Speaker: Kevin Colangelo, LawHub Instructor
Please introduce yourself and the course you are teaching for the program.
Kevin Colangelo: Hi, my name is Kevin Colangelo. I'm with the Law School Admission Council and the course I'm teaching is Client Management and Business Development for young lawyers.
In your view, why is the professional identity formation process important to law students?
Kevin Colangelo: I feel that professional identity formation - - the process - is important to students. It's very personal to students, and it seeks . . . seeks to create a mindset that emphasizes that you, the student, can cultivate and grow and internalize your own professional identity, which is so critical as you make that journey from being a law student to becoming a legal professional.
Hop into the time machine! What would you like to tell yourself, the law student, about the journey from law school to legal professional?
Kevin Colangelo: Wow, what would I tell myself? Well, you know, I think that we just assumed that some of the hard times and some of the stressors and some of the things that were really challenging to you intellectually emotionally, personally, you just had to work your way through it almost like it was a military operation. So I would, I would tell my law student self that if you take the time to think about your values and think about who you are and why you did this, why you went to law school, that you may find a peace and a bit of a pathway that just makes absorbing all of this stress and all of this constant new information a little bit easier.
What advice do you have for students who may be hesitant to start working on their professional identity?
Kevin Colangelo: The advice I'd give to current students is really to kind of continue being the person that you are now, where you've taken a giant leap into something that most of you don't know about and has a lot of elements that may surprise you, not only in this terms of the substance that you learn, but also the experience of going through law school, just the overall day to day activity and interactivity with people and professors and the community at large. That takes a lot, and not only is that analogous to the professional identity formation process, but I think in some ways the professional identity formation process will help you make sense of all of that. In fact, I know it will to the degree that it will definitely help you see yourself as a more comfortable individual within that process.
