Turning Law Students into Client-Service Providers

By Heather Frattone –

As we prepare our students for the “fall” recruiting season, we are increasingly focused on helping them to understand the transition from law student to client-service provider. As law students, you are educational consumers and are expected to take advantage of the school’s opportunities to develop your legal and analytical skills, your practice skills, your communication skills, your leadership skills, and your project management skills. When you step into your first job – whether it is after your first year of law school or your first post-graduate position – you must quickly and abruptly transition to the role of legal service provider. As a service provider, you are expected to inquire about and understand your client’s legal challenges in the context of its business model and to provide legal counsel that best helps your client meet its business goals. For many law students and newly minted lawyers, this transition can be challenging. After a great deal of thought, we have found two critical components to designing effective educational opportunities in this area:

1. Effective programs provide students with context by applying professionalism principles to the projects, activities and education that make up the daily life of the busy law student. By seeing how the principles enhance the work students are doing now, they will better understand how the principles will serve them when they transition to service provider. This can be done through their course work (both doctrinal and experiential), their pro bono work, or their student group leadership.

2. The message and the definition of the skills necessary need to be deliberate and intentional. It is important to find the “right” times to introduce the professional development concepts to law students and to be intentional, clear and concise when explaining the concepts and the importance of taking advantage of the opportunities to develop them. Students’ reception to different concepts will evolve as their legal education progresses, so ensuring that the messaging and programming is developmentally appropriate to each year of law school is key. We generally work to introduce the professional development concepts and provide opportunities to begin basic skill development in the first year of law school and then provide opportunities for deeper development in the second and third years.

Law students are eager to learn and understand the skills necessary for a successful transition from law student to service provider especially when given the tools and opportunities necessary to make this transition smoothly. Our job is to thoughtfully craft those opportunities to maximize the chance that students will understand their relevance and absorb the lessons so that they are able to apply them to their practice.

Blog Author

Heather Frattone serves as Associate Dean for Professional Engagement. Heather received her BS in Economics from Wharton cum laude in 1994 and her Penn Law degree cum laude in 1998. Prior to starting at Penn Law, she worked in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs under President Clinton and at the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia. As a law student, Heather interned with the Honorable Marjorie Rendell, served as a clinical student with the Public Defenders Association, and was a Louderback Legal Writing Instructor. Upon graduation, Heather joined Dechert’s litigation department and later worked in government relations and litigation at Kleinbard, Bell & Brecker. Prior to becoming Associate Dean, Heather served as Executive Director of Policy and Planning in the Chief Executive’s Office at the School District of Philadelphia, where she used her legal and advocacy skills in directing policy development for School District programs.  

Special thanks to Mariel Staszewski, Director of Career Services and Jennifer Leonard, Director of the Center on Professionalism at Penn Law who assisted Heather with this blog post.