Today’s post is twofold. First, a quick reminder about some end of year/early new year professional development events that you may want to attend. And second, some thoughts on modeling respect as an opportunity for professional development for you and your students.
Here are some upcoming events that you may not want to miss:
- Webinar: Lessons Learned from the NextGen Bar Administration (Nov 19, 2026)
- NECASP (December 3, 2026 – Suffolk Law School, Boston, MA; in person/hybrid option available)
- AALS Annual Meeting (January 5 – 8, In person – New York City)
And, of course, to attend professional development activities, one needs to make space during the semester to do so. Which leads to the next topic, professional development through respect.
Aretha said it best; speakers on, click here to play the music, and keep reading…
Setting boundaries with our students is not about creating distance, but rather a means to instill professional accountability and teach the expectations of legal practice.
Academic and bar success professionals occupy a unique position in the development of future attorneys. We are educators, mentors, advisors, and often among the first professional role models students encounter as they begin their legal careers. Our responsibility extends beyond teaching analytical skills. We also need to prepare students to enter a profession in which respect and professional judgment are essential.
Yet, in our efforts to remain accessible, supportive, and responsive to students, we sometimes undermine this responsibility by setting soft boundaries.
Here are some examples that strike a balance between support and respect:
1. Communicate reasonable response times and repeatedly reinforce them.
Technology has made professors more accessible than ever. Students can send emails at any hour, submit questions through learning management systems, and request virtual meetings with relatively little effort.
You may also be in a position where you are supporting traditional and non-traditional students. That can make it difficult to manage responses when students are contacting you all hours and days of the week.
Including language about response times in your emails and/or syllabus may assist: “I welcome your questions and encourage you to communicate when you need assistance. I respond to student emails within two business days. Please plan your coursework accordingly and recognize that receiving a timely, but not necessarily immediate, response is the common practice in our profession.”
This boundary develops respect because it teaches students the importance of time management, awareness of another person’s time, and instills patience. But remember, respect is a two-way street, so if your availability changes unexpectedly, you should also communicate this to your students.
2. Create and share processes for students to advocate for themselves without disregarding professional boundaries.
Adjusting to law school’s academic rigor and grading processes can be the biggest pain point for many first-year law students. Emotions and reactions run high when a student receives their first round of feedback or substandard result on an assessment. Human nature may cause a student to disregard professional norms.
To help curtail human nature and teach measured approaches, create and share a process for students to debrief their assessments early in the semester. For example, “I encourage you to ask questions about your assessment and seek further clarification after you review your work. Upon receiving outcomes on your assessments, please take the next 48 hours to review. After 48 hours, you may request additional review by sending a proposed 30-minute meeting agenda or a list of open-ended questions about your assessment citing the criteria. This will allow us to have a productive conversation grounded in the assessment standards.”
This approach teaches students to advocate effectively. A successful attorney must be able to handle a difficult communication from a judge, hear an opposing counsel’s position, or receive feedback from a supervising attorney without allowing frustration to undermine professionalism.
3. Establish expectations for meaningful preparation before individualized academic assistance.
A colleague recently encouraged me to be more selective in my individual meeting process. Not every student can or should be assisted during individual meetings. Without established norms for individual meetings, students may arrive unprepared or with an expectation that the individual meeting should serve as a substitute for the time they should have spent paying attention in class. One way to establish better norms around individualized academic assistance is to share meeting expectations as part of your course syllabus or department policy.
For example, “I’m happy to work through the material with you during individual office hours meetings. Out of respect for our time, please arrive with two to three written talking points. This is also what I refer to as an agenda. If you wish to review assessment, you must bring all materials with you to the meeting. All professional meetings, including my office hours, begin with rapport building. We will then spend our time focused on the agenda. There may be times when I request that you meet with me during office hours. This request is not optional. It is my expectation that you will reply to this request and schedule your meeting within two business days as that is our course’s established communication norm. In mirroring our profession, your outcomes in the course could receive professional sanctions should you disregard my meeting request.”
If you are not teaching a course, listing these norms on your office door or sharing them via email with your students – either in writing or through an instructional recording are potential alternatives that achieve this process oriented goal.
Learning to respect another professional’s time begins with respecting one’s own responsibility to prepare. An “open-door policy” does not mean a disregard for thoughtful preparation.
And remember, respect must be modeled, not merely demanded. Setting these boundaries creates a strong tone to begin your work but sustaining the norm through a busy semester is often the most challenging. Before you set your boundaries, authentically examine your own professional practices to identify areas that may need more consistency or improvement. The last thing you want to do is to set standards so high that you consistently do not achieve them thus resulting in the students losing respect for you.
If we expect future attorneys to respect the time, boundaries, and professional responsibilities of others, we must be willing to model those expectations—and teach them—in our programs.
(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)
