Name: Building Better Lawyers Webinar Recording
Uploaded: 2026-06-01T16:24:04.266Z
Duration: 59 min 59 s
Description: Building Better Lawyers Webinar Recording

Transcript for "Building Better Lawyers Webinar Recording": Welcome, everyone. Thanks so much for attending today's webinar, called Building Better Lawyers, Enhancing Admissions with Durable Skills. My name is Colby Carter, and I'm joining you today from Acuity Insights. Just wanna let you know, our panelists will be taking questions from the audience at the end of the webinar, so we'll be reading those, to them. If you wanna stay anonymous, just let us know. You are welcome to enter your questions in the q and a box throughout the webinar, and we'll get to them once the panelists have finished presenting. I wanted to, kinda start with an overview and discuss how you as the educators and leaders are shaping tomorrow's lawyers, and we need to have a candid conversation about how, you guys are admitting these brilliant students, but sometimes there are people that are not always equipped with the professional identity skills and judgment competencies that the profession is urgently asking for. You're balancing pressures across admissions, student success, well-being, bar passage, employment outcomes, Yet some of these attributes, are more, predictive of long term success and professional, like, professional formation traits, reflective and relational skills, teamwork and judgment abilities, and practice readiness, attributes. These are really captured by, traditional, assessments or academic metrics. These kind of metrics really tell us who can learn the law, but they don't always reveal the ethical decision making abilities and resilience of client facing competencies, that really define the real success. So if we continue selecting and training lawyers the same way that we always have, we'll keep sending, these graduates into an already strained profession. So today, we're gonna talk about what it looks like to break this cycle. I'd like to provide a quick little overview about acuity. It's actually more to get to our panelists. So our solutions focus on assessing personal and professional competencies that traditional admissions metrics miss, traits like judgment, communication, resilience, and professionalism that are essential for building practice ready lawyers in an AI driven world. One, our two core assessments are open response situational judgment tests that measure social intelligence and professionalism. They these allow you to evaluate applicants holistically and support the development of their professional identity throughout the program. And unlike tools that rely on the academic metrics, that are that have prescribed right answers or subjective materials like personal statements. Our assessments let applicants draw on their own personal experiences and reveal the reasoning behind the decisions that they make. In our program, we do have in program professional skills development products that use modular, story based scenarios to assess and strengthen the interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities students need for ethical client work, teamwork, and long long term success. Today, more than 1,000,000 applicants across 500 programs, including medicine, health sciences, business, education, and engineering have taken Casper, making it the most widely used open SJT in higher education. And today's webinar, focuses on essential professional skills needed by law graduates. The idea for this webinar came out of our recent published report, future proofing students, professional skills in the age of AI. So drawing on academic and market research, the report highlights how universities can better equip students with the professional skills, also known as durable skills, like empathy, resilience, and ethical reasoning, that, machines can't sorry. That machines can't replicate. Some key insights from the report, are, like, 75% of long term job success is tied to professional skills, not technical expertise. Over 25% of executives say they won't hire recent grads due to a lack of durable skills, and a and a discussion on how COVID nineteen has disrupted professional skill development, leaving many students underprepared. We'll also be sending a full copy of the report to, everybody that attends today's session along with a recording of the webinar. So I would, like to go ahead and introduce the presenters that are here with us today. First, I'd like to mention doctor Ian Holloway, who is a former dean of law at the University of Calgary, serving from 2011 to 2024, and more recently serves as a professor within the faculty. He previously held leadership and faculty positions at law schools in Canada, Australia, Singapore, and The UK, a graduate of Dalhousie, UC Berkeley, and the Australian National University. Ian also studied at the Kellogg School of Management and Harvard's Kennedy School. His career spans legal practice, academia, and public service with recognition including election to the American Law Institute, King's Council designation, and membership in the King's privy council for Canada. Ian is a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and remains active in various legal and national advisory roles. Beyond the legal sphere, Ian spent a total of twenty five years serving in the Royal Canadian and Royal Australian Navy. Navy. Sorry. Next, I'd like to talk about introduce Kendra Brodean, who is the founder and CEO of EsquireWell, where she delivers training, speaking, and consulting to advance well-being, emotional intelligence, and leadership in the legal profession. With a law degree from the University of Minnesota and a master's in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. She brings a unique interdisciplinary perspective on what it takes to thrive in law, not just succeed academically. Kendra has served in varied roles such as the director of career and professional development at the University of Saint Thomas School of Law and as a chief attorney development officer at a national law firm. She teaches well-being and professional formation at Saint Thomas and leads the Henton, County Bar Association Institute for leadership in the legal profession program. She's committed to improving the legal profession, and she also serves on the ABA well-being pledge committee and the board of lawyers concerned for lawyers in Minnesota. And she is a past president of the Minnesota women's lawyers. Next, I would like to introduce, Michael Roscoe, who is a professor and department chair in the department of physician assistant medicine at the University of Tampa. He holds a PhD in health sciences and has served in academic leadership roles including department chair, assistant dean for interprofessional education, also a colonel in the Indiana National Guard. Mike brings extensive military leadership experience, including combat, deployments and has received honors such as the Bronze Star. His national leadership includes service on the board of PAEA and NCCPA with a focus on fostering transparent student centered learning environments. So I'm gonna go ahead and pass along to Ian, who will start our discussion by helping us, establish what we mean when we talk about durable or professional skills and the role of law schools in developing these. Thanks, Ian. Thanks very much, Colby, and thank you all for being here today. It's a it's a delight to be with you. I wanna start by saying that I think we've got two big problems in North American legal education today. The first is that we misconceive our role, And the second, is that because of the first because we misconceive our role, we go about admissions to law school in the in the wrong way. On the first issue, we we still reflexively think of our role as to teach law, and one might think, well, that's axiomatic. Of course, law school should teach law. Medical school teach teaches medicine, and, of course, we should we should teach law. But the reality is that the law, the the principles of law are getting easier and easier to access. When I began as a as a young lawyer, the the best lawyers were the the the people who knew knew the most law. The smartest person in the room was the was the person who was able to recall, seemingly from out of nowhere legal detail. But with technology, the ability to access legal principle is becoming much much easier than it was, and that's only gonna increase as as AI becomes more sophisticated. So I think that without us realizing it, there's been a shift in our roles. And, I think that increasingly our role is going to be to inculcate in our students, inculcate in the next generation of warriors, what we're calling today durable skills. But because we still think that our role is to teach law, we are admitting, I think, the wrong people. Of course, not every student. I mean, ours many most of our students go on and flourish. But we in deciding who we, should admit to law school, I think that we're doing the wrong the wrong way. It's a fact that law schools still principally admit on the basis of gray matter for which we use in in North America. In any event, in most law schools, the combination of the LSAT, the LSAT, and, and academic grades. We don't admit on the basis of things like empathy and resilience and so on. And so that's what we wanna talk about today is, you know, the the role of durable skills and how we how, Acuity Insights can help law schools better select people for, on the basis of durable skills. And this what I've presented here in this slide is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it's an illustration of some of the things that, even just by looking at them, you realize, yeah. Yeah. Of course, it's important. Good lawyers need to be empathetic and have to have emotional intelligence, of course, have to be able to communicate. That that is something on the whole we do moderately well. Although, as more and more of as a greater and greater proportion of our students come to law school without having studied classical rhetoric, I think it's the case that writing skills have diminished in recent years. We certainly don't test for resilience at the time of admission, nor curiosity. We just take it as a given that if someone's really smart, they're curious, but the two don't necessarily go hand in hand. Problem solving is important. You know, the the conventional party line in legal education is we teach students to think like lawyers. As professor Kingsfield most famously said in, in the paper chase, but we don't. At best, we we go halfway there. We teach students certainly to be critical. You know, by the time they graduate from law school, they're very good at tearing issues apart, tearing things apart. But we tend not to focus on the second half of the equation, and that is how to solve how to solve problems. And following through from that is is logical reasoning reasoning to an outcome. We're moderately good, I think, at logical reasoning in terms of criticizing, but logical reasoning in terms of coming up with solutions. I'm not sure that we're we're as good as we as we, should be, as we need to be. Why is this so important? Well, Colby touched upon some of it. But I I wanna go back to kind of, you know, foundational principles. You know, if we think about what a client approaches a lawyer, the client typically doesn't say, oh, I I need some legal advice. Typically, they don't say that. What typically happens is that the client, approaches a lawyer because her or his life has come to an end. They've been charged with a crime or their marriage is break broken down or they have been dismissed from their employment. Or they come to the lawyer because they think I'm the next Bill Gates. I'm the guy in the garage. I I'm I've I've got, the next important idea. In other words, they approach lawyers in times of stress or in times of crisis. And what they need, yes, of course, they need legal advice, but they also need, things like understanding. They need a sense of belonging, a sense of validation, or a sense of constructive criticism. They need leadership. They're in a bad place, and they need someone, the lawyer, to help lead them to a better place. We don't tend to think about, the role our role as lawyers that way in law schools. And I think that we're making a a big, a big mistake in that respect. I also think, that if what we do in laws if all we do in law schools is think that our role is to prepare students for the first day of their first job, then we're letting them down. The sociologists and demographers teach us that our students today are gonna have multiple careers in the course of their working lives. And I think that we owe it to them. We spend a lot of money coming to law school. I think we owe it to them to provide them with the kind of enduring skills or durable skills as we're calling them today that will help them navigate, and succeed and flourish in those in those multiple, in those multiple careers. And I think that's only gonna become more important, as, as AI becomes, more sophisticated. You know, we're all finding ourselves now having to pivot, having to to turn on a dime. Well, I think we're gonna find, a lot more dime strewn before us in our professional pathways as, as we as we go. So what I wanna do now is show you a very brief clip, which, from a a a leadership educator named Simon Sinek. And, Simon is talking to a group of business leaders, but I think it will be easy to analogize what he's talking about, to what we do in law school. So, technology permitting, we're gonna start through this clip now. I work with the navy I've worked with the navy seals. And I asked them I work with the navy I've worked with the navy seals. And I asked them, like, who do you how do you pick, like, the guys that go on SEAL Team six? Right? Because they're the best the best the best the best. And they drew a they drew a graph for me. And on one side, they drew they wrote the word performance, and on the other side, they were they wrote the word trust. The way they define the terms is performance on the battlefield and performance off the battlefield. So this is your skills. This is did you make your quarterly earnings? Whatever. However we wanna translate it. Right? Performance. Traditional. This is how are you off the battlefield? What kind of person are you? The way they put it is I may trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my money and my wife? This is what they told me. Nobody wants this person, the low performer of low trust, of course. Of course, everybody wants this person, the high performer of high trust. Of course. What they learned is that this person, the high performer of low trust, is a toxic leader and a toxic team member. And they would rather have a medium performer of high trust, sometimes even a low performer of high trust, that's a relative scale, over this person. This is the highest performing organization on the planet and this person is more important to them than this person. And the problem in business is we have lopsided metrics. We have a million and one metrics to measure someone's performance and negligible to no metrics to measure someone's trustworthiness. And so what we end up doing is promoting or bonusing toxicity in our businesses. Negligible to no ability to measure someone's trustworthiness. Analogize that to what we do in law schools. How much ability do we have to measure someone's resilience, empathy, team ethos, willingness to delay gratification? All those other things, those other durable skills, those durable characteristics, that are going to determine whether or not someone succeeds or fails, in in our profession. Clearly, future clients have a stake in this. And at the risk of sounding corny, we in law schools owe it, to the rule of law to ensure that what we're turning out are properly prepared to meet the needs of clients in the future. But we also owe it to our students, our current students because for many of them, I fear we're setting them up for for failure. We all know and anyone who's been in a position of, of leadership in a law school today knows that a significant proportion of our students are gonna end up kind of unhappy, in their professional lives. We we we many of them will will burn up, and and that's not good for for anyone. And, you know, there's a lot of talk these days about a mental health crisis in the legal profession. Well, does it is it any wonder, that we we admit people who are super smart, but otherwise quite unprepared, unsuited for what they'll actually be facing for the stresses of day to day, legal practice, the stresses of day to day client service, client service. So, in addition to not necessarily doing what we do to meet the needs of the rule of law, again at the risk of sounding corny, I worry oftentimes that we're not actually meeting the needs of, of our of our current of our current students. So let me finish off with just, with just a few questions for for us all to consider. You know? Are we admitting, the wrong people? Are we not training them correctly? Of course, many of our students are the right people, but are we doing what we can to ensure that enough of them are the right people? Are we missing diamonds in the rough? You know, we're we're all familiar with students who, you know, scraped into law school and, you know, graduated with b minus averages and went yet who went on to be very, very successful, lawyers. We're also familiar with with a students who end up quitting, you know, in bitterness after a few years. So we're missing those diamonds in the rough because we're focusing on the the shiny gems that in fact are are iron pyrite rather than real real gold. Are we admitting people who've got the potential, but not doing enough to burnish, that potential? Are we not doing enough to help them cultivate those nascent skills that they may have in them at the time that they first walk in our door. Some may disagree. So I think we can ask a foundational question. Is it in fact our responsibility, excuse me, to, to address these skill sets? You know, I know some people, think that I'm quite wrong in in what I believe. I mean, I believe it quite sincerely, but other people disagree. But if it's not our role in law schools, whose role is it? I mean, surely no one would say, well, we'll just set them loose and, let them learn, by by screwing up with their clients. And that's hardly a satisfactory answer, I don't think. And are there certain skill sets that we're overvaluing, and others that we're undervaluing? I mean, certainly, I'm not sure whether or not we'd call intelligence a raw skill set. The skill test taking is a skill set, and that's something, you know, when we when we when we privilege LSAT scores, we certainly are, valuing, the the skill of high pressure, high stakes test taking. That's an important skill to be sure for every lawyer. But, are there are there ones that were undervalued? So these are all questions that I'd like, that I'd like to, to invite us all to consider after we're after we're done today. But I'll just say conclude by saying that in my view, we have a responsibility to accept students with a strong gap a grasp of durable skills, And we have an obligation to nurture those skills, throughout their time in law school. And I think that if we do that, if we recognize that and work at that, we're gonna build better lawyers and we're gonna enhance the rule of law. Thanks. Back to you, Colby. Thanks, Ian. Now that, we've established what we mean by durable skills and how law schools can adapt admissions and the approach to in program development. Let's take a look at how these skills play out in the profession. I'll pass it over to Kendra now. Thanks, Kendra. Thanks so yeah. Thank you, Colby. I'm delighted to be here with all of you and talk about this topic that's so near and dear to my heart and the work that I've done over the course of my career. As as you, Colby, mentioned in your introduction, I've had the privilege of spending time both in law schools and in law firms. So I love to serve in that I and I'm currently serving in those capacities, teaching at a law school, well-being and professional formation, where we get to talk about all of these durable skills. Many of you know my co professor, Jerry Oregon at the University of St. Thomas. He is deeply beloved, in the profession and in legal education. And so we get to work with these upper level students. We're almost completely subscribed with three l's at this point because the course sells out immediately upon opening registration and it's our delight to equip these students with the kind of skills that we're talking about today so that as they bridge into their professional careers, they have these very skills in their toolboxes. And so, what we're thinking about is, these technical versus, again, what we're calling durable skills because none of us love the phrase soft skills, right? We don't want to say that. So, we're saying these professional skills, these durable skills, these skills that help our students really go the distance. And so that's what we're trying to think about as organizations like Forbes and Deloitte have talked about, trained on these kind of skills. We sometimes in law and to hold a mirror up to ourselves had been a bit of laggards. We've been the dinosaurs saying, oh, maybe maybe these skills actually matter, but now we're starting to realize just how very much these skills do, the mindset, the core skills that complement the technical skills. And just listening to Ian's wise words over the last few minutes thinking, is it the job of law schools to equip our students? I'm with you, Ian. I firmly agree it is because if we think of law schools as the training ground for these students to launch them into success in the legal profession, they need a balance of these technical skills and durable skills. So just to dive a little bit more deeply into what we mean by those two phrases, as you can see on the left side of the screen, the technical skills are those technical substantive skills, sort of traditional skills that we think of and that any of us who are lawyers, what we learned in law school for me twenty, twenty five years ago before the advent of adding these additional durable skills into the curriculum. These were the courses and the skills that taught us to analyze complex legal problems and apply all of the different statutes and rules and case law and regurgitate all sorts of numbers and letters and all of those sorts of things and apply them to specific cases and situations. We learned how to develop and execute those strategies and argue argue so well and vehemently and zealously advocate, but maybe not with the emotional intelligence that would help us do that even better. We learned how to conduct research. That's great. We have to be able to do that and investigate things and look for those errors and problems, those that kind of, cynicism that we know we come into the profession a little bit hyper cued to do, Doctor. Larry Richards' research on the lawyer brain. We know that we come in a little cynical and questioning and and that's okay. It primes us to be good problem seekers, issue spotters, and law school exacerbates that, again, because we get reinforced for issue spotting and finding all the problems and the argument. But then we are not sort of restored on the other side with a sense of optimism and resilience and ability to to face adversity in a meaningful way, but we're sure good at finding problems. And finally, we're able to acquire and apply that new legal knowledge. That's great as things change and laws new laws are applied and certainly in this day and age on the daily on a daily basis moving and changing, hopefully, we are learning how to apply those laws. But then, what if we're lacking the adaptability? What if we're lacking the resilience, the flexibility that comes with those durable skills? So moving over to the right side of your screen, can our students communicate clearly and persuasively, not just rooted in logic and application, but really by having the emotional intelligence to read the room, to notice the facial expressions and the tone and the word choice and the energy of the person across the table or the jurors in the box or the judge at the front of the room or whoever it is that they're trying to persuade? Do they have the skills that will make them infinitely more persuasive whether or not the law is actually on their side? Can they uphold those ethical and professional responsibilities in every setting? We know that when students have higher emotional intelligence, they have a bit of a higher thermometer, barometer for sussing out what is an ethical challenge, where is my spidey sense or my smell sense coming up where I'm like, I don't think this passes muster. I might need to dig a little more deeply in this. I might need to raise this. Whatever it is, we know there's an intersection between that heightened EQ and a heightened sense of ethical responsibility and responsibility to others and we allow our students with these skills to consider the broader impact. As Ian mentioned, that obligation we have to the rule of law and to society and to these students' future clients understanding themselves with a sense of empathy and compassion in the midst of a profession that is a service profession, whoever that ultimate client is. And ideally, in some way, it is the public good. It is the rule of law, allowing these students the opportunity to learn to collaborate effectively within teams, across disciplines, and demonstrating cultural empathy, awareness, and that emotional intelligence that goes with this. And as I was thinking about our opening slides thinking, oh, COVID. These poor law students right now who who were at very, formative points in their development during COVID. What did they lose? They lost a lot of interaction that would have trained them to have emotional intelligence. So not only have we not really, underscored emotional intelligence as a core skill in our law school curriculum, but we also now are dealing with a generation that lost out on the very opportunity to interact in traditional, usual, predictable ways in middle school, high school, college, wherever COVID hit them, and so they're lacking some of these skills. I have three young adult children, two in college right now, one literally texting me today about her law school applications. So this whole topic is very top of mind for me and I started thinking about them as I was preparing for this talk thinking their texting and messaging on social media, they can't read the other when they are typing through a phone. Right? So not only COVID, but just the evolution of technology has also made it harder for them to practice the very skills that they need to succeed in communication in empathy. There's not another face on the other side of the screen to read. There's not a tone to hear. So they don't have all of the same opportunities we had even if we were just talking on our I don't know about you, but I remember the old school phones with the coily cord. I couldn't see the other person, but I could hear them. Now my young adult kiddos, again, college law school age kids or young adults, they can't see or hear the other person on the other side of that communication. It leaves them at a disadvantage. So when I get to talk to my clients who are primarily law firms now and then I work with the law school of both this faculty and it just more as a consultant opportunity, we get to talk about why EQ matters because legal practice is it is about IQ. We we know that that's an important skill. But at the end of the day, it's about people. As Ian said, these are people who are at the end of their rope in some way, in whatever way, and they need us. I always say lawyers are the butt of jokes until somebody has a problem and then we're their first call. Right? So and I think we just have to grapple with that. Clients and colleagues and juries, they make decisions based on trust and empathy like the cynic video you saw. Like, who is the most empathetic? Who is the most persuasive because you like the person? You trust the person. They have figured out a way to show you that they are trustworthy. So EQ predicts that success in leadership. I do so much training and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do it. Training leaders on emotional intelligence because we know that's what sets the tone for the culture of the entire organization. I also I was just in Chicago keynoting a talk on EQ and business development. I I was in a business development role for a while in a large law firm. I think EQ and business development go hand in hand. I actually just think business development is all emotional intelligence because it's all people. It's all about talking to people and listening to their needs and answering in a meaningful way that shows you get it and asking for the business in a thoughtful way. It's all EQ and if anybody has any questions on that intersection, please shoot me an email. I love talking about that and we know for especially our private sector attorneys, our students who become private sector, that business development, that origination is so critical and this is all so important to tie to those technical skills. For EQ, when we say that we're talking about four quadrants just so we're level setting quickly as we wrap up this portion, talking about self awareness, knowing one's own emotions and what's triggering them, self regulation, stopping yourself from responding when your emotions are running too high, too hot, when you are triggered or dysregulated, empathy, understanding what others are feeling, and then social skills, using all of that knowledge to work together to resolve conflict, to influence, to lead teams, to work with others. And we know our clients want this. Our firms and organizations need this. We know people are much better mentors and mentees. When they have these skills, they can take the feedback that they will inevitably be given, internalize it, use it rather than, being becoming dysregulated in the face of helpful feedback and that they will, as Ian said, be stand the test of time in the legal profession. Thanks, Kendra. That was great. So I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Mike who's gonna walk us through his experience with measuring these durable skills at the time of admissions in medical education. Alright. Well, thank you, everybody. It is great going last. I get the advantage of following some amazing, speakers. I am not a lawyer. I'm representing medicines. I've taught in med school and in PA across numerous other, medical fields. And and what I'm struck by most in just listening to our our prior two speakers is everybody thinks there are problems every single profession is having. And so, kinda start a little bit from the medical perspective, although you can certainly apply, the lawyer side of it, is, the how you define these durable skills. And I'm gonna tease, we we don't like soft skills. So, you know, medicine, we use non cognitive skills, which I think is just as just as bad. But, you know, it's that old game. If we said in medicine, what are three traits that you would wanna see in your personal medical provider? And you could say you're a lawyer for that matter, and you can play this game. I know we're on a weird call. You can yell it to your screen a little bit. But invariably, you're gonna say things like communication, compassion, empathy. And I'm gonna teach you and just say, did any of you say medical knowledge or knowledge, like, law knowledge? And and I'm gonna put money on the table that nobody on your first three traits said, oh, yeah. Knowledge. And I ask you why, and you might say, well, that that's a that's a given. Right? And then why is it communication, empathy, compassion, all these other durable skills, why aren't those givens? And so it's really an interesting mindset that we put all of our eggs in a single domain. And it kinda leads in a little bit to something I think is really important for us. And and that's really defining the difference between an outcome and a competency. And so an outcome is at the end of something. So this could be an exam at the end of a block of material. This could be a certification exam. But an outcome actually doesn't measure a person. It it measures the event. Whereas start flipping your mindset to a competency, which is actually future facing. So you could say at the end of law school, this graduate of my program can do x, y, and z. And that's future focused. And and really a competencies focus then becomes about a person, not the event. And it's a really it sounds it's easy to say in words, but it's really hard to shift that mindset even in our education, even how we're selecting people is are we training? Is our curriculum designed for day one practice or is it designed for meeting some magical outcome, within our program? And so not to layer this in, but we think about milestones in medicine and we kinda start from entry level, we kinda go into developing, and then we kinda go into proficiency, which is at the time of graduation. And and, of course, there's mastery and and expert beyond those levels that we see in in practice. But it's interesting because and and we use medicine, as an example. If if I take a first year professional phase student and I said, hey, you're still in foundational state. Would I expect that student to be able to diagnose some complex medical illness, develop a complex medical treatment? And the answer is, of course not. So why do we expect the very same thing in our durable skills? So for example, take professionalism. Are we seeing our students professional because they showed up to class on time, they didn't cheat, they didn't get in trouble? That's that's not competency. That's minimum threshold. That's minimum criteria of expectation. So my what I'm what I'm challenging you for is not only admission selection for these traits, but look at your curriculum. And so how are you weaving in these durable skills and mentoring these these traits in from entry learner to developing that skill set all the way out to mastery, if you will, or at least proficiency about time of of graduation. And so the way you get buy in, in my mind, is complete transparency in that process, and it's a guide by the side and flip away from Sage on the stage. And you you openly say that we think to be a great provider, great, great lawyer, it's a holistic picture of not just medical knowledge, but all of these durable sales that was mentioned by the previous worker or previous speakers that we have to train you to all of them, not just the knowledge domain. And so you've gotta get buy in by seeing outcomes, of course. I just talked about outcomes being an issue. You have to see outcome improvement, but you gotta see competency improvement, which you can measure through performance in the first year of practice, employer, surveys, culture within the program. And and, of course, accreditation across all these professional skills and domains are really starting to tease out the difference between outcome and a competency. You're starting to see all accreditations across countries, across different professions. Start asking the question, are your students, are your graduates competent, which is a different question than did they meet an outcome. And so I I I think you need both, by the way. It's not mutually exclusive, on this. And so I don't need to belabor that point a little bit, but how do we get there? And so what these you can't just say, oh, I'm gonna take this situational judgment test and that's gonna answer or solve all my problems. This is a magical tool for my, university to add to medical knowledge. It's not that it's not the case. So students are often not successful in professional schools, whether it be med school, law school, PA school, whatever, because they're not a right fit for the program. And so identifying what your institution looks like, your mission, your vision, your values, which drives the culture of your institution, which it's okay to be different. Right? So you've gotta define that for your faculty as well as your students and then select for that culture, which is driven by mission, vision, values. And that drives performance, that drives culture, that ultimately then drives outcomes and competencies. But students often, like, I call it scooping spaghetti. Right? They scoop spaghetti, throw it against the wall, see what sticks, and we wonder why they're not successful because we're mismatched on these durable skills. They may be smart, but they're not a match for the program, if that makes sense. So I'm very open is, hey, we may not be the best program for you, and that's okay. Alright? We need to select what we are. And so I think what defines culture is often the different slider bar, if you will, of durable skills. Because knowledge is knowledge. Right? You all you have to pass some exam at the end of the day, but what's different is those durable skills. And so I I would challenge you, and I'm gonna talk a little bit about implementation and action items, is be brave. I'm gonna talk about that in my next slide here in a moment. But being brave and being different. We tend to to just do what we've always done. Right? This is the way we've always done it. It works. Why would I change? And so it it I would argue it's not working. Right? Across all of these different professions. And, I think that's how you separate yourself, from the pack. We certainly previous speaker, I think Dan talked about it. I know Kendra talked about grit. Grit is a construct. Right? You've gotta define grit and look for grit. That's resiliency. These students are not defined by their GPA. They're not defined by entry exam. They're defined by other items within that application. And so start looking through that application for for grit. And then be true to that identity, whether that be your mission, your vision, your values, or what what you're stressing. Now, I'm certainly currently at the University of Tampa, but I wanna talk about I developed a program from the ground up at the University of Evansville. And there's a couple of things on implementation that I wanna stress to everybody here is we are talking about admission variables. I'm gonna challenge you to think beyond admissions. Alright? So at University of Evansville, I made the academic markers, some people wanna call them cognitive markers, I made that a simple threshold. And there's a med school in Australia that I was working with who did the same thing with great success. We made that a threshold, whatever that is, a GPA, an entry exam score, whatever that is. And then once we're once they met that, move it off to the side. Go all in on these durable skill selections. And so define what what that is for your program through your mission, vision, values. So I I did that at the University of Evansville and we looked we defined grid internally through the application process, and we started looking for what we identified as as grid. And that may be things such as holding a job, the number of classes taken at a time. It could be leadership within their undergraduate world. It doesn't matter. Whatever your program defines, through its mission, vision, or values, but we selected solely on that. We used Casper is a great screening tool for admissions, but then we went through our interview process, which is where you select. That's a very specific process. So think of your situational judgment test as a sensitivity item, if you're a staff person, where it's telling you who you don't want. Your interview process is who you want, if you will. And so we selected specifically based on these durable skills. And I got a lot of second, third pass over. Nobody wanted these students. Right? Their GPA was just too low or whatever. The bottom line was when we graduated these students, I had a lower attrition rate than all the other programs around me and my my certification rates were the highest in the region. And I take it with Passover students because they use the wrong markers in my mind. So you will get buy in from employers, faculty, students. The outcomes will follow, I promise you, if you measure the competencies on that. So things like board scores and attrition scores and so forth. My last point, that I really wanna make is, go beyond admissions. One magical thing that I've done with Casper in situational judgment test is is I identified advisers based off of their Casper scores, their z scores. And I was able to this student might need a little more help. So I was very purposeful in identifying remediation efforts and student efforts within the program way beyond just admissions. And so that also, I would say, led to that success in competencies and outcomes. So it's not just admissions tool. And I think that's a really important thing that I learned over the ten years of using, Casper. And, I'll I'll kind of leave that open there for questions, and I'll kind of put it back to to Colby for time, and, we'll go from there. Great. Thank you, for that. So, this has been a really excellent, exciting discussion, and I wanna thank all three presenters. And I kinda wanna go over some of the top three takeaways that I've, captured from from our discussion today. But before I get into those three points, I do wanna, remind you that right after that, we will be moving into the q and a portion. So please feel free to add your question a your questions to the q and a box. So one of the one of the, captions that I I, got was durable skills are really no longer a nice to have. They're kind of nonnegotiable for for future, employment. Right? This isn't just for lawyers, but as we saw with medical education, and, as we see with our own personal customer service experience, in the world, these character based and practice readiness competencies such as judgment, communication, resilience, ethical reasoning, and teamwork, they're really essential for long term success, in professional, situations. They also matter just as much as cognitive ability, and law schools, and other educational institutions really should prioritize their assessment and development. Another point, would be academic metrics alone don't identify who will thrive in school or in practice. You know, we do use the the assessments and the traditional indicators like GPA to review who can learn the, the information in these in individual programs like law, but do they really capture the interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities required for that client work later on down the line or collaboration within the program, those decision making or professional well-being. Also, if we overlook these competencies at the, top of the funnel at admissions, it might contribute to burnout for these students. Or once they get into their profession, maybe it'll work up to their, underperformance, and, maybe, it could be another opportunity to find those diamonds in the rough. And the last point that I kinda captured, it really is kind of a significant opportunity, to build healthier, more resilient, and truly, like, practice ready, lawyers. So by enhancing the admissions side with these tools, you can really reveal the skills behind the transcript, that's kind of embedded in your the professional identity of the sector, and that judgment development across the curriculum where institutions can really strengthen student outcomes, hopefully reduce burnout and prepare their graduate graduates for the realities of those modern legal practice. So as I will come over to the q and a section, I will go through some of the questions that we received. So for the panelists, kind of given what we've discussed today, how would each of you describe the kind of, student who you kinda see would be really prepared to thrive through either school or your profession. We'll go ahead and start with Kendra. Sure. I I look forward to hearing my my co panelist perspectives as well, but, clearly EQ is one of my favorite things. And I know both whenever I've been involved with an admission a quasi admissions process and certainly when I was serving as a recruiter in the law firms, I looked for that emotional intelligence on a resume or an application. I always said I loved seeing people who had been food servers, worked in the service industry because I could tell if they had done that well that they had customer service skills and they had EQ. I also loved to see students who had multiple jobs, not that they were working themselves to the bone, but that they had juggled competing priorities, that they had resilience and grit. And so I think encouraging our students I would sometimes see students who are like, should I leave that off my resume? I'm like, no. I think those those positions show the very kind of durable skills that your law school or your future employer is looking for. Mike, do you wanna follow-up? Yeah. It's it's two two things. One is completely agree. There's literature out there in the medicine world exactly to what Kendra just stated about service industry. That is been high markers for success in the medical field, right now. And we tend to use artificial surrogate markers like, prior health care experience or whatever that is out there, and all surrogate markers for emotional intelligence. And I always argue, just put emotional intelligence. If you want that to be your marker, just screen for that. Don't do a surrogate marker. And then I'm gonna bridge a little bit to a question I did receive a little bit is how do you get buy in, from key decision makers? And, honestly, you have to drag them sometimes and show them why it works because, people are very stuck in tradition, and they don't like change. And I actually when I instituted this, I got stakeholders to do my interviews and see the outcomes. And one of the things I did I did actually with Casper. We did a a longitudinal study with their psychometricians about Casper versus other markers. It will never correlate or regression to a cognitive marker. But I did find something that it did correlate to, and that was professionals and violations. I mean, the lower your Casper score was, it guaranteed to a point I did a rock curve if you're a stat geek, and we actually found a cut point where I can guarantee them to be in my office with professionals and issues. And so that's the value to me as a chair is who is gonna be my problem child, so to speak, in my program. So that's why I stress that's how you get stakeholders involvement is who's getting through the program successfully by ID not causing a ruckus for whatever that's defined. So I'll kinda pause. I kinda dominated that question a little bit. Ian, did you have anything you'd like to add? Just that I I was interested in what Kendra said. We we actually hear I I sometimes talk about McDonald's premium. Right? If if a if a a candidate had worked and flourished at McDonald's, then, they'll do fine in law school. Thank you very much. I did wanna add one thing, though, and that is some years ago, I remember talking to a consultant, based in Los Angeles, and he had been retained by one of the one of the, the AMLO, 100 firms to look at not so much recruitment, but retention. The the firm leadership was concerned about lawyers, leaving after a few years. And so the question was, what were the factors most likely to to predict stickiness in the law firm? And what, he concluded was, grades and intelligence, wasn't one of them, or weren't weren't weren't them. The two factors most likely to predict stickiness retention in law firms were first, had you been in the armed forces and secondly, had you been a varsity athlete. Because those two markers indicated resilience, grit, team ethos, loyalty, willingness to delay gratification. And so that firm then went on, to place a premium on those two things, with respect to recruitment and and and then retention in the firm afterwards. So, Ian, that that kinda leads into a a nice little follow-up question, which, you know, we all see the value of these durable skills and law graduates and graduates in in general. But these students don't always, value these skills in the same way that we do. How would you suggest that we get them to kind of understand how important these skills are? Well, that that it's actually a very good question, very perceptive question. And, it it it looks back in a way to what to what Mike said. You know, what we're talking about today, is is change, a new way, a different way of doing things. And how do you get buy in for the, for the change? So I think we first have to ask ourselves the question, you know, why is it that students don't see things necessarily the way that we do? Why is it that they don't that that they don't see value in the kinds of enduring skills that we've been talking about? The answer to that question, I think, will help determine what our strategy should be to get by. But I also think that, you know, we we don't we shouldn't shy away from, saying sometimes we know better. You know, I maybe that I could be accused of paternalism in putting it that way, but it's true. We do know better. You know? I've been a member of the bar for forty years, and and I know better with respect, than a first year student, what's important for their for their long term future. And so we we we shouldn't has it we shouldn't shy away from that, from acknowledging that fact. But the the base, answer is that we need to figure out why it is. Are we unconsciously modeling, the old fashioned indicia of success, making law review and high LSAT score and so on? If we are, then we need to think about more consciously modeling the kinds of, of things that we that we that we think are important. Great. Thanks for that. Really appreciate, all of our presenters today. I'm gonna go ahead and wrap everything up. And I do want to also let, the, today's attendees know that we are, offering or looking at, expanding Casper into the legal education field. So we do have a free pilot opportunity for anyone that's interested. You know, if you wanna add, another piece to the holistic admissions, the practice ready development, also, we'll be at AALS, to have a conversation there. But if at any time, you can always reach out to me or, any of my partners at Acuity to discuss, what we can do for the legal education sector. So thanks again. I appreciate everyone for the time that they gave us today, and I hope they enjoy the rest of everything. Thank you.