Centre for Legal Education

In June this year, as a Nottingham Trent University Senior Fellow, I facilitated three workshops/roundtables at Nottingham Law School. The overarching themes for the three workshops was around the imperatives for ‘New Approaches to Lawyering’, to better meet the needs of community into the future. Each session had a very different focus and participant group.

The first session examined health justice partnerships and multidisciplinary practice and law clinics, the second looked at alternatives to the sometimes-problematic adversarial system and the final workshop/roundtable examined the future of legal education.  Using a deliberative, democratic style, the sessions were designed to facilitate conversations so that participants could share insights, expertise, experience and ideas by way of facilitated conversation points and positioning in the most recent research and commissions of inquiry.

The workshops explored ways forward and canvassed problem-solving approaches and restorative practice and holistic and responsive client centred approaches. The impact of each workshop included actioning ideas for future action in the UK, including new cross sector collaborations and plans for change. These were recorded and have been shared amongst participants who formed the groups and they will no doubt come together in future exploring some of the initiatives that were suggested.

Many thanks to the Nottingham Law School (NLS), Centre for Legal Education and Nottingham Centre for Children, Young People and Families who hosted the event. To Professor Jane Ching and the NLS team who helped formulate and coordinate and note take the sessions and the Events Team.

Dr Liz Curran, Associate Professor, ANU School of Legal Practice, ANU College of Law

13 July 2018