Affiliation: Executive Director, Network of University Legal Aid Institutions (NULAI) Nigeria & Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE)
Country: Nigeria
Abstract: From Implicit to Impactful: Advancing Reflective Practice in Law Clinics
Between 2020 and 2023, I conducted extensive research into adult education with an emphasis on critical reflection and transformative learning theory. I applied these educational frameworks to clinical legal education (CLE), and my thesis examined how reflective practice impacts law clinic programmes. Interviews with law professors revealed that although essential, reflective practice is often only implicitly applied. The study recommends formalizing and documenting reflective practice to improve knowledge transfer and professional development. Transitioning reflective practice from an implicit to a clearly defined approach will facilitate stronger connections between theory and practice, foster a collaborative community among CLE professionals, enhance global networks, and build capacity for law teachers, clinics, and students. Such efforts are essential for building a community of practice, advancing experiential learning, guiding law faculty engagement towards improved educational practices, and promoting best practices that contribute meaningful value to the CLE movement.
Bio: Odinakaonye (Odi) Lagi is a development professional and human rights advocate promoting human rights-based programming in Nigeria and the globe. Currently, the Executive Director, NULAI Nigeria, an organization dedicated to promoting legal clinics and improving access to justice that has helped establish more than 50 university-based legal aid clinics throughout Nigeria. She is the Co-President of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE). Her research areas include reflective practices within clinical programs, citizen-security relations in West Africa, gender and social inclusion, and criminal justice administration. She has two Masters in Human Rights and Adult Education from Central European University, and St. Francis Xavier University, Canada, respectively, and was an Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) Human Rights Fellow.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Recording:
Transcript:
Affiliation: Adjunct faculty, Ateneo Law School
Country: Philippines
Abstract: Transforming Law Students Into Becoming Happier, Healthier, and More Ethical Versions of Themselves: A Philippine Response to Patrick Schiltz 25 years hence
In 1999, US attorney (now federal court judge) Patrick Schiltz wrote a very thought-provoking article on what makes the legal profession unhappy, unhealthy, and unethical. In the course of teaching legal ethics and mulling over his article for the past decade, I have come to realize that mindfulness and reflective practice are the key to addressing these 3 key ailments of the profession. In this presentation, I will share my journey on how I discovered mindfulness and made it into a foundational feature of all my courses. I will discuss my students’ experiences on how mindfulness has developed not just their emotional intelligence and empathy but also their mental health, resilience, and moral courage. This in turn has enhanced the collective classroom experience, making students more engaged, collaborative, and inspired. I will discuss the theoretical frameworks and pedagogical methods that I use to develop students’ self-awareness and capacity for reflection and offer recommendations on how traditional legal ethics courses can be innovated to inspire and transform students into becoming happier, healthier, and more ethical versions of themselves.
Bio: Atty. Tanya Lat is a Philippine-trained lawyer and adjunct faculty at the Ateneo de Manila University Law School and University of the Philippines College of Law. A law teacher for more than 15 years, she has focused her teaching, research, and practice on legal ethics and leadership in the legal profession, with the aim of contributing to the ethical formation of lawyers. She incorporates mindfulness meditation, reflective practices, positive psychology, and Theory U into all of her courses. She has done extensive work on legal education reform in the Philippines, serving as consultant to the Philippine Legal Education Board, Executive Director of the Philippine Association of Law Schools, and Executive Director of the Legal Education Advancement Program (LEAP), a groundbreaking reform initiative introduced at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. She is a member of the Global Integrative Law movement and the TEDLaw International Advisory Council.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Recording:
Transcript:
Affiliation: Professor of Law, Gonzaga University
Country: USA
Abstract: Reflective Practices in Restorative Legal Pedagogy
This presentation is co-presented with Olwyn Conway. This article explores fostering enhanced capacity for reflective inquiry and practice in legal education through a restorative pedagogical approach. Teaching restoratively employs self-reflection, regulation, and consensus-based decision-making. It engages reflective practices to teach collaboration, tolerance of ambiguity, complex problem-solving, questioning the status quo, prefiguration, and resistance to binary thinking. Restorative pedagogy builds skills vital to a healthy legal profession: emotional intelligence, cultural humility, trauma-informed practice, and dialogic skills. The use of holistic, reflective, and circle-based practices grounded in the pillars of restorative justice (respect, self-reflection, relationship, community, and dialogue) can mitigate the elements of legal education contributing to our current “polycrisis.” Restorative practices develop emotional awareness and self-compassion, build skills for respectful and effective communication, elevate and honour the voices and experiences of historically marginalized people, and protect against the burnout and dehumanization that can amplify the worst aspects of our adversarial legal system.
Bio: Professor Inga N. Laurent is a Fulbright Scholar and legal educator who teaches in the areas of criminal law and procedure, evidence, and dispute resolution. Inga’s research is centred on restorative, transitional, and transformative justice and praxis. Inga believes deeply in our human capacity for goodness while recognizing the world is fraught with challenges, which cause us suffering, distracting us from developing into our better selves. Inga also believes in the power of truth even (or especially) when difficult to hear, accept, or acknowledge.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Recording:
Transcript:
Affiliation: Law Professor, University of British Columbia, Peter A. Allard School of Law
Country: Canada
Abstract: Teaching for integration: Aesthetics, Resilience and Reflection
Professor Michelle LeBaron proposes to contribute an article on aesthetic methods that support student reflection and assist in synthesizing learning. These multi-modal methods have been applied and evaluated in several courses at University of British Columbia (UBC) and internationally. Michelle will draw on curricula and pedagogy from her UBC courses on Resilience and Legal Futures and her LLM Legal Theory Seminar, illustrating how experiential, aesthetic methods assist students with visualizing and achieving their goals while maintaining habits that support resilience. She will also address methods of effectively evaluating student achievement when aesthetic, experiential approaches are used.
Bio: Professor Michelle LeBaron has been a professor at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law since 2003. From 1993-2003, she served as faculty at the Carter Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason in Arlington, Virginia, and core faculty at the European Graduate School Expressive Arts programme in Switzerland. Drawing on this interdisciplinary background, Michelle developed innovative, expressive arts-informed pedagogies and curricula in conflict resolution, negotiation and legal futures. She has published widely including in Negotiation Journal, Conflict Resolution Quarterly, Organizational Aesthetics and the Journal of Law and Society. Michelle also co-edited Changing Our Worlds: Art as Transformative Practice (with Dr. Janis Sarra, 2018) and The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement and Neuroscience (with Carrie MacLeod and Andrew Floyer Acland, 2013). She was awarded a Wallenberg fellowship at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies from 2015-2018, where she made seminal contributions connecting arts, social change and legal pedagogy.
Where presenting: Nottingham Trent Centre for Legal Education Conference (NTCLE)
Presentation:
Affiliation: Legal Educator, University of Victoria, Faculty of Law
Country: Canada
Abstract: Access-to-Justice Education in Canada: Challenges and Potential for Reflective Practice
This presentation is co-presented with Jérémy Boulanger-Bonnelly. Access-to-justice education is at a crossroads. In 2013, the Canadian Bar Association urged the profession to invest in law students as future access-to-justice practitioners through enhanced educational initiatives. Despite meaningful advances, the gap between unmet legal needs and lawyer capacity to fulfill them continues to grow. We must reexamine how current law school pedagogy reflects the broader, interdisciplinary system within which the law operates. Legal education must prepare students for real-world and systemic justice challenges. Building on research from the Access to Justice Education Initiative, we will identify and analyze key access-to-justice competencies. Our cross-jurisdictional research and consultations with scholars and justice system actors will reveal the core knowledge and skills required for people-centred lawyering. Our presentation will outline current and potential learning pathways that shape practice-ready, self-reflective, and resilient legal professionals. Finally, we will share how these findings will help to develop targeted educational materials for embedding access-to-justice competencies in law schools across Canada.
Bio: Valerie is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria, Faculty of Law, and a Legal Educator with the BC Access to Justice Centre for Excellence. Her experience spans the private, government, and non-profit sectors in administrative, employment, human rights, and residential tenancy law. A published author on access to justice, capacity and decision-making, child protection, elder and family law, Valerie understands how legal and policy frameworks shape lived experiences. Her cross-sector research examined how legal, health, and financial professionals can design service models that put access into action. She uses a problem-based learning approach to design and deliver academic and professional training content. Valerie leverages legal education and mentorship to help students and professionals become reflective justice actors. Her interdisciplinary lens aligns with the symposium’s goal to use thoughtful, people-centred dialogue to cultivate responsive legal professionals. (Note there are several co-authors from UVIC's ACE including, Michelle Lawrence and Robert Lapper).
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Recording:
Transcript:
Affiliation: Visiting Scholar, ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Faculty of Law
Country: Canada
Abstract 1: Setting the Stage & Seeding the Ground: Reflective Practice in Law in All Its Complexity & as a Catalyst for Change
This critical historical moment is marked by a growing “polycrisis” including persistent justice gaps, eroding international legal orders, democratic backsliding, disregard for human rights, and the disruptive impacts of climate change. In the face of these challenges and growing imperatives to develop people-centred and more-than-human justice, legal education must foster an enhanced commitment to reflective inquiry and practice as a super or metacompetency.
Legal professionals play significant and increasingly diverse roles for which they must be adequately prepared. Even before the pandemic, escalating conflicts, and threats to the rule of law underscored the need for more robust professional competency frameworks and a more transformative legal education. Such an education must build self-efficacy and metacognitive skills, support wellbeing and a growth and adaptive mindset, foster ethical professionalism and moral courage, while also strengthening the capacity for lifelong and self-directed learning. To respond effectively to the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 on access to justice and the rule of law, it has become imperative for 21st century legal professionals to proficiently engage in multifaceted reflective practice. Yet in law, unlike other disciplines, reflective practice as an essential component of effective professional learning and formation has not been well understood or explicitly cultivated. Reflective practice’s potential as a transformative learning modality to support more robust and holistic models for legal education and practice has inspired this Symposium Series.
In this opening address to the Queen’s Law virtual symposium, I outline the multi-faceted dimensions of reflective practice in law, how it is being uniquely conceptualized, and how and why reflective capacity must be iteratively built across the professional learning continuum. I share a high-level summary of the themes emerging from more than 140 abstracts submitted for this virtual symposium and the four other events in the Series that have been advanced by speakers from Australia, Cameroon, Canada, India, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. A series of reflective questions will be posed to help us envision what the future could hold for advancing a pedagogy of reflection in law across all jurisdictions represented by virtual symposium registrants who will join us from many countries across the world.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
Presentation:
Recording:
Transcript:
Abstract 2: Exploring Reflective Practice in the Law Schools in England & Wales: Does the Literature Adequately Capture Promising Developments?
Michele will present a preliminary thematic analysis of scholarly journal and grey literature about reflective practice in law and how it has evolved as a legal professional competency in England & Wales. This presentation will also explore a sampling of literature that advances critique and critical theory for the contributions these articles make to building student capacity for critical reflection, one of the five articulated domains of integrative reflective practice for legal professionals. Time permitting, comparative insights from country-specific Australian, Canadian, and US literature reviews will also be shared.
Where presenting: Association of Law Teachers
Presentation:
Abstract 3: Transformative: Seeding the Ground for Enhanced Professional Competence, Reflective Professionalism, Lifelong Learning, and a Cultural Shift in the Legal Profession
The need to proactively prepare legal professionals to address today’s complex societal challenges has never been more urgent. Legal professionals play significant and increasingly diverse roles for which they must be adequality prepared. Even before the pandemic, escalating conflict, widening justice gaps, miscarriages of justice, and threats to the rule of law underscored the need for more robust professional competency frameworks and a more transformative legal education. Such an education must build self-efficacy and metacognitive skills, support wellbeing and a growth mindset, foster ethical professionalism and moral courage, while also developing the capacity for lifelong and self-directed learning. Cultivating reflective practice as a super or meta-competency has become essential for 21st century legal professionals and to respond to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 on access to justice and the rule of law. Yet in law, unlike other disciplines, reflective practice has not been well understood.
In this keynote address, I will discuss its multi-faceted dimensions, how it has been uniquely conceptualized for law and reflective capacity built across the professional learning continuum. I will share a high-level summary of the insights emerging from 80+ presenters at three other events in the International Symposium Series: Reflective Practice for Legal Professionals between 16 April and 24 June 2026. The potential of reflective practice as a transformative learning modality to support more robust and holistic models for legal education and practice suggests a pedagogical commitment worth making. I will outline knowledge mobilization initiatives emerging from the Series and thoughts for what the future holds for advancing a pedagogy of reflection in law.
Where presenting: Nottingham Trent Centre for Legal Education Conference (NTCLE)
Presentation:
Abstract 4: Micro, Meso, and Micro Factors Influencing the Acceptance of Reflective Practice as a Core Professional Competency: Findings from Healthcare Disciplines and Australian Legal Education
Canadian legal educators have faced barriers and challenges in incorporating reflective practices into their courses. Opportunities to build reflective practice as a meta-competency have not been fully realized in law schools or anywhere along the Canadian professional learning continuum. What would it take for this to change, and for current challenges to be overcome? The micro, meso, and micro factors that could support more systematically developing reflective practice will be posited based on the findings of a comparative case study of reflective practice in legal education in four common law countries, particularly Australia. Our understanding of these factors will be enriched by the insights gained from a cross-disciplinary literature review of why and how reflective practice as an essential professional learning capacity has been cultivated in medicine, allied healthcare, and other professional disciplines.
Where presenting: Canadian Association of Law Teachers conference
Presentation:
Abstract 5: Setting Our Sights on Transforming the Legal Profession to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century: Situating Reflective Practice as an Enabling Metacompetency
At this pivotal historical moment, faced with a growing polycrisis, legal educators and university law schools find themselves well placed to influence change and transformation in legal education and the profession. I will review the concerns that animated the collaborative creation of the International Symposium Series on Reflective Practice for Legal Professionals, and the diverse themes emerging from Series events held in Canada and the United Kingdom. To seed the pedagogical ground for strengthening the reflective capacity of law students, legal educators, and legal practitioners (of all types), I will explore the five domains of integrative reflective practice as an implementable conceptual framework to enable reflective inquiry and practice as an essential professional metacompetency for law. Rising to the disorienting and unrelenting challenges of the 21st century and responding to the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 on equal access to justice and the rule of law require cultivating a more holistic and robust professional competency framework for all legal professionals. This will be enabled through sustained, disciplined and transformative reflective practice, grounded in critical and collective reflection. I will share insights from my doctoral research about what might help advance a pedagogy of reflection in law and outline emerging plans for mobilizing the wisdom being shared by more than 140 Series presenters across the Symposium Series.
Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association
Presentation:
Bio: Michele is currently a Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Faculty of Law in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law. Her 2023 doctoral explored how and why reflective practice has been implemented in Canadian and Australian law schools. Prior to April 2024, she was a lawyer and the long-time ED of a non-profit community-based legal clinic serving people living in poverty. Her passion for encouraging reflective practice arose from her struggles as a young lawyer, as a supervisor of lawyers and law students, and efforts to build Ontario’s system of 70+ clinics as learning organizations – hubs of holistic and innovative legal services. Fostering a professional culture of reflective inquiry and generative dialogue and developing an access to justice consciousness and conscience have been primary motivators for her research. She advocates for more robust legal professional competency frameworks to align better with the OECD and other international bodies’ visions for people-centred justice (PCJ). PCJ responds to the UN 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.3 on ensuring equal access to justice and the rule of law. She presents internationally on her work. She has published on how and why to introduce reflective practice, how it better , and the to avoid when introducing it. She was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada in 2022 for her work on access to justice.
Affiliation: Professor and Dean of Law, Flinders University
Country: Australia
Abstract: Reflections of the Future: Legal Education in an AI World
Integrative reflective practice is essential for developing ethical, adaptable, and self-aware legal professionals. This presentation argues that reflective practice must be embedded from the first day of legal education, not only as a developmental tool but as a core academic skill. Early and consistent engagement fosters critical self-evaluation, professional identity formation, and resilience. In the context of the rising use of generative AI, reflective practice also offers a rigorous, authentic form of assessment that resists outsourcing and affirms individual engagement with learning. When scaffolded and assessed meaningfully, it becomes a reliable indicator of student growth. However, for this approach to succeed, legal academics must actively model reflective behaviours and commit to developing the pedagogical expertise needed to assess reflection with validity and consistency. This paper explores strategies for building academic capability and institutional frameworks that support reflective assessment, ensuring legal education remains both contemporary and intellectually robust.
Bio: Prof. Leiman is a teaching specialist clinical practitioner, with particular focus on clinical legal education. As Associate Dean Teaching & Learning (2015-2017) and then Dean of Law (2017 to present) I led the development of our innovative under and post graduate law curriculum. I am the Vice Chair Legal Education of the Council of Law Deans Australia. I have published and presented nationally and internationally on legal education, including on reflective practice. I embed reflective practice explicitly in my teaching across numerous topics. I participated as an interviewee in the research for Michele Leering’s PhD.
Where presenting: TBA