Learning to reflect in the first year of legal education : the key to surviving legal education and legal practice

Lawyers and law students suffer significant rates of depression and substance abuse. This paper suggests that Law Schools have an obligation to assist students to develop the emotional intelligence necessary in order to cope with the stressful nature of legal practice. We draw on Schön’s discussion of the indeterminate zone of professional practice to suggest that reflective practice is the means by which students can become sufficiently emotionally intelligent to become balanced and happy lawyers. We suggest that incorporating reflective practice in intentional curriculum design in the first year of law is an effective first step in assisting students to develop the emotional intelligence necessary to survive the study and practice of law.

Conclaves and concurrent expert evidence: A positive development in Australian legal practice?

Many Australian courts now prefer pre-hearing meetings of experts (conclaves) being convened to prepare joint reports to identify areas of agreement and disagreement, followed by concurrent expert evidence at trial. This contrasts to the traditional approach where experts did not meet before trial and did not give evidence together. Most judges, lawyers and expert witnesses favour this as a positive development in Australian legal practice, at least for civil disputes. This new approach impacts medical practitioners who are called upon to give expert evidence, or who are parties to disputes before the courts. Arguably, it is too soon to tell whether the relative lack of transparency at the conclave stage will give rise to difficulties in the coronial, disciplinary and criminal arenas.

Birth of the European individual : Outline of a theory of legal practice

The modern subject is what we can call a self-subjecting individual. This is someone in whose inner reality has been implanted a more permanent governability, a governability that works inside the agent. Michel Foucault s genealogy of the modern subject is the history of its constitution by power practices. By a flight of imagination, suppose that this history is not an evolving social structure or cultural phenomenon, but one of those insects (moth) whose life cycle consists of three stages or moments: crawling larva, encapsulated pupa, and flying adult. Foucault s history of power-practices presents the same kind of miracle of total metamorphosis. The main forces in the general field of power can be apprehended through a generalisation of three rationalities functioning side-by-side in the plurality of different practices of power: domination, normalisation and the law. Domination is a force functioning by the rationality of reason of state: the state s essence is power, power is firm domination over people, and people are the state s resource by which the state s strength is measured. Normalisation is a force that takes hold on people from the inside of society: it imposes society s own reality its empirical verity as a norm on people through silently working jurisdictional operations that exclude pathological individuals too far from the average of the population as a whole. The law is a counterforce to both domination and normalisation. Accounting for elements of legal practice as omnihistorical is not possible without a view of the general field of power. Without this view, and only in terms of the operations and tactical manoeuvres of the practice of law, nothing of the kind can be seen: the only thing that practice manifests is constant change itself. However, the backdrop of law s tacit dimension that is, the power-relations between law, domination and normalisation allows one to see more. In the general field of power, the function of law is exactly to maintain the constant possibility of change. Whereas domination and normalisation would stabilise society, the law makes it move. The European individual has a reality as a problem. What is a problem? A problem is something that allows entry into the field of thought, said Foucault. To be a problem, it is necessary for certain number of factors to have made it uncertain, to have made it lose familiarity, or to have provoked a certain number of difficulties around it . Entering the field of thought through problematisations of the European individual human forms, power and knowledge one is able to glimpse the historical backgrounds of our present being. These were produced, and then again buried, in intersections between practices of power and games of truth. In the problem of the European individual one has suitable circumstances that bring to light forces that have passed through the individual through centuries.

Innovation and hybrid genres: disturbing social rhythm in legal practice.

This paper explores the non-adoption of an innovation via the concept of hybrid genres, that is digital genres that emerge from a non-digital material precedent. As instances of innovation these are often resisted because they disturb the order of activity and balance of power relations in a given situation, or require users to make conceptual and physical adaptation efforts that they consider too costly. The authors investigate such issues with a case study of the introduction of a hybrid digital genre, ODR or online dispute resolution, in legal practice

Ethical ramifications of corporatised legal practice

Ethical constraints applying to lawyers are largely found in formal restrictions in legislation - ethical duties arise as a result of a lawyer's service to the public - business ethics - corporatisation and the push for Multi-Disciplinary Practices (MDPs) - duty of confidentiality - avoiding conflicts of interest - the advent of MDP will add further pressures to lawyers juggling competing interests.

Keeping gender on the agenda : theorising the systematic barriers to women lawyers in corporate legal practice

Despite the implementation of policies and procedures to redress the gender imbalance at the higher echelons in Australian corporate law firms, only a paucity of women successfully tread the path to equity partnership. In this article, it is argued that it is the systemic, rather than the overt, barriers that present the major obstacle to sexual equality within the corporate legal workplace. Neo-Marxian thought, in particular the work of Charles Derber on the proletarianisation of professional workers, as well as contemporary feminist thought, is utilised to explore why profoundly gendered assumptions in relation to the 'ideal worker' norm remain deeply embedded in the mindsets and attitudes of those organising the legal workplace. It is suggested that fear of change to work practices within firms has not only an ideological but also a material base. It is economically determined. Highly trained women lawyers with family work responsibilities who take up flexible work arrangements in firms are fulfilling a proletarian role and their under-utilised labour is being extracted to increase profit share at the apex and facilitate the progress of their unencumbered colleagues along the path to partnership.

Legal practice and ethics

This book aims to challenge students and lawyers to think critically about the way in which they will or do practise law. It is intended to be a guide on the various obligations and duties that a lawyer owes to the court, other lawyers, clients and the community in general. The hope is that students of law will see the ongoing value of maintaining the integrity of the legal profession and the value that lawyers provide to the community when we get things right.

Conflict of interest in Victorian rural and regional legal practice

This research report was based on 163 survey responses and 29 interviews with Victorian rural and regional legal practitioners, as well as 8 human service organisation representatives. Peak law profession organisations including the Legal Services Board, Law Institute of Victoria, the Federation of Community Legal Centres and Victoria Legal Aid were also interviewed for the research. The principal objective of the research was to examine how conflict of interested is manifested in rural and regional settings and how effectively the current conflict of interest rules are applied within those settings. The report includes a number of recommendations for better responding to issues of conflict of interest within a rural and regional context.

Educating law students for rural and regional legal practice: embedding place consciousness in law curricula

As with other professions, the declining rates of recruitment and retention of lawyers in rural and regional Australia is of significant concern. Whilst the causes of this vary between communities, common depictions of the rural and regional lawyer’s role indicate that employment as a lawyer in such areas is characterised by unique personal and professional challenges. Nonetheless, employment as a rural and regional lawyer also offers practitioners rewarding opportunities and lifestyle benefits. Research from other disciplines indicates that the challenges inherent in rural and regional professional practice may be alleviated, and benefits more easily harnessed, via place conscious discipline-specific curriculum that sensitises tertiary students to, and prepares them for, the rural and regional career context.Largely oriented towards substantive content to satisfy external accrediting bodies, undergraduate legal education does not typically acknowledge the ‘places’in which graduates will practice as professionals. This article argues however that there is scope to incorporate place within legal education, and documents an innovative curriculum development project which embeds place consciousness to better prepare law students for employment in rural and regional legal practice.Drawing upon methods from other disciplines, the project team designed a curriculum package which aims to sensitise students to the rural and regional legal practice context, and equip them with the skills to overcome challenges and take advantage of the opportunities available in a rural or regional professional career.

Alice Rio, Legal practice and the written world in the Early Middle Ages: Frankish Formulae, c. 500-1000. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009; 299 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-51499-6

Fil: Peretó Rivas, Rubén.

Post-mortem examinations, with especial reference to medico-legal practice.

Translation of Die Sektions-Technik im Leichenhause des Charité-Krankenhauses.