Volunteering as a Form of Experiential Learning: Lessons Beyond the Textbook 

Abbigail Sullivan* 

“Every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay.”¹ The rules of professional conduct place pro bono work at the heart of the legal profession. But where do lawyers learn this responsibility? For most, it begins not in the pages of a casebook, but in the lived experiences of volunteering during law school. When volunteering at a legal aid clinic or on a pro bono project, students are exposed to the true practice of law. They meet clients who are navigating eviction, immigration, or family crises, which are problems that cannot be solved by abstract legal theories alone. These encounters make the value of service tangible because they teach more than what the classroom can offer. Volunteering in law school exposes students to lessons beyond the textbook: empathy, humility, and an understanding of systemic inequality. These experiences not only enrich learning, but also shape long-term professional habits that work to advance justice.  

The Pedagogical Value of Experiential Learning: 

The American Bar Association (ABA) amended its accreditation requirements to emphasize the importance of practical training in law school.² Students must complete at least six credit hours of experiential coursework, such as clinics, externships, or simulation-based classes.³ This shift reflects a growing recognition that doctrinal study alone does not prepare law graduates for the realities of practice. By requiring hands-on learning, the ABA signaled that professional competence demands more than learning the legal rules. It requires applying them in real contexts, engaging with clients, and developing skills that bridge the gap between theory and practice. 

Experiential learning rests on the simple but powerful idea that learning happens through doing. Rather than treating knowledge as something fixed, experiential learning emphasizes that ideas are “formed and re-formed through experience.”⁴ This approach has particular value in legal education, where doctrines often seem abstract until students see them play out in real people’s lives. Volunteering in a clinic or community setting turns legal concepts from theoretical constructs into lived realities, reshaping the way students understand and apply what they have studied in the classroom. 

The emphasis on experience also highlights that learning is not a one-time event but “a continuous process” in which “all learning is relearning.”⁵ Law students do not begin as blank slates; they carry with them assumptions about justice, fairness, and inequality.⁶ Experiential learning allows those assumptions to be tested. By encountering clients facing eviction, immigration hurdles, or systemic barriers, students are pushed to rethink prior beliefs and refine their understanding of the law’s role in society. 

Experiential learning recognizes the urgency of adaptation in a rapidly changing world. “[T]o stay abreast of events and to keep our skills up to the ‘state of the art’ requires more and more of our time and energy.”⁷ For future lawyers, this is not just about keeping pace with legal doctrine, it is about cultivating habits of reflection and adaptability that will sustain them throughout their careers. 

Lessons Beyond the Textbook: Empathy, Humility, and Inequality: 

One of the most important lessons that students learn outside the textbook is empathy. Experiential education infuses passion and context into the traditional law curriculum by connecting students with real people and their struggles.⁸ Reading about a landlord-tenant dispute in a property casebook is one thing; sitting across from a family facing eviction is another. That human encounter pushes students to see law not only as doctrine, but as a lived reality with real-world consequences. 

In the classroom, law can appear neutral and orderly, but in practice, students see how poverty, discrimination, and unequal access to resources shape clients’ lives. These encounters reveal that legal problems rarely exist in isolation. For students, the lesson is twofold: understanding how law can reinforce these barriers while also recognizing its potential as a tool for change.⁹ Working with low- and moderate-income clients helps move justice away from just being an abstract principle. It helps challenge students to think critically about the kind of lawyer they want to become. In this sense, awareness of inequality is not only about analyzing cases, but about developing the commitment to serve those most affected by them. 

Together, these lessons—empathy, humility, and awareness of systemic inequality—cultivate a deeper understanding of law as a human institution. They remind students that while textbooks can teach rules, only lived experiences can teach the responsibilities that come with applying them. 

Skill Development and Professional Habits: 

Volunteering equips law students with a range of skills that extend beyond the classroom, especially with soft skills. Soft skills “improve the performance of an individual in different and varied tasks.”¹⁰ The development of soft skills is beneficial because they improve how people interact with others while also strengthening personal performance.¹¹

Beyond skill acquisition, volunteering helps students build professional habits that endure. Early exposure to pro bono service strongly predicts whether lawyers will continue that practice throughout their careers.¹² Research on habit formation reinforces this point: habits developed during formative years of professional training are “sticky,” meaning they tend to persist even as environments change.¹³ For law students, this means that starting the habit of pro bono early can normalize service as a natural and expected part of practice, not an optional add-on. In this way, volunteering simultaneously sharpens legal skills and strengthens professional values, producing lawyers who are not only competent, but also committed to service. Service in law school does not exist in isolation; it becomes the foundation for a lifelong orientation toward public interest. 

Professional Identity Formation & Ethical Grounding:  

At its core, volunteering in law school is not just about acquiring skills or checking an experiential box. It is about shaping what kind of lawyer a student will become. Much of the dissatisfaction in legal practice stems from a lack of service orientation and a disconnect from the deeper purposes of the profession.¹⁴ Early volunteering offers a corrective. By working directly with clients and communities in need, students learn the value of service as part of their professional identity, and not as an afterthought. 

This process is as ethical as it is practical. Students see firsthand the lawyer’s role in bridging the justice gap and confronting systemic inequality, and they begin to form a sense of responsibility that goes beyond personal achievement. These experiences plant the seeds of a professional ethic grounded in empathy, humility, and a commitment to justice—qualities that textbooks alone cannot instill. 

In this way, volunteering does more than prepares students for the practice of law; it grounds them in the principles that give the profession meaning. It is here, in the blend of service and reflection, that professional identity is formed. It is here, too, that law schools can fulfill their highest purpose: not simply to produce competent practitioners, but to cultivate lawyers who are in tune to the human nature of law and committed to advancing justice throughout their careers. 

* Abbigail Sullivan, J.D. Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law Class of 2027 (Associate Editor). 

1. Minn. R. Pro. Conduct, Rule 6.1 (2005).  ↩︎
2. About Standard 303, Univ. St. Thomas Sch. L., https://law.stthomas.edu/about/centers-institutes/holloran-center/about-standard-303/ [https://perma.cc/X7RC-YUKA] (last visited Aug. 31, 2025).  ↩︎
3. Id. ↩︎
4. David Kolb, Experiential Learning: Experience as The Source of Learning and Development 26 (1984).  ↩︎
5. Id. at 28. ↩︎
6. See id. at 27. ↩︎
7. Id. at 2.  ↩︎
8. See Deborah Maranville, Infusing Passion and Context into the Traditional Law Curriculum Through Experiential Learning, 51 J. Legal Educ. 51, 57–58 (2001).  ↩︎
9. Julie D. Lawton, Teaching Social Justice in Law Schools: Whose Morality Is It?, 50 Ind. L. Rev. 813, 836 (2017).  ↩︎
10. Albina Khasanzyanova, How Volunteering Helps Students to Develop Soft Skills, 63 Int’l Rev. Educ. 363, 367 (2017).  ↩︎
11. Id. ↩︎
12. Deborah Rhode, Pro Bono in Principle and in Practice, 53 J. Legal Educ. 413, 439 (2003).  ↩︎
13. See Alex Foster, The Habit Blueprint: Unlocking Your Full Potential 5–9 (2024).  ↩︎
14. See Deborah Rhode, The Trouble with Lawyers 2 (2015).   ↩︎