04/10/2020
A few years ago, Regent Law started a course entitled "Foundations of Practice" in which students embrace the challenge of beginning their formation as professionals. Our deans and faculty have been a great support to the class by serving as coaches to students. The faculty coach remains with a student from the first year through the third year--and often beyond law school. As part of the class, students reflect on their experience before law school. Our Center for Psychology and Counseling partners with the law school to test students and to explain the findings of the tests. Students also show their faculty coach a 360-degree assessment (the student's evaluation of her/his strengths and areas of growth, along with assessments of two other persons who know the student well). Students then provided to their coach the following: (1) a reflection on what they observed in the assessment process, (2) a description of how their talents and life experience will help them in a legal position, (3) a concrete plan for seeking a legal position in which their God-given talents will help others, (4) a plan for courses, extracurricular activities, and outside employment in the summers (during the school year, as an intern at a law office, court, or some other legal entity)--again, designed to help the student discern more clearly where he or she can best serve others in the legal field; and (5) developing a strategy to find employment in the area of law they discern as the one to which God has called the student. My colleagues and I enjoy working with students to help them in this process. Even with the disruption from the coronavirus pandemic, our students have continued to seek God's will and meet with their faculty coaches virtually. That's commitment!