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A Shared Birthday 2007
In 2007 I completed my PhD "Lawyers Practising Learning: Reshaping Continuing Legal Education" in which my main finding was Legal Working Culture. This was a self-funded PhD except for the HECS Scholarship I received from The University Of Melbourne. My research was supervised by a professional learning and work-based learning expert in the Education, not Law, Faculty. Then Associate Professor, Dr David George Beckett.
The method required in-depth work analysis and dialogue with lawyers about their lived working experiences. Including observational research to understand how lawyers stepped up to learn to manage and lead throughout their legal careers. Elsewhere I have discussed the fact that, despite holding a senior Legal Professional Development role, my research and candidature was not well supported. Some of my Legal Professional Development colleagues were, however, encouraging.
As Core EQ is now preparing to offer its services to lawyers it is important to be able to articulate where Legal Working Culture sits in contemporary legal practice thinking. And desirable that there is a feedback loop about this. So I invite dialogue from my fellow legal colleagues and people and culture practitioners. How do you address the duality of organisational and professional culture for example?
Having a clearer understanding of this will assist me, to explain to my clients, the relevance of my research findings to their careers. My intention, in raising these matters now, is to contribute to a smarter kinder legal profession. One in which those who have the courage to go outside the status quo legal education swim lane, challenge conventional thinking and develop expertise in another academic field, with the objective of bringing back new insights and ideas, are appreciated and embraced.
Fragmentation of the Legal Profession
Stated Aim of the The Academy of Law
I propose that Legal Working Culture clearly sits within the stated aims of the Academy.
The Stated Aim of the Academy is "to Promote the Highest Standards of Legal Education and Practice". The context behind the establishment of The Academy was that it was considered that there was a "fragmentation of the legal profession." https://www.australianacademy.edu.au/ downloaded 8 March 2024.
Launched on 17 July 2007, [the same year I completed my PhD] the Australian Academy of Law (AAL) states that it is "the fifth learned Academy in Australia and is the culmination of a process begun with the Australian Law Reform Commission’s landmark report", Managing Justice: a review of the federal civil justice system ALRC 89, (2000).
Managing Justice traced the rapid growth, diversification and fragmentation of the Australian legal profession, and the serious challenges these issues present to the maintenance of a coherent professional identity and traditional collegiate approaches.
Without positive action the single ‘legal profession’ could become a multiplicity of ‘legal occupations’, none of which sees itself as part of a larger whole.
The launch of the Australian Academy of Law on 17 July 2007 is a key aspect of the positive action recommended in Managing Justice, bringing together the three strands of the legal profession—the judiciary, legal practitioners and legal academics—united in promoting high standards of learning and conduct and appropriate collegiality across the profession.
The objects of the Academy, set out in the AAL Constitution, include:
"To promote the highest standards of legal scholarship and research, of legal education and practice, and of the administration of justice.
.....
To establish and advance funds to provide scholarships and research grants which advance legal education and the discipline of law and promote ethical conduct and professional responsibility". [Emphasis added].
Silos and SwimLanes
My research swim lane is how lawyers learn to improve their management and leadership skills in their current roles post admission. And what kinds of professional learning and development frameworks work best. My finding was Legal Working Culture. A constructive creative approach to retaining the collegiality in law by distilling observational research and valuable insights from leading lawyers across the three main disciples of law, the judiciary, academia and practising lawyers. In the final stage of my ethnographic research I observed and met with the Dean of a Law Faculty, Managing Partner, Queen's Counsel and Judicial Member. The period of time ranged from 24 months to a more limited series of interviews.
I synthesised my findings across a complex theoretical foundation including leadership theory, workplace learning, professional learning, legal education and continuing legal education.
Does Legal Working Culture now fit within the purview of legal education? Because if it does I am looking forward to an invitation to build on my findings and conduct research with the Academy.
Dr Deborah Hann
7 March 2024.
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