Affiliation: Director of Pedagogy, University of Strathclyde
Country: Scotland
Abstract: Implementing Reflective Practice in Legal Education at Strathclyde Law School: A Compulsory Third Year Reflective Report Module
In September 2023, Strathclyde Law School introduced a new undergraduate LLB curriculum, including a Third Year Reflective Report. This compulsory project, designed to enhance students’ analytical, reflective, and research skills, takes place during the second semester of the third year. Graduate entry students, however, encounter the module earlier, allowing the school to pilot the new approach with this cohort during the 2024-25 academic year. Initially involving 24 students, the module will expand to over 200 in subsequent years. The module combines lectures and workshops, with a distinctive assessment structure: a group research poster, graded on a pass/fail basis, alongside an individually assessed reflective report. This format fosters both collaboration and individual critical reflection. The paper discusses the rationale for embedding the Reflective Report as a core component, as well as adjustments made for the 2025-26 academic year based on reflections from the first cohort and class coordinator.
Bio: I am a Senior Teaching Fellow and am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I am currently the DDirector of Pedagogy at the University of Strathclyde School of Law. I previously held administrative roles as Director of Student Welfare, and Final Year Honours Coordinator. I am a member of The Association of Law Teachers and was the co-organiser of the Annual Conference at the University of Strathclyde in 2025.
Where presenting: Nottingham Trent Centre for Legal Education Conference (NTCLE)
Affiliation: Part-Time Professor (Long-Term Nomination), University of Ottawa
Country: Canada
Abstract: Wapanakew as Pedagogy: Lessons for Reflective Practice and Legal Education
In Nehiromowin, Wapanakew means “to bring to light” and “to emerge,” referring to the first ceremony after the creation of the world. According to atisokana (stories), it brings an awakening that carries one further, guiding humans toward living their traditions and maintaining harmony with the world around them. In contemporary legal education, Wapanakew can be understood as a way of bringing the learner’s inner knowledge to light, offering valuable insights into what legal education might aspire to be. This vision guides the Certificate in Indigenous Law at uOttawa, which introduces Indigenous learners to Indigenous and state legal orders through pedagogies that centre learners’ prior knowledge, lived experiences, and gifts. It incorporates Indigenous modes of learning, including learning by doing, observation, oral tradition, and land-based learning. Teaching within this program has required me to reconceptualize legal learning as a reflective and relational process of becoming rather than the transmission of abstract knowledge. Drawing on my teaching experience, I examine how Indigenous pedagogies can deepen reflective practice and open new possibilities for legal education.
Bio: Florence Robert is a doctoral candidate in law at the University of Toronto whose research focuses on Indigenous legal orders, pedagogies, and methods. Her LL.M., completed under the supervision of Professor John Borrows, examined Indigenous legal pedagogy and the decolonization of Canadian legal education. Her SJD research, supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, documents the values and processes guiding group regulation and conflict resolution within the Ilnu legal order in collaboration with the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation. Since 2022, she has been a Part-Time Professor (LTA) at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, teaching several transsystemic courses in constitutional law, property law, family law, and Indigenous legal orders. She has served as Director of the Certificate in Indigenous Law since 2026. Her academic and teaching experience in Indigenous legal pedagogies directly informs her contribution to this symposium’s focus on reflective practice.
Where presenting: ľĹĐăÖ±˛Ą Law virtual Symposium
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Affiliation: Professor, University of Ottawa
Country: Canada
Abstract: Reflective Practice as a Meta-Competency
In this paper I would like to present reflective practice as a meta-competency, that is, an overarching competency that is necessary for professional competence and for acquiring and integrating numerous competencies, including intercultural competency, critical thinking, professional identity formation, and learning. I will explain the concept of a meta-competency and argue that reflective practice needs to be introduced, practiced with feedback and assessed throughout the whole law school curriculum, and reinforced during a legal professional’s career. I will finally suggest some tools and methods for teaching and assessing reflection in law school and for legal professionals to reinforce it in practice.
Bio: I am a professor and consultant, and I research and write in the areas of legal education, pedagogy, professional competence and competency-based education. I have been writing and thinking about reflective practice in the law school curriculum and have taught and assessed reflection in most of my courses. In 2022, as visiting chair at the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan, I taught a course on professional identity formation entirely based on reflection. In that course, I taught students about reflection, reflective practice and I assessed them based on a reflective portfolio assignment, reflecting on the course but mostly on their professional identity. Recently, I designed a course on reflective practice for the Alberta Law Society and revised Ontario’s Integrated Practice Curriculum to introduce reflective practice as a meta-competency. I also facilitated a workshop to adjudicators at the Immigration Appeal Board on reflective practice.
Where presenting: Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Conference
Affiliation: Professor of Law, Rutgers University
Country: USA
Abstract: Reflecting on Process Recordings as a Reflection Tool for Law Students
Communication skills are essential to nearly every aspect of lawyering. Whether interviewing or counseling clients, negotiating with opposing counsel, drafting legal correspondence and documents, or presenting a case, a lawyer’s ability to communicate well is paramount. While law students receive some direct instruction in written and oral communication, e.g. legal writing, trial advocacy, negotiations, and law school clinical courses, they seldom are required to systematically and routinely document, analyze, and reflect upon their communication(s), resulting in missed opportunities for both guided and self-directed learning. Process recordings, an invaluable instrument in the social work toolkit, commonly are used to record exchanges and assess the effects of communication on the message (both verbal and nonverbal), its meaning, interactions with others, and relationship development. Incorporating a modified version of process recordings into law student learning will enable students to hone theircommunication abilities, improve their self-awareness, and foster their growth as reflective practitioners.
Bio: Jennifer Rosen Valverde, Esq., M.S.W., is a Professor of Law at Rutgers U. School of Law in the Education and Health Law Clinic (EHLC) and holds a secondary appointment as Professor in the Rutgers School of Public Health.  She co-teaches two seminars—Special Education Law and Race, Bias and Professional Identity—and educates students in the practice of law (and, at times, graduate students in other disciplines, e.g. medicine, social work, public health) while advocating on behalf of children with disabilities and their families in special education and public benefits matters. Professor Valverde has published numerous articles on clinical law teaching, interprofessional education and collaboration, special education law, cross-systems educational advocacy, and social determinants of health, and frequentlypresents in New Jersey and nationally on these and related topics. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the Loyola University-Chicago Schools of Law and Social Work.
Where presenting: Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) Conference
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Affiliation: Senior Lecturer, 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: Meribah Rose is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at La Trobe Law School. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on police accountability, miscarriages of justice, and sociolegal analysis of the legal system and its actors more broadly. Meribah has worked collaboratively with practitioners and community legal centres in order to contribute to justice and law policy debates, including around police oversight mechanisms, supervision of junior lawyers and responses to family and domestic violence.
Where presenting: Australasian Law Academics Association (ALAA) conference