Wellness for Law

China in the World Centre, ANU, photo: Melissa Castan

Justine Rogers

I attended the National Wellness for Law Forum last week. The 2-day event brought legal academics, practitioners, consultants and students to leafy ANU in Canberra to exchange their research and ideas about law student and lawyer psychological distress, and their solutions.

Linking the talks was a background debate about whether wellness is an individual brain phenomenon or one driven most significantly by neoliberalism and other social and political factors – I hope we can agree that it’s both, and much more than this, and that ‘treatment’ must be multi-layered and won’t always be called ‘treatment’. The Forum shared many approaches to supporting and improving wellbeing – in the classroom, law schools, in firms  – and at the bench!  – including mindfulness and creativity, developing ethical, interpersonal and emotional capacity, and legitimate flexible work.

One of the presenters said that treatment was useless or, more carefully, that no matter what coping strategy one chose, it didn’t materially matter. The focus, they argued, needs to be on prevention at the organisational level. After my initial reaction

The importance of teaching – “Teach or Perish”

Interesting article “Teach or perish” looks at some of the ironic results of academia’s promotion of research over teaching. While it is never simple (research and teaching are not completely independent activities), the sector’s support in the community does hinge on the role universities play in educating students. Should excellence in teaching be given higher priority in academic careers and greater institutional recognition?