Identifying Students’ Drive as a Compass to Being a Good Lawyer

While the ‘Priestley 11’mandates the teaching of professional responsibility in Australia, it constitutes little more than a shopping list of subjects to be covered. Students need to be able identify ethical problems. But to be a ‘good’lawyer they must also have the tools to respond effectively. In the context of alarmingly high levels of dissatisfaction and depression among lawyers and law students, those tools must be consistent with the student’s own personal and professional identity. Drawing on work from outside legal education by authors like Martin Seligman and Daniel Pink, this chapter argues that scaffolding reflective practice within a broader framework of students’ self-identified passions may means of improving law students’ resilience as well as assisting them to identify, resolve or avoid ethical problems. It will go on to offer a practical guide to assisting students to identify their underlying drive for entering practice as a frame of reference for constructing authentic responses to ethical dilemmas.