1. Abstracts
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Image of Sharry AikenAffiliation: Professor, ŸĆĐăֱȄ

Country: Canada

Abstract 1: Beyond Bans: AI Literacy, Reflective Practice, and Assessment Integrity in Legal Education

 This co-authored paper with Andrea Speltz examines how the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping legal education, disrupting traditional assessment practices and opening new opportunities for innovation in teaching and learning. Drawing on a multi‑year collaboration developing an online graduate diploma in immigration and citizenship law at Queen’s University, including instructor reflections, anonymized student work samples, and course‑level assessment data, the paper advances an argument for integrating reflective practice (RP) pedagogies (Leering 2019, 2023) to prepare students to engage with GenAI ethically and effectively in both law school and practice.

The analysis synthesizes recent scholarship and institutional policy guidance to propose a structured model of AI literacy for law students, distinguishing between domains in which GenAI tools can support learning—such as editing, feedback, and study planning—and domains in which they remain unreliable, including critical analysis, legal research, and accuracy in the face of bias (Bliss 2024). Empirical and practice‑based observations from the diploma program indicate that, when carefully scaffolded, GenAI‑supported activities can enhance formative assessment, deepen student engagement, and promote writing development. At the same time, the paper situates this work within emerging critical literature that cautions that uncritical or unregulated reliance on GenAI may undermine critical thinking, compromise assessment integrity, and reproduce or amplify systemic bias (Veale et al, 2025). 

Rejecting blanket prohibitions on GenAI as both unenforceable and pedagogically unsustainable, the paper argues for embedding GenAI within student workflows through rigorously designed RP tasks that require documentation, analysis, and critical evaluation of AI‑generated outputs. This RP‑centred design, the presentation contends, can foster critical thinking and metacognition while supporting the development of ethical, innovative, and accountable legal professionals, and the session will conclude by outlining practical parameters for implementing such activities and assessments in law curricula.

Where presenting: ŸĆĐăֱȄ Law virtual Symposium

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Abstract 2: Reflective Practice in the Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Refugee Law

This presentation is co-presented with Christa Bracci and Andrea Speltz. This paper describes a multi-year collaboration to design and deliver rigorous reflective practice instruction across the curriculum in the online Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Citizenship Law at Queen’s Law. Grounded in a program-level learning outcome that requires students to self-assess their developing competencies and develop a concrete plan for ongoing professional growth, we position reflective practice as a skill in itself, one which is central to sustained competency development during and, more importantly, beyond formal study. Our pedagogical approach focuses on the process—not the substance—of reflection: we provide explicit frameworks that model rigorous, evidence-informed inquiry while allowing students to select subject matter from their own learning experiences that they feel warrants examination. The program-wide curriculum begins with a foundational unit on reflective practice theory in the introductory course; incorporates scaffolded formative exercises throughout; and culminates in the creation of a reflective practice portfolio. In this portfolio, students document their own development across courses and articulate a forward-looking plan for continued professional growth after graduation. This paper will share practical educational design strategies and transferable tools to support meaningful integration of reflective practice into course curricula, especially in the context of pre-professional education.

Bio: Sharry Aiken is a law professor and founding academic director of the Graduate Diploma in Immigration and Citizenship Law (GDipICL) at Queen’s. She co-developed the flagship GDipICL "Foundations" course and continues to collaborate with colleagues Andrea Speltz and Christa Bracci in the design and refinement of skills instruction and assessment in the program.competency. 

Where presenting: Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Conference and ŸĆĐăֱȄ Law virtual Symposium

Presentation

Image of Matthew AtkinsonAffiliation: Senior Lecturer, University of South Australia and Managing Solicitor, UniSA Legal Advice Clinic

Country: Australia

Abstract: Teaching Students to Reflect (and Reflecting on How) 

Teaching reflection in law school can be especially challenging. So much of legal education trains students to detach from their feelings, be “objective,” and find the “right answer” in a revered rule-based system. Students learn that law and its practice privilege efficacy, certainty, and rigid analytic thinking. They obsess over grades, strive for perfection, and fear showing vulnerability. In this context, asking students to slow down, sit with ambiguity, and examine their own role within that rule-based system and its practice can feel risky, uncomfortable, and, at times, counter-cultural. 

This presentation shares how I introduce reflection in my CLE course. In the first class, I deliberately position reflection as core to lawyering rather than a soft add-on, beginning by asking students why they enrolled and what they hope to gain. By combining scholarship on reflection, Mentimeter, and classroom discussion, I invite students to engage in self-reflection, reflection on practice, and critical reflection. I connect this discussion to students’ favourite topic assessment and provide an exemplar of a past student’s reflective writing. With this presentation, I hope to invite reflection among participants and generate practical ideas for cultivating reflective practice in our own clinical programs. 

Bio: Matthew Atkinson is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Managing Solicitor of the University of South Australia’s Legal Advice Clinic. He teaches and researches CLE and professional ethics, with a sustained focus on reflective practice as a vehicle for social-justice learning. Matthew co-edited Contemporary Challenges in Clinical Legal Education: Role, Function and Future Directions (Routledge 2023) and authored the volume’s chapters on supporting reflective writing and on emerging CLE pedagogies. His empirical work – including an International Journal of Clinical Legal Education article on blogging, journaling and reflection – examines how digital tools and supervision techniques cultivate critical reflection. He is currently investigating how clinicians promote social-justice reflection within diversified Australian CLE programs. The symposium offers a welcoming opportunity to test these ideas, receive feedback, and contribute to a broader conversation on integrative reflective practice. 

Where presenting: TBA

Image of Bruce Baer ArnoldAffiliation: Associate Professor, University of Canberra, Australia

Country: Australia 

Abstract: Developing and Assessing the Reflective Lawyer: Human Wisdom in an Automated Age 

This panel session is led by Legal Education Associate Deans (LEAD) Network Members (Associate Professor Kelley Burton, Associate Professor Judith Marychurch, and Associate Professor Bruce Baer Arnold) from diverse Australian law schools. We aim to provoke a thoughtful and engaging discussion of the conference theme and strongly encourage audience participation. The Bachelor of Laws Threshold Learning Outcome 6 on self-management requires graduates to ‘reflect on and assess their own capabilities and performance, and make use of feedback as appropriate, to support personal and professional development’. With increasing pressure to include the development of practical and professional skills in an already crowded curriculum, we need to consider: 1. How, and where, we might scaffold and support student learning of reflective practice, from foundational, through to developing and then more established skills, on which graduates can build for their ongoing professional development? 2. Whether, and if so, how, we should assess law student reflective practice skills? 3. Asking some cohorts to share their inner life can be challenging for the law student, the academic and bystanders. How do we foster authenticity and self-awareness in inclusive teaching spaces? 4. How can we transform the assessment of reflective practice in legal education, given the automated age of generative AI tools and increasing concerns around academic integrity?

Bio: Dr Arnold convenes the undergraduate Law program at the University of Canberra, where he teaches technology, intellectual property and equity law. Recent SoTL publication deals with emotion recognition technology in teaching spaces and learning management platforms as surveillance machines. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming Elgar Research Handbook on Legal Personhood and contributed chapters to a recent collection on corporate psychopathy.

Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference

Presentation

Image of Yvonne ApoloAffiliation: Lecturer, School of Law, University of Wollongong (UOW)

Country: Australia 

Abstract: What Courts Require, Law Schools Must Build: Verification as Reflective Legal Method for an Automated Age 

In little over a year, three regulatory instruments - the New South Wales Supreme Court's Practice Note SC Gen 23, the Federal Court's General Practice Note GPN-AI and the Victorian Supreme Court's Practice Note SC Gen 25 - have converged on what GenAI-era legal practice demands: that those who place AI-assisted work before a court bear personal responsibility for independently verifying the legal authorities it contains. The NSW LPAB Interim Report (March 2026) compounds this convergent position by mandating practical legal skills in NSW LLB degrees by 2028 and carving out legal research as the one skill not revisited at PLT level, leaving the LLB degree as the site at which that competence must be built. In an automated age, GenAI literacy and verification-centred skill and integrity are no longer merely desirable. For legal practitioners, they are enforceable professional standards. 
 
Existing legal scholarship engaging with these developments identifies education as an essential ingredient in responding to what courts now require, but it is yet to provide the curriculum architecture. These instruments, this paper argues, do more than regulate practitioners already in practice. They create a curriculum design obligation to develop verification as a constitutive element of legal method -explicitly taught, scaffolded and assessed before students enter a profession where automation erodes the vigilance it demands and the supervised practice through which that capability has historically been sharpened. 
 
This paper presents the 2026 redesign of Legal Skills at UOW as the primary vehicle in a program-scale GenAI literacy and integrity pilot across the first-year LLB. Its centrepiece, a Research and Verification artefact, requires students to externalise and evaluate their research process, engaging in structured reflection on their own legal method and making it visible, auditable and assessable as a validity instrument rather than a surveillance measure. A bifurcated assessment architecture builds foundational competence under GenAI-prohibited conditions before verified AI-collaborative practice. The paper contributes a reframing of converging regulatory signals as curriculum design obligation, an implemented architecture operationalising that reframing, and a model for verification-centred legal method as the reflective capability an automated age demands.

Bio: Yvonne Apolo is a Lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Wollongong and the First Year Law Coordinator. Her research examines what emerging technologies demand of law, legal education and the institutions through which justice is administered, with a particular focus on generative AI, deepfakes and privacy. She designed and leads TRACE, a program-scale first-year law curriculum and assessment initiative that develops GenAI literacy, verification-centred legal method and evaluative judgement through scaffolded reflective practice. She is a Fellow of the Wollongong Academy for Tertiary Teaching and Learning Excellence, a member of the Legal Intersections Research Centre, and an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society. 

Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference

Affiliation: School of Law and Justice, University of Newcastle (Australia)

Country: Australia 

Abstract: Reflective Curriculum Renewal: Insights from a Clinical Law School

This presentation is being co-presented with Joseph Wenta. Clinical legal education provides unique opportunities for reflective practice to prepare future lawyers for a fulfilling and fruitful career. Maintaining an integrated academic and practice-focused curriculum that facilitates the incremental development of self-management and critical thinking skills as part of an emerging professional identity is increasingly important as the legal profession and academy adapt to technological and other emerging challenges. The School of Law and Justice at the University of Newcastle has undertaken substantial review of its LLB (Honours) and JD programs over the past two years. That process has been an important moment of “self” and critical reflection where staff, current students, alumni and other stakeholders have renewed their commitment to high quality clinical legal education. We share insights on both the process and outcomes of that collaborative approach to curriculum renewal, with a particular emphasis on the integration of reflective practice to support transition at key points in our law programs. We also reflect on the challenges and benefits of engaging broadly with our School community in refreshing a clinically oriented curriculum to meet emerging challenges in legal education and practice.

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Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference