Clinical legal education (CLE) is potentially the major disruptor of traditional law schools’ core functions. Good CLE challenges many central clichés of conventional learning in law—everything from case book method to the 50-minute lecture. And it can challenge a contemporary overemphasis on screen-based learning, particularly when those screens only provide information and require no interaction. Australian Clinical Legal Education comes out of a thorough research program and offers the essential guidebook for anyone seeking to design and redesign accountable legal education; that is, education that does not just transform the learner, but also inculcates in future lawyers a compassion for and service of those whom the law ought to serve. Established law teachers will come to grips with the power of clinical method. Law students struggling with overly dry conceptual content will experience the connections between skills, the law and real life. Regulators will look again at law curricula and ask law deans ‘when’?

This book addresses the difficult decisions in the life of law students, graduates and young law professionals in deciding the area of legal practice to pursue as a career. The number of legal fields and subfields is over one hundred, making it virtually impossible for an upcoming lawyer to explore all of these career avenues. Many students finish law school with little understanding of what specific law careers involve, for example, or what sports or space lawyers routinely do. This book highlights the time-consuming nature of law education and training that causes a lack of experience in legal fields as being able to successfully determine the right legal profession for the student. Finding a law career that is a significant source of satisfaction is a function of serious thinking and active research, which the current university to legal practice does not facilitate. This book is a practical guide for any student or current lawyer who is deciding and evaluating their future legal profession.

As one of the ’learned’ professions requiring advanced learning and high principles, law enjoys a special standing in society. In return for its status and rank, the legal profession is expected to exhibit the highest levels of honesty, trust and morality, the very values which underpin the legal system itself. This, in turn, entrusts to legal education a particular problem of addressing, not only the substantive elements of the body of law, but a means through which the characteristics of the ’calling’ of law are imparted and instilled. At a time when the very essence of the legal profession is under threat, this book calls for a realignment of the legal curriculum and pedagogies so as to emphasise the development of culture over industry; character over eloquence; and calling over skill. Chapters are grouped around the core content and key themes of Curiosity, Calling, Character and Conscientiousness, Contract, and Culture. The volume includes contributions from leading experts, drawn internationally and from other professional disciplines in order to present alternative approaches aimed at tackling common issues, providing insight, and provoking debate.

Bringing together the current international body of knowledge on key issues for educating for well-being in law, this book offers comparative perspectives across jurisdictions, and utilises a range of theoretical lenses (including socio-legal, psychological and ethical theories) in analysing well-being and legal education in law. The chapters include innovative and tested research methodologies and strategies for educating for well-being. Asking and answering the question as to whether law is special in terms of producing psychological distress in law students, law teachers and the profession, and bringing together common and opposing perspectives, this book also seeks to highlight excellent practice in promoting a positive professional identity at law school and beyond resulting in an original contribution to knowledge, and new discourses of analysis.

This book is about supervision in the legal profession with a focus on the experience of novice lawyers. It is the first of its kind. Until now there have been a range of books dedicated to professional supervision in many disciplines, but not law. Supervision is an important link between formal university-based legal education and independent practice and is relevant to a range of contemporary legal practice issues including changes driven by technology, workplace culture, regulating law firm management, and well-being. This book aims to be scholarly and practical. It provides an overview of how supervision is positioned in the legal regulatory framework; it describes how supervision is conceived in the legal profession and practice management literature; and draws lessons from clinical legal education and other professional disciplines. By reporting on survey data, this book also provides insights into practitioners’ attitudes and perceptions about supervision in legal practice.