How to Make PIF Assessments More Accurate, Bias-Resistant, and Motivational for All Students
To be a lawyer is to be a member of a learned profession that society entrusts with the privilege of self-regulation. To fulfill their duties to society, lawyers must be effective lifelong learners. All knowledge workers, but especially lawyers, must be prepared for a career that includes lifelong learning. If being a lawyer necessarily means being a lifelong learner, then teaching law students the skills, values, and competencies they need to learn now to keep learning on their own for the future is an inescapable part of any law school’s educational mission. Within American law schools, one of the most important places where we collectively attend to the burdens and joys of teaching students how to identify and internalize their commitment to lifelong learning as part of their identity has been the recent movement toward education for Professional Identity Formation (PIF).