Helping Students Navigate the Pathway to Practice

The appointments of William MacDonald as assistant dean for academic and bar success, and Patrick J. Long ’00 as assistant dean for professional development, aim to create seamless support for students as they grow into their roles as effective, ethical attorneys. The moves come partly in response to revised standards issued by the American Bar Association, which now requires accredited law schools to address professional identity as part of their legal education program, as well as incorporate training in cross-cultural competencies in their classes.

Long will concentrate on first-year students, MacDonald on second and third-years. A longtime instructor in the Legal Analysis, Writing and Research (LAWR) program, Long is teaching Professional Development, a required course for 1Ls that spans two semesters.  He says the course, a re-envisioned version of one previously called Legal Profession, goes deeper into the ABA’s expectation that law schools “provide substantial opportunities for students to develop their professional identity—the values, principles and practices of well-being essential to the profession.”

The course’s fall semester focuses on the skills students need to do well in law school—taking lecture notes, reading critically, preparing for exams—as well as self-care strategies that will serve them in school and beyond.  

In the spring semester, he says, the class will turn to the principles that undergird the profession. He plans to show students The Verdict, a 1982 movie in which Paul Newman plays a lawyer trying a medical malpractice case while struggling with addiction. “It shows the kinds of decisions that real lawyers have to make, with the moral ambiguities and real challenges that legal practice provides,” Long says. He also plans to bring to class successful practitioners, “people from the local bar who are models in corporate law or criminal defense or trial work, to talk to students about their day-to-day life as attorneys, but also about how to fashion a career that allows you to remain human.”  

As assistant dean for academic and bar success, MacDonald will continue to teach a spring-semester course for third-year students, Bar Exam Strategies and Skills, aimed at “giving people a running start on their summer bar preparation.” Its purpose, he says, is threefold: to bolster students’ general skills in test-taking, to offer direct feedback on students’ work, and to impress upon them that bar prep needs their serious and early attention. “Law school classes are philosophical,” he says, “but bar prep spews a firehose of information at you. If you’re not expecting that, you might not even think you need to go to the prep classes.”  

MacDonald also taught a newly created course this past fall called Bar Success Essay Writing, which addresses the writing exercises that count for about half of a test-taker’s bar exam score. The class provides intensive instruction to a small cohort of about 15 third-year students, some of them Pro Bono Scholars who will take the bar in February.  

In conjunction with the Office of Student Affairs, MacDonald will also continue to provide individual support for students whose grades may be cause for concern, helping to address not only academic issues but complicating factors such as a family illness. “Very often I’ll meet with students weekly or biweekly,” he says. “There are many who don’t make the transition to law school as quickly as others; they just need a little more time and guidance to get on their feet.”