Date: Thursday, May 29, 2025, from 1 – 2 pm EST/12 – 1 pm CT/11 am – 12 pm MT/10 – 11 am PT
Join the AALS Section on Leadership for an engaging and thought-provoking webinar exploring the vital role scholarship plays in the emerging national movement to embed leadership development firmly within legal education. Panelists will share insights into the impact of past and current scholarship, as well as share their thoughts on innovative practices and strategic priorities to further the integration of leadership into legal education curricula and to supports the development of lawyer-leaders who are prepared to meet today’s complex challenges with integrity, creativity, and vision.
Panelists
Neil Hamilton, Holloran Professor of Law and Co-director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions, University of St. Thomas School of Law
Neil W. Hamilton is Holloran Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. He served as Interim Dean in 2012 and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs twice at St. Thomas. From 1980-2001, he served as Trustees Professor of Regulatory Policy at William Mitchell College of Law. He has taught Professional Responsibility and an ethics seminar to law students and professionals for over 30 years.
He is the author of four books, over seventy law journal articles, and over 100 shorter articles as a bi-monthly columnist on professionalism and ethics for the Minnesota Lawyer from 1999-2012. Most recently, he published Roadmap: The Law Student’s Guide to Preparing and Implementing a Successful Plan for Meaningful Employment (ABA Books 2015), which received the American Bar Association’s Gambrell Award for excellence in professionalism.
Among other awards from the practicing bar, the Minnesota State Bar Association gave him its highest honor, the Professional Excellence Award, in 2004. He received the University of St. Thomas Presidential Award for Excellence as a Teacher and Scholar in 2009. And in 2012, Minnesota Lawyer honored him again for outstanding service to the profession and placed him in its Circle of Merit for those who have been honored more than once.
The Holloran Center, which Professor Hamilton directs, focuses on interdisciplinary research, curriculum development, and programs to help the next generation form professional identities with a moral core of responsibility for self and responsibility and service to others. Hamilton’s research and scholarship likewise focuses on the professional formation of new entrants into the ethics of the professions, particularly the legal profession.
Kenneth Townsend, Executive Director, Wake Forest University Program for Leadership and Character
Kenneth Townsend is the Executive Director of Leadership and Character in the Professional Schools, Teaching Professor in the Wake Forest School of Law, and a Presidential Higher Education Fellow. A recipient of the Truman Scholarship for Public Service and the Rhodes Scholarship, he earned a B.A. from Millsaps College, an M.Phil. from the University of Oxford, and a J.D. and M.A.R. from Yale University. Prior to joining Wake Forest, he worked at Millsaps College as Special Assistant to the President, Assistant Professor of Political Science, and Founding Executive Director of the Institute for Professional and Civic Engagement and, before Millsaps, as a Fellow in the University of Mississippi’s Barksdale Honors College and Lott Leadership Institute. A licensed attorney and frequent commentator on public affairs, he has taught courses in ethics, political theory, public policy, and constitutional law at Millsaps College, University of Mississippi, and Yale University. He teaches “Professional Responsibility” and “Leadership and Character in the Law” at the Wake Forest School of Law. His research focuses on the relationship between law and morality, leadership in the law, and the ethical formation of professionals.
Moderator
Leah Teague, Professor of Law, Baylor University School of Law
Leah Teague is a professor at Baylor Law School and director of its award-winning Leadership Development Program. She created and teaches Baylor Law’s Leadership Engagement and Development course and is a national advocate for integrating leadership and professional identity formation into legal education. Professor Teague played a key role in establishing the AALS Section on Leadership. She served as its Chair in 2020 and is currently on the Section’s Executive Committee. She speaks and writes frequently on the essential role of leadership education in preparing law students to be difference-makers in the profession and in society.
