In this year's spring semester at Santa Clara University School of Law, Robert Cullen broke new ground with his class called Leadership for Lawyers. In developing the class, he consulted with Kirk Hanson, executive director of SCU’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and Barry Posner, dean of the SCU School of business. Posner authored The Leadership Challenge, a well-known book used by Cullen as the course text. From an article in Santa Clara Law on the course:
“The leadership training and development is based on The Leadership Challenge,” Cullen says. “We’ll use case studies and guest speakers to illustrate the ways the principles apply specifically to law.”
Posner:
“In law school, like medical school, the focus is on learning the skills to get the job done,” he says. “But in the end, it’s all about working with other people to make things happen. Many leaders are ordinary people. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things.”
Posner thinks teaching lawyers to lead is critical.
“If you understand the impact that law and lawyers have on our society, it seems almost criminal that we don’t offer leadership training as part of a legal education,” he says. “Leadership isn’t the responsibility of some hero or famous person; it’s everyone’s responsibility."
Donald Polden, dean of SCU Law School, plans to expand upon this first class.
Polden says he wants to develop more curricular and cocurricular programs that focus on leaders and leadership training. “There is a rich vein of information available about leadership,” he says. “But not much that is specific to law. We are building and expanding on what’s already out there so that we can prepare our students for the ethical and moral responsibilities they will take on in their professions and lives.”
I hear that other law schools are considering similar courses; I will let you know about them as they develop. If you hear of any, please let me know.
Perhaps in the near future law firms will be able to collaborate with law schools instead of teaming up with business schools (as they are doing here and here) to train their lawyers in leadership. Seems to make more sense to me considering the fact that lawyers are unique, as are their leadership challenges.
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