Professional Identity in Legal Education

David Trickett is the founder of The Jefferson Circle, which focuses on the re-connection of people with purpose at the individual, organizational, and societal levels through strategic discernment, assessment of underlying values and commitments people bring to life and their daily contexts, and often involves conflict transformation and the development of communities of shared commitment. He works to ensure that good ideas and aspirations can be lived out. Trickett also shares his expertise as a member of the Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Advisory Committee.

In his Voices from the Field interview, Trickett discusses the formation of professional identity in law students and the capacity to better serve clients. He goes on to contemplate the most effective ways in which we can help instill a professional identity in law students, through mentoring, a focus on service, and an institutional trajectory by schools that seeks to engage students in fundamental considerations of what it means to be a legal professional.

David Trickett served for just over six years as the President and CEO of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado. There, he also was the Henry White Warren Professor of Ethics and Leadership. At Iliff, Trickett led a fundamental repositioning of the institution that included the deployment of an array of new products and services, historic successes in customer engagement, marketing communications to a wider public than ever before, historic cost containments, and the adoption of a strategic planning process that has changed the operational and planning life of the organization.

Prior to joining Iliff, he was chairperson of the board and senior fellow at the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University in the Washington, D.C. area. In the mid-1990s, Trickett founded The Jefferson Circle to address the absolutely crucial need to attain alignment of deep life-giving principles with strategic purpose and executable performance. He put The Jefferson Circle on pause while leading Iliff, but has elected to return to this work. He is based in Denver.