Lawyers as Leaders: Why It Matters and What It Takes

About Barry Z. PosnerDonald J. Polden

Donald J. Polden is dean emeritus and professor of law at Santa Clara University where he served as dean of the School of Law for ten years. He is a well-recognized authority on leadership education and development for lawyers and law students. He drew national attention to the need for more formal and research-based scholarship and curriculum development in legal education through the early creation of a law school course on lawyers as leaders. Professor Deborah Rhode of Stanford another early pioneer of lawyer leadership education referred to Don as truly a founding father of the field of lawyers and leadership. Don also is a demonstrated leader serving as dean of two major law schools from 1993 to 2013 and promoting legal education within the American Bar Association and the Association of American Law Schools. His list of significant leadership roles includes chair of the ABA committee that established accreditation standards for more than two hundred law schools leading dozens of law school accreditation teams and serving as president of the Memphis Bar Association to name a few. While at Santa Clara University Don has served as director of the law schools Center for Global Law and Policy responsible for ten international legal education programs several of which he taught in while also lecturing on comparative law at universities in China and Hungary. Don is frequently called upon to serve as a mediator arbitrator and judicial officer in many Santa Clara campus disciplinary proceedings. Following service as Santa Claras dean Don has been actively engaged in teaching and scholarship especially in the areas of leadership development professional identity formation of law students and new lawyers and lawyering skills and competencies. He also continues to teach corporate sports and antitrust law and cofounded and led Santa Claras nationally prominent Institute for Sports Law and Ethics. Don consults with law firms on leadership development of their lawyers such as intellectual property and corporate law powerhouse Haynes Boone and lectures at the U.S. Armys Judge Advocate General graduate program on leadership development of U.S. Army lawyer officers the University of Calgary law school and others. Don created and leads Santa Claras Institute for Lawyer Leadership Education which has conducted several national conferences and workshops on educating lawyers and students in leadership in the legal profession including five leadership workshops for legal education hosted by Santa Clara from 2005 to 2013. He was instrumental in the 2018 launch of a new Section on Leadership for the Association of American Law Schools. This section includes more than six hundred members representing nearly one hundred law schools courses and programs. The section meets annually to promote leadership education in law schools advance legal scholarship concerning law and leadership and arrange programming. In 202021 Don served as chair of the section. Don received an undergraduate degree in business economics from The George Washington University and his JD from Indiana University School of Law. During law school he wrote for the Indiana Law Review and following graduation served as a judicial law clerk on both state appellate and federal trial courts. He practiced antitrust law including participating in five federal jury trials and he argued several cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court. Don is licensed to practice law in the state of Iowa and federal courts. Don has been teaching leadership for lawyers classes for more than a decade and is a frequent speaker at national conferences other law schools classes and within law firms on leadership and the legal profession. He is the author of numerous law review articles on lawyer leadership which have been published in the Baylor Law Review Santa Clara Law Review the Hofstra Law Review the Tennessee Law Review and the Tennessee Journal of Law and Policy. His antitrust scholarship has been published in the Harvard Journal on Legislation and his work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court. Don coauthored Sports Ethics and Leadership and Leading in Law: Leadership Development for Law Students (with Barry Posner) and he has authored several book chapters on lawyer leadership employment law and government regulation law. Don received the Edwin Owens Lawyer of the Year award given by the Santa Clara University Law School. Barry Z. Posner is the Michael J. Accolti S. J. Professor of Leadership at Santa Clara University and chair of the Management and Entrepreneurship Department in the Leavey School of Business where he previously served for twelve years as dean six years as associate dean for graduate programs and six years as associate dean for executive education. Barry has received the Association for Talent Developments highest award for Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance. He has been recognized as one of the top fifty leadership coaches in America ranked among the most influential HR thinkers in the world by HR magazine and Inc. magazine included him among the worlds top seventy-five leadership and management experts. Barry is the coauthor (with Jim Kouzes) of the award-winning and best-selling leadership book The Leadership Challenge. Now in its seventh edition with more than three million copies in print the book continues to be a groundbreaking research study combining keen insights with practical applications and has been translated into twenty-two foreign languages. It is listed among The 100 Best Business Books of All Time receiving book-of-the-year honors by the American Council of Health Care Executives and Fast Company and the Critics Choice Award from the nations book review editors. Kouzes and Posners Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) has been called the most reliable up-to-date leadership instrument available today. The 360-degree online version has been completed by more than four million people. Barry has coauthored other award-winning inspiring and practical books on leadership: Everyday People Extraordinary Leadership: How to Make a Difference Regardless of Your Title Role or Authority; Leading in Law: Leadership Development for Law Students; Leadership in Higher Education: Practices that Make a Difference; Stop Selling & Start Leading; Learning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals for Becoming an Exemplary Leader; Turning Adversity into Opportunity; Finding the Courage to Lead; Great Leadership Creates Great Workplaces; Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It Why People Demand It; The Truth about Leadership: The No-Fads Heart-of-the-Matter Facts You Need to Know; Encouraging the Heart: A Leaders Guide to Rewarding and Recognizing Others; A Leaders Legacy; Extraordinary Leadership in Australia and New Zealand; Making Extraordinary Things Happen in Asia; and The Student Leadership Challenge. Barry is an internationally renowned scholar who has published more than one hundred research and practitioner-oriented articles in such publications as the Harvard Business Review Academy of Management Journal Journal of Applied Psychology Human Relations Personnel Psychology Journal of Selling and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He has served on a number of public and nonprofit boards such as the American Institute of Architects Berkeley Food Network Center for Excellence in Nonprofits Global Womens Leadership Network Sigma Phi Epsilon Fraternity SVCreates and Uplift Family Services. He received an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of CaliforniaSanta Barbara a masters degree from The Ohio State University in public administration and his PhD in organizational behavior and administrative theory from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. At Santa Clara he has received several outstanding teaching and leadership honors including the Presidents Distinguished Faculty Award and the Schools Extraordinary Faculty Award. Barry has been a visiting professor at the University of Western Australia Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Sabanci University (Istanbul) the University of Auckland (New Zealand) and Seattle University. He has made presentations and conducted leadership development programs for corporations across the globe and has been involved with leadership development efforts at more than seventy-five college campuses.