Character Strengths in Law

For the past few years it has been my great honor and privilege to support the work of Professor Lisle Baker at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Massachusetts.

The scene of an embarrassing but fun experience in a moot court competition during my own law school experience, I never thought I would be back in the school sharing my knowledge with students.

Thanks to Professor Baker, a forward thinking law professor concerned about the wellbeing of stressed law students and future lawyers, I have been invited many times to bring the science of #characterstrengths to these students as one of the many tools that Professor Baker offers to help students navigate law school and life.

Apart from the surprise of being back at the scene of my previous demise, another surprise came from aggregating the character strengths rankings of hundreds of law students over several years.

"Not what we would expect"

Students have been pleasantly surprised to discover that strengths like Honesty, Kindness, Love and Fairness show up over and over as strengths they endorse as top strengths. Professors have been excited by the discovery that, when they enter law school at least, their students come for the best of reasons.

The BIG surprise though has been the strength of Humor.

Compared to the rest of the population which endorses humor as a top strength less than 20% according to the analysis from the current version of the VIA Survey[1], the law students endorse it 40-45% of the time. And why does this matter? Well one of the observations by the VIA Institute on this particular strength is that "It is also a valuable method of coping with distressing situations."

I look forward to working with more law students in the future and to discovering more about how we can develop character strengths awareness and use to improve outcomes for students, lawyers and their clients!

From Professor Baker

In this guest blog for Baylor Law, Professor Baker shares insights on why character strengths based on research by Dr Martin Seligman and Dr Christopher Peterson for the VIA Institute on Character

Ruth Pearce?is a Coach, Speaker, Author, LinkedIn Learning Instructor - offering courses for #projectmanagers in motivation and mindfulness. Ruth loves working with groups to uncover and cultivate character strengths, bring out the best in all of us, and build collaborative and inclusive communities in every organization.

Ruth's book?Be a Project Motivator: Unlock the Secrets of Strengths-Based Project Management?was published by?Berrett-Koehler?in 2018. It is available from?Amazon,?Barnes & Noble?and the publisher.

[1] TECHNICAL REPORT The VIA Assessment Suite for Adults: Development and Initial Evaluation Revised Edition Robert E. McGrath, PhD. February 2019 available here.