Law and leadership: Integrating leadership studies into the law school curriculum Monopoli P and McCarty S (eds)

Reviewed by: Chrysavgi Sklaveniti, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

This edited volume responds to a timely call for consolidating leadership in legal practice with legal education to meet professional demands for ethical service. It is forwarded by James MacGregor Burns, well known to Leadership readers, who is also frequently mentioned in the book and is indirectly part of it, through his Leadership Academy. As explained in the introduction by the editors, the book is grounded in a partnership between the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law with the Fetzer Institute and draws on their collaborative project LEAD: Leadership, Ethics and Democracy. In doing so, readers are introduced to a clear and definite purpose: the effort to establish the point where lawyerly skills meet leadership capabilities. With this ambition to create the lawyers’ leadership profile, the book is arranged in three parts around the following thematic questions: what is the lawyers’ role as leaders, why law students need to be trained in leadership and how this training can be included in law curricula. The first chapter in each part serves as an introduction to familiarise the reader with the theme to follow; the introductory essays do provide foundation for the following chapters, but vary in their success to engage the reader into their viewpoints. The targeted audience is legal practitioners and educators as well as leadership researchers. At the end of this review, I will consider how successful the authors have been in conveying their enthusiasm to these groups. At this time, I should mention that I come from the leadership researchers’ side and this is the lens of my review.

Taking a detailed look at the content, the first part begins with Haddon’s argument that leadership is crucial for both lawyers and legal educators. The roots of its significance are found in the fact that lawyers become leaders in a variety of settings, and thus law schools should address leadership in an academic way. The chapter proceeds with examining the kinds of leaders law schools should aim for, focusing on the lawyers’ role as problem solvers. Finally, ethics are presented as central in the development of leadership skills, responding to the need for professional integrity and civic responsibility that accompany lawyers’ status. The next essay, by Sorenson, explores where leadership theory connects with the law agenda. It starts with an apprehensive reference to the romance of leadership in order to state that although lawyers are already leaders, legal education has not yet addressed this need. Next, she presents a brief historic overview of leadership; which may be a good starting place for law professionals or educators, but is rather elementary for leadership researchers. Richard follows with his essay on the nature of lawyers and the resulting competencies that make effective leaders. This chapter is mainly preoccupied with predictive methods-tools that law firms can utilise to determine who will be the most effective leader. Further engagement with the chapter could be encouraged with more in-text referencing, which would allow readers to follow the author’s thinking, understand his focus and assimilate his propositions.

Jackson is next to advocate a new model of legal practice and the aligning skills for successful lawyer leaders. According to the author, the change in the legal business model is that clients now want to establish long-lasting relationships with law firms and make relevant selection choices based on performance metrics and compliance to ethical as well as societal standards. This chapter places more focus on the legal economy than lawyers as leaders, with the author making the connection between these two components by listing leadership skills aligned to the new model. Nevertheless, the rationale behind both the connection and the list is not explained, making it puzzling to follow the arguments. DeMouy follows and introduces readers to the world of lawyers in the context of private sector. In contrast to the legal economic model presented in the previous chapter, the author here claims that clients no longer commit to long-term relationships with their selected firms, but they are more price-driven when meeting their legal needs. Thereupon, there is a power shift from the firm to the individual lawyer who requires to be developed into a successful leader. To achieve such success, the author proposes Kouzes and Posner’s (2007) model, stating that most successful leaders employ these principles. What are missing, however, are success examples as well as a definition for ‘success’. The first part of the book ends with Edwards discussing the context of public sector. This chapter presents lawyers as an ideal fit for public service and examines three areas law schools can revise in order to develop students for the service of public good, with the emphasis predominately on the challenges of the public sector.

Davis introduces the second part and extensively explores the relevance and potential contribution of leadership theory to understanding lawyerly practice. His arguments stem from drawing a parallel between leadership and law as a process of influence. Specifically, he refers to a process of persuasion as a mixture of art and science, similar to Grint’s (2001) work. Upon that, Davis examines behavioural and contingency theories of leadership to argue that success is a mixture of technical and interpersonal knowledge. He concludes by proposing a change in the legal education paradigm to foster this type of knowledge. To strengthen the argument for inclusion of leadership education in the law curricula, Hoffmann in the next chapter discusses the ethical dimension of leadership and the moral courage to achieve change. In such manner, the author wishes to settle hesitance to include classes around leadership ‘soft skills’, in preference of technical ‘hard skills’. In the following chapter, Kelly examines the cognitive dimensions of law and leadership, in contemplation of a coherent learning experience. Sharing similar viewpoint with Haddon in Chapter 1, the author proposes that the best way to teach leadership in the law school is concentrating on problem-solving through cases or simulations.

The third part of the book is preoccupied with how leadership can actually be integrated into law curricula, suggesting an interdisciplinary approach. Blom, Nussbaum and Allen lay the foundations for this part, by providing a detailed and thoughtful description of their personal experience, which could inspire other legal educators. They amalgamate their narrative around the purpose and origins of their presented approach, the lessons they learnt along the way, the feedback they received from students and their hopes for future developments. The next chapter is dedicated to a student’s perspective on the addition of leadership into the law school. Such perspective is suitable to the purpose of the book, but it seems that the opportunity is missed. I would have preferred a number of students’ perspective that would provide a critical reflection on what leadership training means and how it creates understanding about the lawyer’s profession and responsibilities, instead of an individual, mechanical outline of interference with leadership assessment. Blom and Gilmore continue by sharing their personal story, describing how mentoring could become a process of developing leadership for legal professionals. Although content wise, they leave the reader with the questions of how this approach can be introduced into the classroom and law curriculum. Subsequently, Rhee shares his ‘functional and instrumental’ view of leadership becoming meaningful within team environment, alluding to effectiveness and teamwork. He proceeds with presenting his past educational and professional experiences in order to discuss how leadership and team production can be integrated into law school curriculum. His interest is not in criticising whether law schools prepare students for legal life, but to question whether the education provided prepares students for professional development. He champions the latter and concludes by suggesting that law schools could even look at the business school model, which includes aspects of socialisation as an integral part of their curricula.

The next chapter by Hornstein reflects well the essence and purpose of the book, as the authors states that ‘legal education is leadership education’ (p. 223). He proposes exploring leadership by engaging and reflecting upon great literature, such as that of Sophocles, Plutarch and Shakespeare. On these grounds, he is promoting a rhetorical inquiry divergent from what is typically pursued in law schools: instead of ‘why an argument is persuasive’, emphasis is on ‘how an argument inspires action’. In a similar attractive manner, Leviton, Cooperman and Grant-Skinner in the following chapter present an unusual example-incident to uncover how leadership can be developed in unlikely settings, unexpected ways and through challenging circumstances. It is an authentic description that succeeds in triggering attention and fuels reflection: as educators, are we doing the best we can to lead students’ learning? The book ends with Monopoli, one of the editors, who introduces the themes of gender, power and leadership through sharing her personal experience in designing law curricula. At this point, the book seems to come to an end in an abrupt manner; a concluding chapter, with discussion from the editors about what has been attempted and what the future could hold, would help readers to integrate insight from the collection of essays.

Altogether, critically reviewing the book, one immediate concern is the way leadership is presented as an endemic characteristic of the legal profession, equating position with leadership. The inference that a holder of a position exhibits leadership is a familiar theme amongst Leadership readers; nonetheless, is this a compelling conceptual framing for introducing leadership in the legal practice? The book is deeply rooted in the individualist traditions, with the authors often struggling with the ideas themselves: Haddon’s concern with leadership, not leaders and Blom and Gilmore’s description of good lawyering as relational. Given that leadership in the field of law is at its infancy, such tensions are natural. Still, initial assumptions about the nature of leadership impact both its rhetoric and development. On one side, everything there is about leadership is centred on the individual lawyer. Accordingly, leadership theories act as a prescription of what leadership should be and propose that the route to achieving effective leadership is an ideal leader exerting influence on external variables: lawyers-leaders are expected to fill certain profile criteria, while the presence of followers and organisational constraints are overlooked. This arrangement correspondingly indicates the relationship between leaders/lawyers-followers/clients/firm: linear one-way performance of power. On the other side, from this starting point, leadership development is preoccupied with the competencies and qualities of the leader: Blom and Gilmore in their chapter claim that they are proposing a relational method of developing leadership, but then go on to describe a mentoring procedure which empowers the mentored to develop her ‘leadership abilities’.

In the leadership arena, where thinking is more mature, debates around individualism have evolved into relational alternatives. The purpose here is to illuminate that leadership is not contained in individuals, allowing exploration of the social nature of leadership. From this departure, leadership and those involved in it might be better understood as made in the process, rather than being the outcome and producers respectively (Day, 2000). To progress this argument further into how this perspective can be integrated into curriculum, the relational elements embedded in leadership can be fostered in the classroom by advancing the Socratic Method, usual practice in legal education. This would mean that legal educators need to review their approach and understanding of Socrates’ philosophy (Vlastos, 1994), as demonstrated by Blank’s chapter. Turning to ethics, the issue seems more imposed, than pertinent: the book presents ethics as critical for the legal profession, but fails to establish ‘how’ this has implications for leadership. Furthermore, it should not be overlooked that the book has a distinct US focus, which is both limiting and stimulating; the arguments for the legal profession are anchored in the US tradition, providing insight into that world and calling for attention to the environment in which leadership is expressed. Finally, in terms of writing style, on some occasions there seems to be a disruption in the flow of ideas from chapter to chapter; this is understandable to a certain level as this is an edited book, but perhaps a following edition could address this to enable readers maintain momentum. Likewise, the chapters and the book come to an end abruptly: a concluding summary for both would be a worthwhile addition.

Bringing this review to completion, it should be said that this is an honest book that fulfils the editors’ intentions of inviting leadership into the law arena. With regards to the book’s audience, legal educators and practitioners may find it a comforting and reassuring introduction to a discussing about leadership. Leadership researchers will be introduced to a new context for their quests, but will be more demanding and slightly disappointed by the superficiality of analysis. Simultaneously, both reading audiences will be inspired by the propositions of an interdisciplinary approach for developing leadership training. Over and above, this book is a valuable inclusion in Leadership readers’ bookshelf.