Affiliation: Part-time Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution, Mediator, Consultant, Humber Polytechnic
Country: Canada
Abstract: Bias, Burnout and Blind Spots: Why Reflection Matters in Trauma-Informed Law & ADR
This paper is co-authored with Rebecca Norris. The myth that members of the legal profession have and need detached objectivity can leave lawyers and mediators blind to the human realities shaping behaviour, conflict patterns, and decision-making, ranging from basic decisions to critical ones. This paper explores self-reflective practice as a tool for recognizing and navigating one’s own responses to threat, distress and systemic pressure - which, in turn, allows us to identify and navigate others’ responses more skillfully. Grounded in neuroscience and trauma-informed insights, we set out how reflection supports attunement to clients, ethical advocacy, resilience under pressure and competent decisions-making. In this paper, we explain how, when embedded as a standard professional competency, self-reflection protects clients, witnesses, and practitioners alike, turning emotional awareness into a strategic and ethical asset.
Bio: Raheena Lalani Dahya is a family law and community mediator in Toronto, Canada; a Professor of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) at Humber Polytechnic; and a faculty member of family law mediation programs at various institutions in Canada. Her academic focus is split into three streams: (1) the application of neuroscientific principles to the practice of mediation, including trauma-informed and attachment-informed mediation; (2) culture and conflict in an algorithmic society; and (3) risk assessment and the mitigation of violence in interpersonal conflict. Raheena’s work has been used in North America, the UK, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. Raheena is a lawyer in Ontario and an unregistered Barrister in England and Wales. She is accredited as a mediator by multiple institutions internationally. Currently, Raheena is serving her first three-year term as a global mediation trainer for the Aga Khan International Conciliation and Arbitration Board. Raheena is a dedicated member of the mediation field, having spent years advancing the industry, in part through her leadership roles. She served six terms as an Executive Board Director of the Ontario Bar Association’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Section; and four terms as a Board Director for the Family Dispute Resolution Institute of Ontario, (which was then) a family mediation accrediting body, where she founded the Family Violence Section and served as the inaugural Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Raheena is committed to life-long learning and the rigorous pursuit of knowledge. At present, she is studying in a part-time MSc in Applied Neuroscience programme at King’s College London, as part of her ongoing research in ADR & neuroscience. She is an avid yoga practitioner and a certified yoga teacher.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
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Affiliation: Program Manager, U.S. National Nonprofit; Attorney - Former Public Defender, no affiliation
Country: USA
Abstract: In Right Relationship: Practicing and Teaching Trauma-Responsive Restorative Advocacy
Attorneys who recognize and respond to trauma and stress—in both clients and themselves—are better positioned to provide effective advocacy and shape more restorative legal practice. In an era of mounting pressures, legal education must evolve to prepare attorneys for modern practice while nurturing essential relational skills. This Article proposes Trauma-Responsive Restorative Advocacy, a framework that builds on trauma-informed approaches to address attorney wellness, enhance client representation, and transform legal culture. The framework comprises four pillars: expanding trauma education, incorporating somatic practices, cultivating mindfulness, and adopting restorative practice. Attorneys can create environments of coherence in professional interactions by assuming a restorative lens, developing somatic awareness, and practicing critical self-reflection. Drawing on restorative justice principles and interdisciplinary science, it offers practical tools to navigate stressors, prevent burnout, and develop deeper capacities to provide dignified, holistic, and adaptive representation to individuals and communities navigating dynamic challenges.
Bio: Amy Dallas is an attorney, somatic and restorative practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of practice and system change. A former public defender, a decade with the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, NY, she witnessed the toll that high-pressure systems take on clients and lawyers. As Program Manager at the Vera Institute of Justice, she works nationally with elected prosecutors and community organizations to advance restorative and equitable approaches, and leads a national learning community. She also founded the Center for Responsive Practice. Amy’s article introduces Trauma-Responsive Restorative Advocacy, a practice framework that applies a restorative justice lens and expands trauma-informed principles through somatic, mindfulness, and restorative practices for dignified, sustainable legal practice. She serves as Treasurer for the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice and holds a JD from Fordham Law.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
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Affiliation: Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne
Country: Australia
Abstract: Reflective Practice in Action: The Value of Reflective Practice in Integrated Services for Managers and Staff
TThis paper is co-authored with Laura Bianchi. Multi-disciplinary teams of lawyers, social workers, psychologists and financial counsellors, are increasingly being employed in the legal sector to work holistically with vulnerable clients. This, however, presents both opportunities and challenges for lawyers leading these teams, increasing the importance of effective and authentic reflective practice at both the client/practitioner and manager/practitioner levels. This paper examines the introduction of structured reflective practice at Redfern Legal Centre’s integrated, financial abuse team. It explores the team manager’s external supervision model, provided by a dual trained lawyer/social worker, and the impact of this for reflective practice in team and client engagements. Using social work approaches such as structured supervision, person-in-context theory and unconscious bias, this paper suggests that reflective practice plays a particularly important role in maintaining the effectiveness and sustainability of integrated practice teams. As such these teams have a unique opportunity to contribute to development of reflective legal practice more broadly, as well as ways it can be incorporated into legal education.
Bio: Jennifer Davidson is a lawyer and social worker and is currently a Senior Lecturer and Director of Teaching and Learning for the Department of Social Work. Jennifer's research and teaching are focused on how individuals and families can be supported to navigate and make decisions in complex service systems. Her work has centred around the contexts of social work, health, law and disability. She has a particular interest in socio-legal collaborations in Australia and is a leading researcher examining innovative models of interdisciplinary programs of lawyers, social workers and other social service professionals and how they can be structured and maintained. She currently holds supervision, advisory and governance roles across the legal sector.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
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Affiliation: Associate Professor and Director of Clinics, Melbourne Law School
Country: Australia
Abstract: Teaching and Assessing Reflection in the age of GenAI
This presentation is co-presented with Dr. Jacqueline Weinberg. Reflective practice is central to the methodology of clinical legal education and has been identified as a core competency for justice-oriented legal professionals. Correspondingly, reflective writing is a common form of assessment in clinical courses. Student reflections have the capacity to provide a rich window into student learning, ethical awareness and emerging professional self-concept.
Yet in an era where the use generative AI is increasingly ubiquitous—regardless of institutional regulation—legal educators must confront a pressing question: how do we design opportunities for reflection, including as assessment, that continues to cultivate authentic self-awareness, critical insight and professional identity formation, while acknowledging and engaging with new technologies?
This interactive panel invites discussion of the pedagogical and ethical challenges GenAI poses for reflective practice and assessment in CLE from the perspective of different law school programs and clinical models. Rather than framing AI solely as a threat to authenticity, the panel seeks to explore how teaching and learning regimes might evolve to preserve and deepen students’ reflective capacities in ways that are pedagogically rigorous, professionally meaningful and technologically informed.
Bio: Kate Fischer Doherty is the Director of Melbourne Law Clinics at the University of Melbourne, where she coordinates the student law clinics and public interest internship program. Kate is experienced in the design and development of experiential learning opportunities and presents regularly at clinical and legal education conferences. In 2024, she was a convenor of the National Wellness for Law Forum and co-edited the collection Wellness for Law: Reflecting on the Past, Shaping the Future (2025). With Dr. Brad Jessup, Kate has also researched and published on models for climate clinical legal education. Prior to joining the University Kate worked in the community legal sector for more than 10 years.
Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference
Affiliation: Senior Lecturer in Law, Director of the Justice Hub and Director of Social Responsibility, University of Manchester
Country: United Kingdom
Abstract: Building Critical Interpretation and Reflection through LEGO®&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;
Critical realism provides an ontological and epistemological conceptual foundation to view the world and how we gain knowledge (Bhaskar,1978). Such an approach provides a potential route to circumnavigate the traditional positivist (objective)/constructivist (subjective) dichotomy (Twining, 2018) by acknowledging that both agency and social structures can be viewed together. Whilst this theoretical base has commonly been used for methodological underpinnings in research, this article will propose that it may equally be used as a method of critical interpretation, reflection and practice. One technique that can be specifically utilised to support and enhance such a process of critical reflection is through the construction of LEGO® models, which represent metaphoric stories of experiences, perceived identities and influences. This is both a cerebral and experiential process where individuals reflect through their fingers by constructing metaphorical models external to themselves (Papert and Harel, 1991). The use of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® has already been identified as a viable pedagogical technique to assist with complex legal problem solving (Ribary & Allen, 2024). This article will build upon such ideas to consider the findings of an empirical study involving law clinic students, using the construction of tangible LEGO® models as a means to both solidify abstract ideas and uncover emergent cognitive, social and emotional reflections.
Bio: Dr. Philip Drake is a multiple award-winning Senior Lecturer in Law, Director of the Justice Hub, ITL Fellow for Partner Enabled Learning and former Director of Social Responsibility for the School of Social Sciences at The University of Manchester. Before joining Manchester in 2019, he was responsible for establishing the innovative award-winning Legal Advice Clinic, based off campus in shop premises, for the University of Huddersfield in 2013. He has worked as a consultant for the University of Birmingham’s Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues in their Virtuous Professionals Interventions Project (between 2014 and 2017); been a steering group member for a Legal Education Foundation ÂŁ100,000+ funded project (between 2019 and 2021) – â€The Law for Dementia Carers’ and jointly led a working party to incorporate social responsibility teaching into the new law degree at Manchester (2021-2022). He has worked internationally with both the University Complutense Madrid (2022-2024) and University of Southern Denmark (2019) to support clinical legal education and setting up a Legal Advice Clinic.
Where presenting: Association of Law Teachers (ALT) Conference
Affiliation: Director, Detection & Intervention, Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner
Country: Australia
Abstract: Cultivating Reflective Practice in the Victorian Legal Profession
This presentation is co-presented with Lucy Fraser. The Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner (VLSB+C) is a modern, evidence-driven legal regulator with a proportionate, risk-based approach to regulation. As the independent regulator of the legal profession in Victoria, the VLSB+C plays a key role in fostering a reflective practice culture within the legal profession.
This session will explore the role reflective practice plays in VLSB+C programs designed to enhance lawyers’ capability to deliver quality legal services to consumers and improve their own personal resilience and wellbeing. By enhancing professional performance and improving wellbeing before serious harm occurs, programs built around reflective practice for lawyers also, critically, contribute to protecting and empowering consumers of legal services and increasing access to justice.
Presenters from the VLSB+C will showcase several programs incorporating reflective practice, along the regulatory continuum (which extends from education through to regulatory intervention), including:
- The Early Career Lawyer Capability Framework and Reflective Practice Template, which aim to embed the core skill of reflective practice at the point of embarking on a legal career;
- Our ethical checklists, which are also designed to encourage lawyers to reflect on their skills and capabilities across their career;
- The Costs Support program, which invites voluntary participation by practitioners with a record of low-risk but repeated costs complaints enabling reflection and the development of new capabilities to improve practice;
- The Early Intervention Strategy, in which VLSB+C proactively identifies and engages with law practices to address emerging issues and mitigate risks, including a key emphasis on the role of reflection and adjusting continuing professional development (CPD) to address capability gaps; and
- The Lawyer Wellbeing Program, whose body of work includes research, a Systems Theory of Change and practical tools and resources that drive sector-wide positive change in lawyer wellbeing.
Bio: Alice is an experienced legal and regulatory professional who began her career as a litigation lawyer working across a diverse range of legal practices. After several years in private practice, she transitioned into legal profession regulation in 2017, bringing with her a strong understanding of the operational and professional challenges faced by legal practitioners. Since 2024, Alice has served as Director of Intervention and Enforcement at the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner (VLSB+C). In this role, she leads teams responsible for applying regulatory tools designed to prevent risks to the integrity of the legal profession and exercising statutory powers to intervene when necessary to protect consumers of legal services. Alice’s experience on both sides of the profession has shaped her commitment to proactive, evidence-based regulation. She focuses on understanding the underlying causes of professional conduct issues and working collaboratively with the profession to enable earlier intervention and more effective, sustainable outcomes for both practitioners and the community.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
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Affiliation: Professor Emeritus of Legal Education, City Law School, City St George’s, University of London
Country: United Kingdom
Abstract: Reimagining Legal Education for the Future of Law: Advancing Reflective Practice as a Core Professional Competency in the UK
Professor Emeritus Nigel Duncan will be moderating this panel at ALT. Our presenters will explore different aspects and perspectives of how reflective practice has been evolving for law students and legal professionals in the UK. This session is the first event offered as part of the 2026 International Symposium Series: Reflective Practice for Legal Professionals. Following the presentations, participants are invited to share their working knowledge and observations of how well reflective practice has been accepted and implemented in the UK. Does the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning literature adequately capture promising developments? How else is reflective practice being more visibly and viably advanced? How can current and evolving developments in the UK, and the Symposium Series and its legacy website contribute to advancing reflective practice as a professional metacompetency? What else might help?
Bio: Although retired, Nigel continues to teach Advocacy on the Bar course. He researches and writes in areas of professional ethics and student and practitioner wellbeing. He serves on the editorial boards of The Law Teacher and The European Journal of Legal Education. He is currently editing the ninth edition of Opinion Writing and Case Preparation for Oxford University Press and is co-editing a special issue of The Law Teacher. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Law Teachers.
Where moderating: Association of Law Teachers (ALT) Conference
Affiliation: Lecturer, Curtin University
Country: Australia
Abstract: Self-reflection and Self-Care for Emerging Legal Professionals: A Practical Legal Training Perspective
The focus of this presentation/paper would be to cover the range of reflective and self-care advice/practices that I teach students who are undertaking the Practical Legal Training program at Curtin University. My work in this space is informed by my mental health training and the insights that I gleaned from my research work that explored in part how clarity of vocational purpose and virtues such as resilience, responsibility, a growth orientation and wisdom can be cultivated through self- reflective spiritual work that includes practices such as solitude, meditation, journaling and detoxing from the digital world/social media. A key aspect of my message that will be empowering and agency enhancing to those in attendance will be that these virtues can be cultivated through these processes and are not something that some people innately have but others don't, or that they need to receive from outside of themselves before they can improve their lives. Another wrinkle to the presentation I will touch upon will be the virtue of justice and how this can be fortified in those entering the profession who feel a vocation to the law.
Bio: Dr. Christian Duperouzel is a Lecturer at the Curtin Law School and a Conscious Leadership consultant. As a lecturer at Curtin, he has led large cohorts of first-year commerce students across Curtin’s Bentley and international campuses through the core Business Law unit, and the recently formed Markets and Legal Frameworks unit, which integrates the disciplines of law, economics and marketing. As an accredited mental health trainer, he is also active in teaching emerging legal professionals about self-care and wellbeing with an emphasis on integrative personal development work. In 2016, he completed his PhD, which explored the topic of the Role of a Lived Calling in Driving Virtuous Leadership Behaviour, and since that time, he has published in national and international academic journals. His first book, “Calling New Leaders: How Living your Calling Will Make You an Inspired Leader of the Modern World,” was published in 2023 by Central West Publishing.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
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