Law students focus most of their legal education on learning rules, frameworks, and procedures. They study precedent, master legal analysis, and develop the technical skills required to succeed in the classroom and on the bar exam. Yet one of the most important skills they will need as lawyers is rarely listed in a syllabus: adaptability.
We all know that the legal profession is constantly evolving, particularly with new technologies and shifting legal frameworks. Every day, lawyers are faced with new client problems, reinterpreted precedent, and shifting career paths. The lawyers that thrive are those that can adapt to meet the challenges.
Many high-achieving students arrive in law school believing success is always knowing the answer. They seek certainty, but the law is characterized by ambiguity. How many times have we all said “it depends” on a daily basis? Lawyers need to be able to confront situations where the answers are unclear.
Teaching adaptability helps bridge this gap between new law students’ expectations and the realities of being a lawyer. Law professors and ASPs should create opportunities for students to learn that being adaptable is part of the profession.
- Normalize Course Corrections
One of the most effective ways to teach adaptability is to normalize adjustment. Many new students view having to change strategies as evidence that they failed. In reality, effective learners constantly adjust their strategies.
Academic support professionals can help teach this by normalizing and guiding students in adjusting. For instance, students who realize their outlining method isn’t working should explore other approaches. Receiving disappointing exam results should lead to modified study techniques. These are all instances where students can learn adaptability that can later be carried into their career.
- Create Opportunities for Productive Struggle
Adaptability develops through experience. Students cannot learn flexibility if everything is predictable. We shouldn’t create unnecessary obstacles, but we should provide opportunities to navigate complexity. For instance, open-ended hypotheticals and practice questions with multiple plausible arguments help students better understand uncertainty in the legal profession. Reflection exercises after assignments also help students process unexpected outcomes and consider how they might approach the situation differently in the future.
It can be scary as a professor to provide open-ended problems because you also might not know the answer. It’s difficult to admit that you don’t know when so many eyes are staring at you. I’ve gotten some brutal comments from students about my not knowing answers to my own hypotheticals, even after explaining to the students that I can’t 100% predict what a judge would do with the imaginary case. But these exercises help students understand that being a lawyer comes with uncertainty, and we need to be able to move forward with an open mind to adapting to new situations.
- Teach Reflection as an Adaptability Tool
Adaptable lawyers learn from challenges. Law students may not have had to engage in reflective practices in previous environments, but they should learn to before they go out into the legal profession. Reflection helps identify what worked, what didn’t, why a strategy succeeded or failed, and what changes should be made moving forward. Being able to answer these questions in the law school environment will help students answer these same questions in their careers. Reflection transforms an experience into learning.
- Model Adaptability
Students learn as much from observing educators as they do from formal instruction. When we revise a workshop based on feedback, experiment with new teaching methods, and share lessons learned from professional challenges, we’re demonstrating that adaptability is a professional strength. I even go so far as to tell students when I’m using a method that came from feedback from an earlier class so they can more easily see me being adaptable. Students benefit from seeing that even experienced professionals continue to learn and adjust.
- Connect Adaptability to Professional Identity
Perhaps most importantly, adaptability should be framed as part of what it means to be a lawyer. Effective lawyers learn new areas of law, respond to changing client needs, and navigate unexpected developments. Adaptability is an essential component of professionalism. Helping students see and understand this connection encourages them to view adaptability as fulfilling their professional responsibilities.
Legal educators often say that students come to law school to learn how to think like a lawyer. Thinking like a lawyer must include adaptability. By helping students embrace change, learn from setbacks, and remain flexible in the face of uncertainty, we prepare them for exams, bar passage, and long, successful careers in a profession that will continue to evolve. After all, the most successful lawyers are the ones who know how to adapt when challenges arise.
(Dayna Smith)
