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2 J.L. Teaching & Learning 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/jnlolwtch2 and id is 1 raw text is: SYMPOSIUM INTRODUCTION INTERROGATING THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM: IMPLICATIONS FOR FORMATION OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY David I. C. Thomson* In its landmark 2007 report on legal education, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching focused its strongest criticism on the conclusion that law schools were not paying sufficient attention to the formation of professional identity in their students.1 This was a relatively new concept to legal educators, although one they may have addressed occasionally in some courses and clinical offerings.2 But the Carnegie Report put a spotlight on the obligation as follows: The apprenticeship of professional identity ... include[s] the virtues of integrity, consideration, civility, [and] conceptions of the personal meaning that legal work has for practicing attorneys and their sense of responsibility toward the profession.3 It is instructive to remember that the Carnegie Report was part of a series of reports on education for the professions and included reports on the training of doctors, nurses, clergy, and engineers.4 In each report, Carnegie Foundation authors emphasized the professional formation of the student.5 However, perhaps because the legal profession already had a code of professional conduct6 and the ABA already required every law school to teach professional ethical rules,7 many legal educators did not understand what exactly was missing. It did not help that the report unintentionally blurred the distinction between the required course in ethics (and its emphasis on the ethical rules) that has long been a part of legal education and the new concept introduced in the report: theformation ofprofessional * Professor of the Practice of Law and John C. Dwan Professor of Online Learning, University of Denver, Sturm College of Law. 1 See WILLIAM M. SULLIVAN ET AL., EDUCATING LAWYERS: PREPARATION FOR THE PROFESSION OF LAW 14 (2007) [hereinafter Carnegie Report]. 2 See id. at 12-14. 3 Id. at 132. 4 Id. at 15. 5 See Anne Colby & William Sullivan, Formation ofProfessionalism and Purpose: Perspectives from the Preparationfor the Professions Program, 5 THOMAS L.J. 404, 405, 410 (2008). 6 MODEL RULES OF PRO. CONDUCT PMBL. PARA. 7 (AM. BARASS'N 2013). 7 ABA STANDARDS FOR APPROVAL OF L. SCHS., Standard 303(a)(1) (2023-24).