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