Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2024
Keywords
Legal teaching assistants, Professional identity
Disciplines
Legal Education
Abstract
In 2022, the American Bar Association (ABA) amended Law School Accreditation Standard 303(b) by adding an explicit requirement that law students have “substantial opportunities” for “the development of a professional identity.” In the years leading up to this change, several scholars stressed the importance of teaching professional identity—that is, of helping students begin to cultivate the personal and professional values appropriate to the practice of law. Yet one cohort of law students is surprisingly absent from the existing professional-identity literature: teaching assistants (TAs).
Law-school TAs have responsibilities—from offering reasoned advice, to editing legal-style documents, to problem-solving with supervisors—that mirror many of the tasks they will assume as new attorneys. TAs inhabit a liminal space between student and professor, academia and legal practice. Thus, we argue in this article that TAs’ unique apprenticeship position provides an important opportunity for professors to help their TAs form strong professional identities.Lara
Recommended Citation
Freed, Lara and Goldberg, Rachel T., "Cultivating Teaching Assistants' Professional Identities" (2024). Cornell Law Faculty Publications. 1776.
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/facpub/1776
Publication Citation
Lara Freed and Rachel T. Goldberg, "Cultivating Teaching Assistants' Professional Identities," 18 Charleston Law Review 519-538 (2024)