Affiliation: Vice President for Teaching and Research and Head of the Crisis and Emergency Management Program, Ramat-Gan Academic College
Country: Israel
Abstract: Bridging Disciplines: Reflective Practice in Interdisciplinary Dispute Resolution Education
The fragmentation of dispute resolution professions (mediation, arbitration, and legal advocacy) presents significant challenges for emerging legal professionals navigating increasingly complex, transnational conflicts. This presentation examines how reflective practice can serve as a bridge across disciplinary silos, drawing from the JUSTCOMP project, an international research collaboration investigating competency-based dispute resolution across five countries and three legal systems. Our research addresses a critical gap in legal education: while professionals encounter interdisciplinary challenges involving law, economics, organizational studies, behavioral sciences, psychology, and information technology, their training typically remains confined to single-discipline frameworks. This misalignment diminishes career mobility across sectors and legal systems while limiting the profession's capacity to deliver holistic, client-centered services.
Through international collaborative research across common law, continental law, and mixed legal systems, we propose exploring how systematic reflection can enable legal professionals to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives without requiring expertise in each field. Our proposed methodology emphasizes building reflective capacity for cross-disciplinary dialogue, mutual understanding, and collaborative problem-solving, competencies essential for responding to evolving challenges in justice delivery. This work directly engages three symposium concerns: strengthening emerging professionals' reflective inquiry skills and building the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Law by documenting effective practices for interdisciplinary competency development. Our preliminary analysis suggests that structured reflective practice, supported by intentional interdisciplinary exchanges, can enable legal professionals to recognize when diverse expertise is needed, communicate effectively across disciplinary boundaries, and synthesize multiple perspectives in dispute resolution contexts. This approach aims to prepare graduates for emerging international Dispute Resolution Hubs that demand versatile, adaptive professionals capable of serving clients with complex, multifaceted conflicts.
This presentation invites colleagues to collaborate in developing methodologies for integrating interdisciplinary reflective practice into legal education. Together, we can explore implications for curriculum design, professional development, and the future of competency-based legal training in an interconnected world. A key purpose is to engage colleagues interested in joining this collaborative research process from its inception, contributing their disciplinary perspectives, institutional contexts, and pedagogical expertise to co-create effective approaches for reflective, interdisciplinary competency development in dispute resolution education.
Bio: Dr. Efron previously served as Dean at Zefat Academic College School of Law in Israel and as Head of its Clinical Education Program. She was a visiting professor at Mitchell-Hamline School of Law in Minnesota; University of Missouri LL.M. program in dispute resolution; Osgoode Professional Development program at York University, Canada; and Tunghai University International College, Taiwan. She was a visiting scholar at Masaryk University Law Faculty in Czechia under the auspices of the Theodore Herzl Distinguished Chair. Dr. Efron teaches Negotiation, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Legal Foundations, Civil Procedure and Family law, and published widely on legal education, pedagogy and curriculum design, negotiation, dispute resolution and other subjects
Where presenting: TBA
Affiliation: Head of Learning Transformation, Law Institute of Victoria
Country: Australia
Abstract: The Mindful Lawyer of the Future
As the legal landscape evolves, the imperative to nurture not only technical proficiency but essential skills such as reflective practice, adaptability, and ethical grounding in future legal professionals is paramount. This session is designed to showcase mindfulness as a key component in legal education and beyond. We will explore the key principles of mindfulness, its transformative potential within legal training and how heightened awareness can enhance pedagogical strategies, decision-making, and student engagement. By introducing practical techniques for embedding mindfulness into curricula, students can begin to cultivate mindfulness in practice, ultimately enhancing wellbeing, cultivating mindful listening, emotional intelligence and paving the way for a client-centric approach to practice. Attendees will examine the significance of self-care in legal education, equipping future lawyers with pragmatic tools and strategies to navigate complex environments. The session aims to inspire educators to create supportive, values-driven learning cultures that prioritize mindfulness and ethical practice so that graduates can practice law with confidence, integrity and compassion.
Bio: Artemis Evangelidi is Head of Learning Transformation at the Law Institute of Victoria, and the founder of Aipeia Consulting and the Centre for Conscious Leadership. With degrees in Science, Law, and Psychology, she brings 20+ years’ legal experience and over a decade as a conscious leadership consultant and coach. She’s trained in presence and mindfulness with Eckhart Tolle and others, completed her Inner MBA in 2024, and is passionate about integrating wisdom traditions with psychology and neuroscience. Her book, “Life. Thoughts That Make The World Go Around” informs global leadership programs. Artemis is a board member of the US-based Mindfulness in Law Society and co- chair of its Australian Chapter and sits on the boards of other charities and NGOs, advising on mindful and conscious leadership.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Recording:
Transcript:
Affiliation: Professor of Law, Bond University
Country: Australia
Abstract 1: Reflective Practice as a Critical Element of a Proposed New Legal Wellbeing Pedagogy
This paper is co-presented with Emma Jones. This paper discusses reflective practice as a critical component of a proposed new Legal Wellbeing Pedagogy (LWP) (Jones, Strevens & Field, 2025). The LWP draws upon the theoretical basis of positive psychology, particularly Self-Determination Theory and its Basic Psychological Needs sub- theory, to create a learning and teaching framework specifically focused on promoting positive wellbeing for both academic law staff and law students, thus reimagining the legal curriculum as a vehicle to facilitate thriving and flourishing in an evidence-based and sustainable manner. The LWP addresses cognitive, experiential and affective engagement with legal education. It provides a clear framework for the integration into the law degree of challenge and growth, independence and meaning, collaboration and connection. The LWP promotes a holistic approach to wellbeing by highlighting the role of empathy, reflection, values and ethics as key inter-connecting concepts. This paper explains how the LWP conceptualizes the teaching of reflective practice as a metacognitive skill supporting students to make sense of the challenging, complicated content of the law curriculum, and promoting their personal and professional awareness, as well as their engagement. The paper offers practical ways for legal academics to incorporate and promote reflection throughout the legal curriculum.
Bio: Rachael is a Professor of Law in the Bond University Faculty of Law, and Co-Director of the Bond Centre for Dispute Resolution and Bond’s Centre for Professional Legal Education. Her areas of teaching and research expertise include dispute resolution, family law and domestic violence, lawyer and law student wellbeing and legal education (particularly foundations of law and transition in, through and out of law school). Rachael is an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow (2010), the winner of a National Teaching Citation (2008) and an Australian Teaching Excellence Award (2014), and she is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She founded the Australian Wellness Network for Law and co-founded the ADR Research Network. Rachael has been involved with Women’s Legal Service, Brisbane, since 1993 and is now an Ambassador for the Service. In 2013, Rachael was named Queensland Woman Lawyer of the Year, and in 2020, she was elected as a life-long Academic Bencher of the Inner Temple in London.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Presentation:
Recording:
Transcript:
Abstract 2: The Reflective Practitioner in a Digital Legal World
This presentation will be co-presented with Nick James and Tammy Johnson. The rapid integration of GenAI, digital platforms, and technology‑enabled service delivery is reshaping legal practice and professional identity. This roundtable discussion, hosted by the Centre for Professional Legal Education (CPLE), examines the role of reflective practice in preparing students and early career lawyers for uncertainty, complexity, and ethical judgement in a digital legal environment, one in which digital and GenAI tools are fully embedded in everyday legal practice, rather than emerging at the periphery. In an environment increasingly shaped by efficiency‑driven digital tools, reflective practice functions as a counterbalance that preserves human judgement, empathy, and professional self‑awareness in technology‑mediated legal practice. The discussion draws on the existing body of scholarship to explore how reflection assists lawyers in navigating ethical grey zones, professional accountability, as well as the limits of automated tools. The format is of this session designed to support collegial exchange and shared reflection, offering space for law academics to consider common challenges and emerging practices across Australian legal education.
Bio: Rachael is a Professor of Law in the Bond University Faculty of Law, and Co-Director of the Bond Centre for Dispute Resolution and of Bond’s Centre for Professional Legal Education. Her areas of teaching and research expertise include dispute resolution, family law and domestic violence, lawyer and law student well-being and legal education. Rachael has published widely in the areas of dispute resolution, legal education and wellness for law. She completed a PhD on mediation ethics in 2011, and is the author of Australian Dispute Resolution (2022) and co-author with Laurence Boulle of Mediation in Australia (2018). Rachael founded the Australian Wellness Network for Law and co-founded the Australasian Dispute Resolution Research Network. She has been involved with Women’s Legal Service, Brisbane since 1993 and is now an Ambassador for the Service. In 2013 Rachael was named Queensland Woman Lawyer of the Year and in 2020 she was elected as a life-long Honorary Academic Bencher of the Inner Temple in London.
Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference
Affiliation: Professor, Université de Sherbrooke
Country: Canada
Abstract: Integrating Reflective Practice and Professional Identity Formation in Week 3 of L1: Too Soon?
This presentation is co-presented with Claudia Bérubé. In Sept. 2024, Université de Sherbrooke introduced a new course entitled “Becoming a Legal Professional”. This 45-hour course was developed in response to the study by Nathalie Cadieux et al. (2022) on the mental health of legal professionals in Canada, which revealed that more than half of the respondents reported experiencing psychological distress, with even higher rates for professionals with less than 10 years of practice. Through various experiential activities, the course aims to foster the development of transversal competencies, and to develop students' reflective practice, with particular attention to professional identity formation and reflections on the role of lawyers in society. Our contribution will outline the structure and objectives of the course, highlighting both its early successes and the challenges encountered in the first years of its implementation. In the Quebec context, where most law students enter law schools at 19 years old without prior undergraduate degree, we will discuss the issue of timing. Is it too soon to introduce professional identity formation as early as the third week of the first year of Law school? Spoiler alert: we think it is not.
Bio: Véronique Fortin is a member of the Québec Bar and a professor at the Faculty of Law of Université de Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, QC, Canada). Her research focuses on making visible the various legal techniques used to control and oppress marginalized populations. She favours an empirical approach, most often ethnographic, for her research. From January 2024 until December 2025, she was Associate Dean of Experiential Learning and contributed to implement a new course on professional development titled “Becoming a Jurist”, course that she also taught. As an educator, she is committed to clinical legal education, experiential learning, and critical and active pedagogy.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Recording:
Transcript:
Affiliation: Leader, Lawyer Wellbeing Program at the Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner
Country: Australia
Abstract: Cultivating Reflective Practice in the Victorian Legal Profession
This presentation is co-presented with Alice Duggan. 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: Lucy Fraser leads the Lawyer Wellbeing Program at the Victorian Legal Services Board + Commissioner – an initiative to positively influence system-level change in lawyer wellbeing in the Victorian legal profession. Lucy has significant experience leading People & Culture teams and a passion for enabling innovative cultures that optimize wellbeing and performance. Lucy values collaboration, creativity, and fairness and wants to contribute to reducing mental health stigma and increasing connection in workplaces. She holds Master’s degrees in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Conflict Resolution and Mediation.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Presentation:
Recording:
Transcript:
Affiliation: Director, Faculty & Curriculum Development, Osgoode Professional Development, Osgoode Hall Law School at York University
Country: Canada
Session title: The Reflective Educator & Transforming Law Schools
Audrey Fried will be moderating this panel at the ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium.
Bio: Audrey Fried is the Director, Faculty & Curriculum Development at Osgoode Professional Development, Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Canada. Her research focuses on how social and technological developments are changing the legal profession and how legal education should respond. Her scholarship has appeared in the The Law Teacher, the Journal of Legal Education, and in the edited collections, Law Teaching Strategies for a New Era, and Wellbeing and Transitions in Law: Legal Education and the Legal Profession. Her paper, “Unstructuring for Insight: The Legal Profession in an Age of AI & Social Change,” published in The Law Teacher, won the Canadian Association of Law Teachers Prize for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning in 2024. Fried earned her JD from the University of Chicago Law School, her LLM from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and her MA from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto where she is currently a doctoral candidate.
Where moderating: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Affiliation: Lecturer - legal studies, North Metropolitan TAFE, Perth, Western Australia
Country: Australia
Abstract: Ethics and Professional Responsibility in Digital Legal Practice: Educating Reflective Lawyers in an Automated Age
The increasing integration of digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) into legal practice is transforming how legal professionals conduct research, deliver services, and manage client matters. While these developments enhance efficiency and accessibility, they also raise significant ethical and professional responsibility challenges. This paper examines the implications of digital legal practice for key ethical duties, including confidentiality, competence, accuracy, and professional judgement. Legal practitioners are increasingly relying on AI-assisted research tools, document automation, and digital platforms. However, overreliance on such technologies may lead to risks such as inaccurate legal advice, breaches of confidentiality, and reduced professional oversight. Existing professional conduct obligations continue to apply, requiring lawyers to critically evaluate and appropriately supervise the use of technological tools. This paper argues that legal education must respond to these developments by preparing future lawyers to become reflective practitioners. It highlights the importance of integrating ethical awareness, technological literacy, and critical thinking into legal curricula. By fostering reflective judgement, legal education can ensure that graduates are equipped to balance technological innovation with professional responsibility in an increasingly automated legal environment.
Bio: Akila Mahesh Elpitiya is a Lecturer in Legal Studies at North Metropolitan TAFE in Perth, Western Australia. He holds an LLB (Hons) in Law with Management from the University of Salford, United Kingdom, and has professional experience in legal practice, legal administration and tertiary education in both Australia and Sri Lanka. His teaching focuses on legal systems, legal practice, legal research and professional skills. His academic interests include legal education, practice-readiness, professional ethics and the impact of digital technologies and artificial intelligence on legal practice and legal training.
Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference
Affiliation: Lecturer and PhD Candidate in Law, La Trobe Law School
Country: Australia
Abstract: From Individual Burden to Collective Responsibility: Educating the Legal Profession on Reflective Practice
The legal sector is increasingly aware of the crucial role that targeted reflective practice plays in maintaining the human element of contemporary legal practice. This has led to practice-based initiatives to build relevant skills, drawing on tools such as the Systems Theory of Change framework supported by the VLSB+C. This presentation explores reflective practice implementation across two research projects, the Lawyer Wellbeing Project, and the Supporting Trauma Informed Legal Services (STILS) project, in partnership with the VLSB+C and the legal aid commissions, respectively. Whilst the many benefits of reflective practice are well-known, including reducing burnout, improving professional judgement and ethical decision-making, and supporting boundary navigating with clients, the burden has largely remained on the individual. The Lawyer Wellbeing Project drew on co-design methods and introduced structured, reflective practices to address the pressures, emotional demands and uncertainties of legal practice and, in turn, support enhanced lawyer wellbeing and improve client engagement practices. Two streams were co-designed and piloted. The first targeted lawyer wellbeing, specifically offering supportive, structured reflective practice approaches as a means embedding professional judgement, self-management and sustainable career strategies; the second focused on client interactions, using reflective practice methods to enhance professional boundaries and reduce conflict. Meanwhile, the STILS project implemented reflective group supervisions for staff as part of a broader empirical study on trauma informed practice across six diverse legal assistance services. Drawing on these projects, this presentation shares our experiences introducing reflective practice as a formal, disciplined professional practice support tool at the firm or practice level, rather than as an individual responsibility. As well as outlining the pilot interventions and initial findings from the project, the presentation will examine the broader role of reflective practice in the legal profession and explore how legal educators might train students in these skills based on lessons from the projects.
Bio: Stephanie Falconer is a Lecturer and PhD Candidate in Law at La Trobe University. Her research examines how reflective practice can be embedded meaningfully in legal education. She adopts a multi-lensed theoretical approach, drawing on transformative learning, professional identity formation, and affect theory. Her empirical work has explored student and staff experiences of authentic, experimental assessments and reflective practice to improve its design and evaluation in law curricula. Stephanie Falconer is a Lecturer and PhD Candidate in Law at La Trobe University. Her research examines how reflective practice can be embedded meaningfully in legal education. She adopts a multi-lensed theoretical approach, drawing on transformative learning, professional identity formation, and affect theory. Her empirical work has explored student and staff experiences of authentic, experimental assessments and reflective practice to improve its design and evaluation in law curricula.
Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference