Teaching Civility and Civil Discourse as Leadership Development (also moderated by Leah) and the Demonstration of Professional Identity Formation Exercises (moderated by section member Jerry Organ) also stimulated much productive thought.  Thanks so much, Leah for these opportunities to share wisdom.  I hope we can organize a few programs for the 2026 SEALS annual meeting.

As I noted in my last newsletter message to you back in the spring, the Section on Leadership exists to support and promote your work on leading in and through law.  Our role as legal educators and staff members offers us the opportunity to impact current and future law leadership (through teaching, scholarship, and service) in meaningful ways at a time when it seems critical to so many of us.  Our AALS annual meeting program, Impact, Excellence, Resilience, and Professional Integrity: Educating Lawyers as Leaders, scheduled for Thursday, January 8 from 2:35 pm – 3:50 pm) focuses in on some of the related opportunities and challenges.  In a discussion moderated by Tania Luma, our invited guests—the American Bar Association’s Immediate Past President (Bill Bay), the AALS’s current President (Austen Parrish), and two Fifth Circuit U.S. appellate court judges (James Graves and Corey Wilson)—will tackle the education of principled lawyer leaders in present times. 

Please also note that our section business meeting is that morning (Thursday morning) from 7:30 am to 8:00 am.  Our nominations committee has finalized a great set of nominees for election at the meeting.  You should have received a separate communication on the elections through the listserv.  If not, please contact me or another member of the section’s executive committee, and we will get that to you (and help to track down why you may not have received the initial message).

In addition, we are privileged to cosponsor a program at the 2026 AALS annual meeting (Doing Well-Being Without Losing Your Mind: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Law Student, Faculty, and Staff Well-Being) with the Section on Balance & Well-Being in Legal Education.  That program is scheduled for 1:00 pm to 2:15 pm on Wednesday, January 7.  As a wellness advocate and practitioner, I was grateful for the reach-out from the leadership of the Section on Balance and Well-Being requesting our support for this program.

Please remember that you can access significant amounts of information about the section (and about other matters relevant to section members) on the section’s webpage on the AALS website.  For example, as many of you prepare for a new semester of teaching, I will take the opportunity to remind you that our section’s webpage offers access to syllabi for leadership courses, upcoming and past (recorded) webinars hosted by the section, and prior editions of this newsletter. The section’s webpage also includes a link to our section’s Bylaws and a subpage listing the names of and contact information for members of the section’s leadership. We do hope you will continue to reach out to us with your ideas for programming and resources. 

I feel truly privileged to have had the opportunity to lead the Section on Leadership this past year.  The journey has been rewarding, and I am inspired to continue it with all of you into and through the 2026 AALS membership year.  In the interim, enjoy the holiday season.  I hope to see many of you in New Orleans in January.

Best regards,

Joan

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Upcoming Events: AALS 2026 annual meeting

Main program: Impact, Excellence, Resilience, and Professional Integrity: Educating Lawyers as Leaders

Thursday, January 8, 2026, 2:35 PM – 3:50 PM Hilton New Orleans Riverside, First Floor, Grand Salon Section 3

Questions recently have been raised about the integrity of lawyers, judges, and legal institutions. The legal profession is tasked with ensuring the integrity of its members and the stability of legal institutions, even in the face of growing partisanship, declining civility, and low levels of social trust. What does principled leadership look like in contexts of uncertainty, where legislative actions, executive orders, and judicial opinions continually raise new questions about free speech, the rule of law, and the nature of democratic legitimacy? This session explores from several perspectives how law schools can educate lawyer leaders in the current, dynamic environment.

Session Speakers:
William Bay, Thompson Coburn LLP:
James E. Graves, Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit;
Austen L. Parrish, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Cory T. Wilson, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Moderator: Tania Luma, Loyola University Chicago School of Law


Cosponsoring with the Section on Balance & Well-Being in Legal Education:

Doing Well-Being Without Losing Your Mind: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Law Student, Faculty, and Staff Well-Being

Wednesday, January 7, 2026,  1:00 pm to 2:15 pm. Location: Hilton New Orleans Riverside, First Floor, Grand Salon Section 3.

As a wellness advocate and practitioner, I was grateful for the reach-out from the leadership of the Section on Balance and Well-Being requesting our support for this program.


Section on Leadership Business Meeting

Thursday, January 8, 7:30 – 8:00 am Location: Hilton New Orleans Riverside, Third Floor, Durham Room

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Guest Column: Leading Across Cultures: What International Students Teach Us About Law and Leadership

By: Professor Kathleen Elliott Vinson, Suffolk University Law School

In January of 2021, the University of Illinois College of Law launched its Leadership Project, a leadership development program for our students. In Leadership is about relationships, including listening, adapting, and learning from others. This September, I had the privilege to spend two weeks in Finland, teaching Global Leadership for Lawyers at Turku Law School, where I feel I learned just as much as my students. The class of fifteen students included students from Finland as well as numerous exchange students, representing six different countries: Finland, Germany, France, China, Czech Republic, and Taiwan (seven countries if you count the professor was from the United States). Students worked in groups of three; each group had students from different countries sharing their different perspectives, experiences, and cultures. Conversations, self-reflections, and collaborations about leading self, leading others, and leading change, challenged all of us in the class to think more deeply about what it means to lead in a global profession. We reconsidered our assumptions about global leadership as we explored similarities and differences through a comparative lens. For example, some students spoke of cultures rooted in hierarchy and competition, while others described cultures that prioritized collaboration and consensus. Some shared cultural values that emphasized time and task completion while others prioritized relationship building and well-being (having the course in Finland, we discussed why Finland is ranked the happiest country in the world). We also examined how culture can affect communication, conflict styles, and difficult conversations.

Through diagnostics, journals, case studies, group presentations, and a final reflection paper, students learned a great deal about themselves, their own culture, other cultures, and how it all affects leadership. By sharing their experiences across cultures, the course enhanced their leadership skills and their cultural competence. The experience illustrated how cultural competence is at the heart of leadership education, not an optional part of it. The experience highlighted the pedagogical value of situating leadership education within a transnational context instead of in the abstract, where students bring authentic engagement and varied perspectives to discussions of law and leadership. While I had taught internationally before, I had never had so many students from different countries in one class together, which really enriched the cross-cultural dialogue. Students reflected that after the course, they viewed leadership in a new way and felt more prepared and motivated to take on new challenges to lead in a complex, global world. They noted that the lessons and tools they learned in the course would help them in their studies, the legal profession, and their life in the future.

This course almost did not happen, which reminds me of another leadership lesson I learned from this experience regarding growth v. fixed mindset, grit, and resilience. In the course, students completed a closed door/open door exercise where they reflected on a prior setback or closed door they had experienced and then discussed how another door opened. It helped students reframe how they viewed failure and increased their appreciation for where they are now. Well, now I will share my closed door/open door experience regarding this course. I was thrilled to be placed on the Fulbright Specialist roster and had applied and planned with the University of Turku to teach this course as a Fulbright Specialist award. I had aligned the timing of my sabbatical with the dates for this course in Finland. The U.S. State Department, however, did not provide final approval of this Fulbright placement. I felt deep disappointment when this door closed. But, thanks to the support of both the University of Turku and my home institution, we moved forward independent of the Fulbright program and the experience proved to be transformative for both me and my students. It’s a good reminder that embracing a new path or different perspective can lead to great growth, for our students and ourselves.

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Recently Published Scholarship on Leadership Development for Law Students and Lawyers

We are pleased to introduce a new recurring feature in the AALS Section on Leadership Newsletter, highlighting recent publications that advance the study, teaching, and practice of legal leadership. This section is designed to spotlight scholarship that deepens our understanding of how lawyers are formed as leaders, how leadership is cultivated in legal education, and how leadership shapes the profession and its institutions. We hope this new feature will serve as both a resource and an inspiration for your teaching, research, and service.

We invite Section members to share information about their recent leadership-related publications for possible inclusion in future newsletters. If you or your colleagues have recently published scholarship that advances leadership development in legal education, the profession, or related fields, please send the citation and a brief description to the Newsletter Editor. We look forward to continuing to showcase the outstanding leadership scholarship being produced across our community.


Jane Mitchell, Associate Professor, Brigham Young University Law School
“That Class Changed My Life”: Using Transformative Learning Theory to Teach Leadership, 65 SANTA CLARA L. REV. 593 (2025), available at https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/lawreview/vol65/iss3/1.

How can faculty move beyond teaching about leadership to truly form law students as leaders? In her recent article, “That Class Changed My Life”: Using Transformative Learning Theory to Teach Leadership, BYU Law Professor Jane Mitchell explores how adult learning theory can catalyze authentic leadership development in legal education. Drawing on Mezirow’s transformative learning theory and a design-based research methodology, the article identifies specific pedagogical strategies that prompt deep shifts in students’ leadership identity, values, and capacity to lead.


Joan Heminway, Rick Rose Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of Tennessee Frank Winston College of Law

Professional Identity in Context: The Transactional Business Lawyer as Counselor and Leader, 76 Mercer L. Rev. 1199 (2025), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5404081.

When many of us began our legal education, leadership formation was rarely addressed explicitly as part of professional identity. At the invitation of the Mercer Law Review, Professor Joan Heminway reflected on her own development as a lawyer-leader shaped by relational counseling practice. Her essay, Professional Identity in Context: The Transactional Business Lawyer as Counselor and Leader, examines the leadership dimensions of transactional lawyering, particularly the lawyer’s role as a trusted advisor, problem-solver, and ethical leader in business contexts.


Bryan Adamson, David L. Brennan Chaired Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s Academy for Inclusive Leadership Development: A New Pedagogy Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Belonging into Legal Education, 75 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol’y 1 (2024), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4955908.

The Academy for Inclusive Leadership Development at Case Western Reserve University School of Law was created to educate lawyers, business professionals, and students to become inclusive organizational leaders. In Case Western Reserve University School of Law’s Academy for Inclusive Leadership Development: A New Pedagogy Integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive Belonging into Legal Education, Professor and Associate Dean Bryan L. Adamson explains how the Academy offers innovative leadership training grounded in equity, systemic change, and inclusive professional identity. The article demonstrates how leadership education can be a powerful tool for addressing structural inequality in the profession.


Margie Alsbrook, Assistant Professor of Law, Mercer University School of Law

Flexibility & Resilience Are Essential Legal Skills, 2025 Wis. L. Rev. Forward 33 (2025), available at https://wlr.law.wisc.edu/flexibility-resilience-are-essential-legal-skills/.

Professor Margie Alsbrook argues that today’s lawyers must be educated not only as technicians, but as adaptive leaders capable of guiding change. In her recent article, Flexibility & Resilience Are Essential Legal Skills, she contends that adaptability, resilience, and interdisciplinary thinking are core leadership competencies for lawyers navigating technological disruption, environmental crises, and shifting client expectations. She emphasizes that preparing students for leadership in uncertainty strengthens both individual lawyers and the legal profession as a whole. The article is available on the Wisconsin Law Review website.


Andrea Kupfer Schneider, Professor and Director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution, Yeshiva University – Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; Abigail R. Bogli, Quarles & Brady LLP; and Hannah L. Chin, Whitefish Bay School District

The New Glass Ceiling, 2024 Wis. L. Rev. 1687 (2024), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5053324.

Two recent articles featured here examine persistent barriers to women’s leadership in the legal profession, with important implications for leadership education and institutional reform. The first, The New Glass Ceiling, co-authored by Professor Andrea Kupfer Schneider, attorney Abigail R. Bogli, and attorney Hannah L. Chin, challenges the assumption that gender equality has been achieved, documenting women’s continued underrepresentation in senior law firm leadership and compensation.


Paula Schaefer, Art Stolinitz Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of Tennessee Frank Winston College of Law

The Motherhood Myth, Traditional Firms, and the Underrepresentation of Women, 20 F.I.U. L. Rev. 287 (2025), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4895367.

The second article to examine law leadership gender barriers is The Motherhood Myth, Traditional Firms, and the Underrepresentation of Women. In this article, Professor Paula Schaefer dismantles narratives that attribute the underrepresentation of women in law firm partnerships and leadership roles to caregiving rather than institutional structure. In the process, the article offers recent data on women and men in U.S. law schools and law firms.


Katie Kempner, AALS Associate Director of Research and Data Analytics; Kate Schaffzin, Director of the Institute for Professional Leadership and Douglas A. Blaze Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of Tennessee Frank Winston College of Law

Women Attorneys in Higher Education Leadership, Am. Assoc. L. Schools (2025), available at https://www.aals.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Women-Attorneys-in-Higher-Education-Leadership-Report-FINAL.pdf

Continuing with the theme of gender and law leadership, the AALS recently released a comprehensive empirical study titled “Women Attorneys in Higher Education Leadership,” co-authored by Katie Kempner and Kate Schaffzin. The study analyzes national data on women lawyers serving in senior academic leadership roles, documenting both progress and persistent gaps in advancement. It offers valuable insights for those engaged in cultivating higher education leadership pipelines, including within legal education. Additional information and the full report are available on the AALS website at Women Attorneys in Higher Education Leadership.

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MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR – Summer, 2025

Dear AALS Leadership Section Members,

It is certainly an interesting time to be researching, writing, and teaching in the law leadership area. The value of our academic endeavors as members of this section is clear. Whether our interests lie in work that touches on government, private enterprise, or individual rights and responsibilities, there is much to say and do.

The Section on Leadership exists to support and promote your work on leading in and through law. Our section’s presence on the AALS website includes information that may be valuable to your work. For example, our webpage can direct you to syllabi for leadership courses, upcoming and past (recorded) webinars hosted by the section, and prior editions of this newsletter. The section’s webpage also includes the names and contact information for members of the section leadership, which will be growing this year due to recently adopted bylaw changes that were approved by the AALS earlier this year. We hope you will contact any of us on matters of mutual interest and that you will let us know about other useful resources we can provide to section members.

The section has been active over the past nine months. It seems like forever ago now, but we had a fascinating and productive panel discussion at the 2025 AALS annual meeting in January on The Courageous Intersection of Leadership Education, Professional Responsibility, and Professional Identity Formation(recording available through the link). I had the privilege of moderating the discussion, which featured luminaries in law leadership, including Lee Fisher, Jerry Organ, Jennifer L. Rosato Perea, Aric Short, and Kellye Testy. There were so many great questions and comments from the floor! We did not have time to cover them all. I hope we will be able to get some of those engaged audience members to write newsletter columns for us or participate in (or even just suggest topics for) webinars in the coming months.

Early in March, the section hosted a webinar in which Elsbeth Magilton, a Lecturer and the Director of Externships at the University of Nebraska College of Law, shared her work in involving students with non-profit boards. You can find out more about the webinar, Law Students Learning to Lead through Non-Profit Board Service, by clicking on the link. A recording is also available from the linked page. Among other things, Elsbeth talks about the evolution of her non-profit leadership program, which in and of itself is an enlightening part of the webinar. I am grateful to my Tennessee Law colleague Beth Ford for organizing and moderating the discussion with Elsbeth.

At the end of March, the Wake Forest University School of Law and Program for Leadership and Character hosted the second major law leadership event during the 2024-25 academic year, a Leadership and Character in the Law Conference. Section executive committee member Kenneth Townsend and his team at Wake Forest Law organized a masterful program that involved section leadership and members as well as others. The section was a partner in that effort. The conference echoed and built on the discussion group that Kenneth and his colleague Ben Rigney organized for the 2025 AALS annual meeting on Developing Courageous Leaders: Trailblazing and Diverse Approaches to Leadership Education for Law Students

And all of this followed on the October 2024 law leadership symposium hosted by the Institute for Professional Leadership at The University of Tennessee College of Law: Lighting the Way for 10 Years: A Symposium on Leadership in Law and Lawyering. I am again grateful to Beth Ford for leading the charge in organizing that event, which was also planned and executed in collaboration with the section. A special, peer-edited edition of the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy will be published later in the year that features work related to the symposium, which celebrated the Institute for Professional Leadership’s tenth anniversary. 

I remain inspired by Tennessee Law’s commitment to leadership education. We have a new director of the Institute for Professional Leadership starting with us this summer, former Memphis Law dean Kate Schaffzin, and we are adding a new leadership course to the institute’s curriculum this fall, Lawyering and Social Change, being taught by our dean, Lonnie Brown. I likely will have more to say about all of that in future communications.

With this issue of the newsletter, the section says goodbye and thanks to our immediate past chair, Lee Fisher. Lee, the outgoing dean at the Cleveland State University College of Law and a former Ohio Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General, has been a wonderfully giving and welcoming leader for the section and for lawyer leadership education. However, he now moves on to new challenges outside legal education as he takes on the presidency at Baldwin Wallace University. We wish him well.

We also are grateful for the executive committee service of Martin Brinkley (dean at the University of North Carolina School of Law) and Kellye Testy (AALS executive director and CEO), both of whom rotated off the executive committee in January. Martin and I had some quality time together organizing a webinar for the section back in the summer of 2023 focusing on adjunct and full-time faculty collaborations on leadership curriculum and course design, and Kellye and I work in intersecting business law and leadership spaces and have known each other for almost 25 years, by my calculation (yet neither of us looks a day older somehow!). I will miss their fellowship on the executive committee, but they continue to be influential in law leadership through their institutional leadership in legal education.

AALS President Austen Parrish, Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the UC Irvine School of Law, has called us to embrace the following theme for his year in leading our profession: Impact. Excellence. Resilience. The Enduring Contributions of Legal Education. He desires to celebrate what all of us have been doing and continue to accomplish. In articulating his thoughts on this theme, he notes that law schools “have broadened their missions to try to equip the current generation with the skills and mindsets they need to succeed and live fulfilling lives.”  Legal education’s embrace of leadership instruction and training has been a part of this expansion. We are planning a program for the 2026 AALS annual meeting consistent with President Parrish’s theme.

Leading—and leading change—is what we do as lawyers and law school instructors. Our students are the future of our profession. I appreciate all that all of you are doing to forward leadership education in law schools. In a time of rapid and dramatic institutional change, our leadership in the classroom, in our writing, and in our service to the profession and other communities is more important than ever. Please use the section as a resource in your work as we all navigate the evolving circumstances in which law is practiced and learned.

Best regards,

Joan

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Leadership Development:  Just Do It!

By: Greg Miarecki

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign College of Law
Adjunct Professor
Executive Assistant Dean for Career Planning and Professional Development

In January of 2021, the University of Illinois College of Law launched its Leadership Project, a leadership development program for our students. In designing the Leadership Project, we looked to many colleagues at other law schools for ideas and inspiration. And while we wanted to get it right, we wanted – as Nike would say – “just do it” and continue to refine it over time. At the outset, our program had several goals:

  1. Ensure that all of our students have a baseline understanding of leadership principles.
  2. Deliver leadership education and programming in a manner consistent with how law students learn in other courses.
  3. Make leadership education relatable. 
  4. Allow students to self-select into more advanced studies on leadership, once they have been exposed to initial training.
  5. Reward students for participating in the program.
  6. Use available resources efficiently.

Consistent with these goals, we centered the Leadership Project around three pillars – introduction, induction, and development:

Introduction:  Provide all first-year students with a short overview of leadership, providing basic frameworks and common language. Such instruction can be delivered in a few hours in a group setting.  It would focus primarily on the study of others, rather than focus on self-reflection.

Induction:  Students who remain eager for more would move to an “induction” phase, which provides a considerably deeper dive into leadership concepts. In this phase, the student or lawyer might begin some self-reflection and individual coaching.    

Development:  Once a student completes the induction phase, he or she would move to the developmental phase. This phase generally requires a smaller group, and typically involves a much higher level of self-reflection and individual attention. 

While these descriptions map to how our Leadership Project functions, they serve as a good starting point for any school wishing to build a leadership education program. Each of these three stages is flexible, and other schools’ programs might look quite different, even if they use the same basic framework. For example, a local law school focused on serving the public interest community may utilize a program that looks much different than a program at a large “T14” school. And each school can and should leverage the resources it has and the environment in which it sits, whether it be faculty, academic strength in particular areas, alumni bases, etc.

The Leadership Project at the University of Illinois follows this basic framework. Each of our first-year students takes a course called Fundamentals of Legal Practice. As part of this course, we offer three different sessions: Principles of Leadership, Leadership and the Importance of Inclusion, and Leadership in the Non-Profit Realm. During these sessions, we introduce students to the topic of leadership, primarily through the study of other leaders. We ask them to identify a good leader and discuss that leader’s strengths and weaknesses. We discuss the importance of including diverse perspectives, with a special focus on our first Illinois lawyer-leader President, Abraham Lincoln, and his creation of a “Team of Rivals.”  And we invite students to analyze a series of case studies featuring notable leaders, including Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and former Duke University head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski. 

Through these introductory sessions, we expose all of our first-year students to basic leadership principles. We teach each session in a group setting, making it more efficient than individualized coaching. And by focusing on examples of other leaders, we attempt to help students learn about leadership in a relatively familiar way – through case studies.

After completing our Fundamentals course, students can opt out of further leadership-focused programming. Those interested in learning more are invited to participate in a series of lectures or discussions focused on leadership. Our Leadership Project has hosted more than thirty speakers, including former Illinois Governors Jim Edgar and Pat Quinn, current Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, Chicago Alderman Timmy Knudsen, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Lisa Holder White, and Michael Osanloo, the CEO of the wildly popular Chicago-based Portillo’s Hot Dogs. Each leader shares their individual perspectives on leadership with the students, and the students learn from those examples. In selecting our speakers, we leverage our Illinois connections and the expertise of our alumni base. 

Each semester, our Leadership Project also hosts a “book talk.”  Our students read a selected book and meet as a group to discuss the leadership lessons embedded within. For example, in the past year, we have read President Obama’s (our second Illinois lawyer/President) “A Promised Land,” John Carlin’s “Playing the Enemy” (the story of how Nelson Mandela used the sport of rugby to unite South Africa), and Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why.”  These book talks give students an opportunity to dig deeper into the principles of leadership and discuss them with their classmates.

The College of Law also offers a number of courses touching on aspects of leadership, including, for example, Trial Advocacy (focused on how to communicate and build an energizing vision for a jury), Small Firm Practice (focused on how to build and lead a small firm), and our numerous clinics. The College also offers a focused “Lawyers as Leaders” course, in which students engage in deeper discussion and analysis of leaders and also examine their own personality features that either assist or hinder in their leadership of others. By leveraging our already existing courses, we made the Project more cost-effective.

Students who complete a prescribed number of Leadership Project lectures and discussions, book talks, and courses are eligible to participate in a half-day virtual retreat, led by an executive coach. In this retreat, students engage in deep self-analysis in small groups. Once students complete this retreat, they become Leadership Scholars, receiving a plaque, transcript designation, and a celebration at the end of the academic year.

In the first four years of our program, nearly 50 students have earned a Leadership Scholar designation. And more than 300 students have attended at least one Leadership Project event. I’m especially pleased to see that our program attracted leaders you might expect (such as student organization leaders), and ones that we did not expect – students with softer voices and not as involved in student organizations, but who are nonetheless eager to lead and capable of doing so, armed with the tools we have provided them. Some have reported that they did not initially think of themselves as leaders, but that our coursework and programs convinced them that they could, in fact, lead others.

Leadership development programs are important. They positively impact the lives of our students. As one of our Leadership Scholars put it:

The classes prepared me for real-life challenges, the events connected me with leaders I look up to, and the book talks allowed me to think hard about the kind of leader I want to be. This program deals head-on with a deficit many law schools face by connecting students with opportunities that will change their careers and lives.

You can deliver these benefits without extensive infrastructure or excessive costs. Just do it! If you’re thinking about developing such a program, I’d be delighted to help you in any way I can. Your fellow Section members are available to help. Please reach out to me at [email protected] if I can assist!

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WEBINAR: Advancing Lawyer Leadership: Why Scholarship Matters

Join the AALS Section on Leadership for an engaging and thought-provoking webinar exploring the vital role scholarship plays in the emerging national movement to embed leadership development firmly within legal education.

Distinguished panelists:

  • Neil Hamilton, Holloran Professor of Law and Co-director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law
  • Kenneth Townsend, Executive Director, Wake Forest University Program for Leadership and Character

Moderated by Professor Leah Teague (Baylor Law School), our panelists will share insights into the impact of past and current scholarship, and share their thought on innovative practices and strategic priorities to further the integration of leadership into legal education curricula and to supports the development of lawyer-leaders who are prepared to meet today’s complex challenges with integrity, creativity, and vision.

You can also watch the recording of the last webinar in the series: Law Students Learning to Lead through Non-Profit Board Service.

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Wake Forest Hosts Inaugural National Conference on Leadership and Character in the Law

On March 27–28, 2025, Wake Forest University’s Program for Leadership and Character and Wake Forest School of Law—together with the AALS Section on Leadership—hosted the inaugural Leadership and Character in the Law Conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Designed as a collaborative, forward-looking convening, the conference brought together law professors and lawyer leaders from around the country to share common concerns as well as to develop ideas for developing lawyers of integrity.

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AALS Leadership Section Spring/Summer 2024 Newsletter

VOL. 11, SPRING/SUMMER 2024

Our students are studying law at a moment when many of our most cherished values as Americans are at a crossroads – among them are truth, civility, the rule of law, and democracy. Our work on leadership education has never been more important. Now more than ever, we need lawyer-leaders to defend these values. That’s why I ask our students each year to think of themselves as more than future lawyers. I ask them to think of themselves as future custodians of civility, defenders of democracy, and guardians of justice.

As Chair of the AALS Leadership Section, I am honored to follow in the footsteps of so many pioneers in law school leadership education – Professor Deborah Rhode (2018), Professor Leah Teague (2019), Dean Doug Blaze (2020), Dean Don Polden (2021), Dean Garry Jenkins (2022), and Dean April Barton (2023). We are a relatively new AALS Section, chartered in November 2017, but we already have made a huge impact on legal education, thanks in large part to our founder, the late Deborah Rhode, and my Section Chair predecessors, each of whom has been teaching leadership for many years. Kellye Testy, our new Executive Director and CEO of AALS, is also a long-time leader in teaching leadership in law schools. Thanks to all of them and many of you, an increasing number of law schools have leadership programs and curriculum.

My special thanks to last year’s Chair, Dean April Barton, for the opportunity to work closely with her on the January 2024 AALS Leadership Section Session and my thanks to Chair-Elect, Professor Joan Heminway and the other members of the Executive Committee with whom I’m working to make our January 2025 AALS Leadership Section Session equally successful. I’m very grateful for the members of our AALS Leadership Section Executive Committee each of whom is featured in this newsletter.  

We hosted a thought-provoking session on April 25, Teaching Law Leadership with Non-Law Texts with Professor Joan Heminway and Beth Ford, Interim Director, Institute for Professional Leadership, University of Tennessee College of Law. As noted below, we will host leadership webinars on September 10, October 8, and November 13. Please join us for each of these sessions. Please also join us October 24-25 at the Leadership Symposium hosted by The University of Tennessee College of Law’s Institute for Professional Leadership. More information is below.

We have created a bank of law school leadership course syllabi and descriptions of law school leadership programs. Please add your leadership course syllabus and/or leadership program description here: Shared Course Syllabi and Program Descriptions.

My thanks to each of you for all you do to promote leadership education and training in our law schools.

My best,
Lee
[email protected]


MEET THE 2024 – 2025 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

April M. Barton
Dean and Professor of Law
Duquesne University Thomas R. Kline School of Law

“Leadership development instills within our students a deep desire to serve others, pursue justice and act with integrity in any role they choose.”

Hear from April

Martin Brinkley
Dean and William Rand Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor
The University of North Carolina School of Law

“As de Tocqueville said in the 1830s, in America lawyers are the class that exercises restraint on the dangerous potential of a public carried away by populist passion. That role is of immense importance today.”

Hear from Martin

Chair-Elect
Joan MacLeod Heminway

Rick Rose Distinguished Professor of Law, The University of Tennessee College of Law

“Leading as a lawyer takes true grit—passion + perseverance. If we model it, our students can learn it.”

Hear from Joan

Tania Luma
Assistant Dean, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
& Clinical Professor
Loyola University Chicago School of Law

“In the face of enormous divides, the practice of leadership is critical–it is the practice of mobilizing people to meet the challenges that will enable them to thrive in changing and challenging times.”

Hear from Tania

Hillary A. Sale
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Leadership and Corporate Governance and Professor of Management
Georgetown University Law Center

“Teaching leadership is a great way for students to examine their purpose in being a lawyer and to take ownership of their careers and opportunities.”

Hear from Hillary

Aric Short
Professor of Law; Director of 1L Mentoring
Texas A&M University School of Law

“A pressing reason to teach leadership is to encourage students to first lead themselves. The practice of law expects new graduates to be self-directed, motivated, and curious.”

Hear from Aric

Leah Teague
Professor and Director of Leadership Development Program 
Baylor Law School

“From advising clients to advocating for a cause to negotiating a deal or the resolution of a conflict, every aspect of what a lawyer does when representing clients is a version of leadership.”

Hear from Leah

Kellye Y. Testy
Executive Director and CEO, AALS

“Before a leader can fix much else, they need to first focus on improving their own health — spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical. That first step helps a leader get out of their own way so that they can truly be of service to others.”

Hear from Kellye


IN MEMORIAM

Susan Jones, Professor of Clinical Law
George Washington University School of Law

“At its core, leadership is about transformation. Leadership coaching, a personalized and confidential form of professional and personal development, is a creative partnership between a coach and a client to empower the client toward greater self-reflection, clarity of purpose, meaningful change, accountability, and effective engagement in the world.”

Earlier this year, we lost our colleague Professor Susan Jones. Susan was a friend and inspiration to many of us, an active member of the Executive Committee of our AALS Leadership Section Executive Committee, and a passionate advocate for leadership education in law schools. Susan was a Professor of Clinical Law and a member of the full-time faculty at The George Washington University Law School. She was also the Director and Supervising Attorney of the Small Business & Community Economic Development Clinic (SBCED Clinic). Susan was a trailblazer in transactional clinical legal education and the practice of small business law and social entrepreneurism.

Before she passed, we asked Susan to answer some questions about her views on leadership.

Learn about Susan


UPCOMING EVENTS

The Intersection of Leadership, Professionalism, and Professional Identity – Webinar

Sep 10, 2024  • 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM (ET)

SPEAKERS: 
April M. Barton, Dean and Professor of Law, Duquesne University Thomas R. Kline School of Law
Aric Short, Professor of Law and Director, Professionalism and Leadership Program, Texas A&M University School of Law

Learn More & Register

Leadership for Equity Amid Political Turbulence – Webinar

Oct 8, 2024 from 12:00 PM to 01:00 PM (ET)

SPEAKERS:
Heather Gerken, Dean and Sol & Lillian Goldman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Tamara F. Lawson, Toni Rembe Dean and Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law
Kellye Y. Testy, Executive Director and CEO, AALS

Learn More & Register
 

Women and Leadership – Webinar

Nov 13, 2024 from 05:00 PM to 06:00 PM (ET)

SPEAKERS:
Hillary Sale, Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Leadership and Corporate Governance, Georgetown University Law Center; Professor of Management, McDonough School of Business
Alison Spada, Chief of Staff in the Office of the Dean, Georgetown University Law Center

Learn More & Register
 

Lighting the Way: Leadership Symposium – The University of Tennessee College of Law

October 24-25, 2024




The AALS Section on Leadership and the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy are collaborating with The University of Tennessee College of Law on this symposium which celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Institute for Professional Leadership. The symposium will feature workshops, a call-for-papers panel, and expert panels on law leadership in the context of legal education. The program is scheduled to extend from Thursday afternoon through a Friday evening reception and will include a Thursday evening gala dinner. The symposium schedule will be made available on a symposium website hosted on The University of Tennessee College of Law’s website.
 


 GUEST COLUMN

“The Value of Examining Leaders Within Communities”
Tania Luma discusses the importance of recognizing movement and community leadership in legal academia.

Read More
 


 LAW SCHOOL LEADERSHIP COURSES AND PROGRAMS

We have created a bank of law school leadership course syllabi and descriptions of law school leadership programs.
Please add your leadership course syllabus and/or leadership program description here: Shared Course Syllabi and Program Descriptions


LEADERSHIP SECTION ANNOUNCEMENTS

Hello, all. I hope that everyone is enjoying the summer season so far.  It has been a bit warm in Tennessee, but I am surviving!

Through this message, I am passing along a request from the Interim Director of our Institute for Professional Leadership at The University of Tennessee College of Law.  As our professional leadership program enters its second decade, we are reflecting and planning.  As a result, we also are wondering what everyone else is doing in their law schools relating to professional leadership education and training.

We hope that you will let us know by completing a brief survey.  You can find it here.  We will share the results of the survey with you once the response collection process has been completed.  Although there is no formal end date for the survey at this time, we will begin reviewing responses in the next few weeks.  Accordingly, an early response is highly valued.

Either Beth or I are happy to answer any questions about our leadership program or the survey.  Beth can be reached at [email protected], and I can be reached at [email protected].

Wishing you well.

Joan
Joan MacLeod Heminway
Rick Rose Distinguished Professor of Law
The University of Tennessee College of Law

Uncategorized

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR – Summer, 2023

Dear AALS Leadership Section Members,

AALS President, Mark Alexander, has challenged us to embrace this year’s theme of Defending Democracy.  “We have a special role to play in saving our democracy from the very real dangers that threaten us and our country.  [O]ur democracy is the lifeblood of a free and fair society and … is worth being defended with action and resolve.”

How does this theme relate to our AALS Leadership section? 

We must educate transformational leaders who will be positioned to serve in public office and other institutions that uphold our democracy.

We are witnessing a scarcity of leadership in our government institutions, most notably in our Congress and state legislatures. I am referring to true leadership—the kind that acts with integrity, respects the rule of law, understands respectful debate, and treats others with dignity and respect. These might sound like wistful qualities of yesteryear, but these qualities are very real and necessary to a healthy democracy and must be taught and reinforced.

Lawmakers must build coalitions, even with those with whom they disagree. They must listen and act respectfully. They must understand that compromise is essential in a functioning democratic system. We need leaders who display character, create collaborative cultures, and foster inclusive environments that uplift and inspire. Most importantly, leaders must be motivated by a higher good – our democracy and those whom we serve.

As legal educators, we can help our students understand what leadership is and what it looks like in action. Our students have a keen sense of character, service, and equity and we can reinforce and explore these qualities with them, empower them to embrace their innate compassion and humility and teach leadership skills that will equip them as they move forward to defend our democracy. 

Sincerely,

April M. Barton, Chair

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I am grateful to our outgoing Leadership Section Chair, Dean (now President!) Garry Jenkins, for his wisdom, leadership, and collegiality. I have learned much from him and appreciate all that he has done for our Section over the years. He is a shining example of exceptional leadership and we wish him the best in his new role as President of Bates College!

I am also grateful for our AALS Leadership Section 2023 Executive Committee who are already working hard to make sure we have programming for all of our members throughout the year. 

Executive Committee Members are:

Lee Fisher, Chair-Elect
Dean, Cleveland State University College of Law
Joseph C. Hostetler-BakerHostetler Chair in Law

Martin H. Brinkley
Dean and William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor
University of North Carolina School of Law

Joan MacLeod Heminway
Rick Rose Distinguished Professor of Law
Interim Director, Institute for Professional Leadership
The University of Tennessee College of Law

Susan R. Jones
Professor of Clinical Law
The George Washington University Law School

Tania Luma 
Assistant Dean, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Clinical Professor
Loyola University Chicago School of Law

Stephen Rispoli
Assistant Dean of Student Affairs and Strategic Initiatives
Director of Innovation and Scholarship, Executive LL.M. in Litigation Management
Baylor University School of Law

Hillary A. Sale
Associate Dean for Strategy
Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Leadership and Corporate Governance,
Professor of Management
Georgetown University

Aric K. Short
Professor of Law & Director, Professionalism and Leadership Program
Texas A&M University School of Law

Leah Witcher Jackson Teague
Associate Dean and Professor of Law
Baylor University School of Law

Kellye Y. Testy, 
President & CEO
Law School Admission Council

Uncategorized

Expanded Conversations about Professional Identity and Leadership at AALS 2023

Aric K. Short | Professor of Law & Director, Professionalism and Leadership Program
Texas A&M University School of Law

          At this year’s AALS Annual Meeting in San Diego, there was a noticeable increase in the number of presentations and panels related to professional identity formation and leadership development from prior years. This heightened attention may stem, in part, from the newly-implemented ABA Standard 303, which requires all law schools to provide students with multiple opportunities for professional identity formation and training in anti-racism and bias. But it also likely reflects an increasing recognition within the academy that the competencies and values associated with professional identity formation are critical to preparing our students for a successful and rewarding career in law.

          Below is a sampling of topics addressed by panels and presentations on professional identity formation and leadership at this year’s Annual Meeting:

  • How to effectively spread the load of providing professional identity formation opportunities across the entire law school enterprise, including faculty and staff (sponsored by the Section for Associate Deans for Academic Affairs and Research);
  • Ways to weave training on bias, cross-cultural competencies, and anti-racism into the law school curriculum (sponsored by the Section on Civil Rights);
  • Specific techniques for helping students explore and form their professional identities from orientation through their last weeks of law school (sponsored by the Sections on Balance and Well-Being in Legal Education, Academic Support, Clinical Legal Education, Student Services, and Teaching Methods);
  • Practical tools for effectively implementing anti-racism training (sponsored by the Section on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Professionals);
  • Suggestions on how to move beyond diversity to equity and inclusion in law school teaching (sponsored by the Sections on Teaching Methods, Academic Support, Balance and Well-Being in Legal Education, and Minority Groups); and
  • Exploring ways that leadership training in law schools can bring about positive change in society and for the clients our students serve (sponsored by the Section on Leadership).

In addition to these formal opportunities to discuss the theory and practice of professional identity formation and leadership, there were countless informal discussions about strategies and best practices that occurred during the Annual Meeting. All of this AALS attention on Standard 303 topics aligns with the growing number of workshops, symposia, and other efforts in broader academia addressing professional identity formation and leadership.

Of particular note to section members, the Holloran Center at the University of St. Thomas School of Law is hosting a symposium/workshop later this month for authors of casebooks used in required law school classes: “Transitioning from Student to Lawyer: Infusing Professional Identity Formation into the Required Curriculum.” Over 20 authors from all four major casebook publishers are scheduled to attend and present ideas for more formally incorporating Standard 303 themes into existing courses. Be on the lookout for articles synthesizing these ideas in a forthcoming issue of the St. Thomas Law Review.