CBA Presidential Visit & Happy Hour

Please join us on Tuesday, January 24 as we welcome CBA President Ryann Peyton at the BCBA office. Ryann will be discussing current happenings at the CBA, and will be presenting a CLE program on Mentoring Professional Identity. Following the program, we will hold a happy hour event in the office and front patio. A special thank you to Peek Goldstone, LLC, our sponsor for this event. Please find a description of the CLE program below.

Mentoring a Professional Identity

It used to be that in the legal profession, experienced lawyers would hand down a “professional identity” to new lawyers through apprenticeships and clerkships. In today’s legal profession, many new lawyers lack opportunities for face time with seasoned attorneys, and the notion of legal apprenticeships have all but disappeared entirely. For many lawyers, personal relationships with veteran lawyers who model professional identity and successful practice may be inaccessible or unfeasible. Nevertheless, it is paramount that every attorney develop their own professional identity to serve as a compass, a refuge, and an aspiration for weathering the practice of law.

Our discussion will focus on the role of professional identity in creating a successful legal career, including the correlation between poorly developed professional identity and heightened burn out, unprofessionalism, and disciplinary issues in practice. The goal is to move away from the common, simplistic professional identity of most attorneys and develop a more holistic, positive identity which comprises all the professional characteristics the lawyer currently embodies and wishes to embody in the future. This training also provides a practical, interactive experience for participants to develop a written description of their holistic professional identity.

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