Recent Scholarship and Research:

The research program of the Holloran Center is currently focused on two themes:
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1. Fellow Hank Shea is exploring what professionals can learn from others' mistakes in a book with chapters by former white collar offenders about lessons learned, possible preventive steps and the importance of ethical culture in an organization. The book will have an accompanying video interview with the offender for each chapter. 
   
   
2. Professor Neil Hamilton, Director of the Holloran Center, and Verna Monson, Fellow, believing that an ethical leader in the peer-review professions must first internalize and live a high degree of professionalism, are exploring a career-span developmental concept of professionalism in two empirical research projects. (See below for more information).
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More information on Professor Hamilton and Fellow Monson's current empirical research projects:

First, Hamilton and Monson are working on project titled: "A Career Span Model of Professional Ethics: How Exemplary and Entering Attorneys Understand the Meaning of Professionalism" 

The Carnegie Foundation’s study of legal education, Educating Lawyers (2007), states a need to “revitalize legal preparation” by focusing on the development of each student’s ethical professional identity (professionalism) through the use of research-validated pedagogical approaches and acculturation processes. However, the Carnegie study reported no research on the extent to which legal education influences results in the internalization of the profession’s ethical-social values into students’ personal and professional identities. The American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation process is also increasing its focus on assessment of outcomes.

The study proposed here provides some of the foundational research necessary for legal education (and education in the peer-review professions) to more effectively foster student ethical professional identity.

The major goals of this study are to:

§  Provide a research-validated model of an ethical professional identity. The resulting model will both help resolve the current confusion in the scholarly literature on the definition of professionalism and give direction to curricular and pedagogical efforts to help students develop into what Carnegie calls the “apprenticeship of ethical identity formation.” The definition also provides a basis for assessment.

§  Determine if there is evidence of a career-long development in the formation of an ethical professional identity. Educating Lawyers notes that many law faculty and students believe both that “by the time students enter law school, it is too late to affect their ethical commitment and professional responsibility” and that “character is established earlier in life.”  Our study aims at refuting both beliefs.  

Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan’s (1982, 1994) research demonstrates that how we make sense of who we are within the world – the core of our identity -- can and does evolve throughout the lifespan. How do exemplary lawyers make sense of their role as professionals?  How do their conceptions of self relate to Kegan’s stages of identity development? How do their conceptions of professionalism vary from early-career or entering law students?

Through interviews and dialog with legal exemplars, we examine the nexus of lawyer understandings of professionalism with our definition based on a review and synthesis of the American Bar Association’s reports on professionalism and Model Rules, as well as research by the Carnegie Foundation. Through bracketing exemplars’ understanding of professionalism with those of early-career attorneys and law students in geographically diverse regions, we will learn how attorneys’ understandings of professionalism may evolve throughout their career. Employing methodologies used at Harvard Business School (Forsythe, Snook, & Lewis, 2007), we will conduct in-depth interviews with approximately 80 exemplary attorneys about their understanding of an ethical professional identity and how they make sense of their role within society. We will also conduct a study of lawyer professional identity development for both the entering class and the five-year alumni class in four law schools in diverse regions. Our research will guide development of an approach for fostering lawyer ethical professional identity during and after law school, and will contribute knowledge in career-span professional identity development for other peer-review profession.

This research will result in several articles and a book. 

The second Hamilton and Monson research project is an article titled "The Empirical Relationship Between Professionalism and Professional Effectiveness in the Practice of Law."

This paper examines the relationship between professionalism and effectiveness through a review of empirical literature from the social sciences and the professions. In both peer-reviewed and industry studies, increased capacities for professionalism (e.g. personal conscience defined as perceptual clarity and empathy, moral judgment, moral identity, and moral implementation skills) were related to a wide range of effectiveness outcomes as assessed by clients and experienced professionals. These effectiveness outcomes include (1) increased satisfaction with the professional’s services, (2) decreased likelihood the professional experiences malpractice claims or complaints, and (3) increased likelihood the professional will detect or report wrongdoing. Evidence indicates that professionalism is not a fixed trait, but rather it can be enhanced and developed across the career span.

Link to SSRN: "The Empirical Relationship Between Professionalism and Professional Effectiveness in the Practice of Law".