Track 3
Making the Shift to Mutual Care: How One School Is Empowering Student Personal and Professional Well-Being Through Institutional Investment in Mutual Care
January 21, 2022
Start Time: 12:30 pm
Duration: 60 Minutes

This session details the shift from a lens of self-care as an individual responsibility to an institutional culture of mutual care where well-being is incorporated into systems. Through an interdisciplinary model, we strive to promote the personal and professional skills needed to become well-rounded practitioners who incorporate well-being as essential to their professional responsibility and as the cornerstone of longevity in the field.

Our goal is to create a culture of mutual care, where faculty, staff, and administration demonstrate their investment in all students’ personal and professional well-being. Systems are adapted or created with the well-being of students, faculty, and staff in mind. Some examples include:

  • Pre-orientation workshops and orientation programming focused on mental health.
  • First-year curriculum containing two courses with an emphasis on academic support, personal well-being, and professional identity development.
  • Upper-level coursework in Resilient Practice for Clinical Students, which incorporates the tenants of trauma-informed care into the law school classroom.
  • Our offices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Career and Professional Development include aspects of personal and professional well-being in their programming.
  • Our schoolwide strategic plan includes a focus on training opportunities for faculty and students regarding resilient and trauma-informed practice.

Learning Objectives

  • Adopt well-being as a skill necessary to the competent and successful practice of law.
  • Develop strategies to shift the burden of well-being from entirely law student self-care to a culture of mutual care between the law student and the institution.
  • Build relationships and well-being programming throughout all departments.