PRACTICE

Belonging in Legal Education: Identity and Culture in the Legal Professions, Workplaces and Higher Education

This special issue of PRACTICE: Contemporary Issues in Practitioner Education explores how belonging (or exclusion) is lived, enacted or reimagined within the development of legal education and associated professional learning across contemporary undergraduate, postgraduate and professional education.

Legal education is experiencing multiple catalysts for change; these include contemporary challenges facing the legal professions, such as the emergence and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other new technologies,¹ as well as growing financial pressures including reductions in funding affecting the Higher Education sector globally.

Across jurisdictions, legal education takes place in diverse institutional and regulatory contexts. In some settings, the law school serves as an explicit site of professional training for legal practice whereas, in others, it functions as a gateway to further vocational preparation. Yet across these settings legal education is also a platform of identity formation; professional culture and ongoing questions of belonging within the academy and the profession are raised by this.

Previous research has explored how practices such as learning through simulation, employed in a range of fields beyond legal education² and common within some areas within legal education (such as professional qualifications), can be used to support “authentic” assessment and the (re)development of undergraduate legal education³. Similarly, across undergraduate, postgraduate and professional legal education providers, clinical legal education is frequently utilised as a means of developing both (legal) professional skills and attribute relevant to both legal- and non-legal- careers⁴.

The development of attributes such as reflexivity has been positioned as central to the development of legal education,⁵ in which factors relating to race,⁶ class,⁷ and connected dynamics have been highlighted as impacting student identity, engagement and wellbeing.

This special issue seeks to explore the role of reflexivity, identity and culture within legal education, acknowledging legal education’s often explicit connection to legal practice, and the ways that change and responses to change are influenced by a variety of socio-economic factors and the professional backgrounds of those involved.⁸

We welcome submissions related to legal education at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional training stages across any jurisdiction on topics including (but not limited to):

• The relationship between legal practice, experiential learning and doctrinal legal education and this relationship’s impact on student/staff identities;

• Intersectionality and inclusions in law classrooms, legal workplaces and the relationship between these;

• Identities, belonging and professionalism in legal education and training and educational initiatives addressing these;

• Interventions, reforms and initiatives to support belonging, engagement and wellbeing within legal education settings;

• Academic careers, “pracademic” staff and hybrid roles within the legal academy;

• Mentoring and developmental practices and how these draw on and inform the experiences and identities of the staff/students involved.

• Institutional culture, governance and practices of belonging within the Law School.

School.

¹ Marjan Ajevski et al, ‘ChatGPT and the future of legal education and practice’ (2023) 57(3) The Law Teacher 352; Stuart Hargreaves, ‘Words are Flowing out Like Endless Rain into a Paper Cup: ChatGPT & Law School Assessments’ (2023) 33 Legal Education Review 69

² Ewan Ingleby and Ryan Williams, ‘The emperor’s newest clothes? Simulated learning and its benefits and challenges for practitioner pedagogy in higher education (HE)’ [2025] PRACTICE

³ Sadie Whittam, ‘Keep it real: The case for introducing authentic tasks in a UK undergraduate Law Degree’ (2023) 33(1) Legal Education Review 127

⁴ M A du Plessis, ‘The role of clinical legal education in developing ethical legal professionals’ (2021) 54 De Jure 278

⁵ Emma Jones, Caroline Strevens and Rachael Field, ‘Legal wellbeing pedagogy: A new model for promoting wellbeing in law schools’ (2025) 6(2) The European Journal of Legal Education 371

⁶ Foluke I Adebisi, ‘Seeking the university that is ours: understanding, unpacking and unsettling Black students’ racialised (un)belonging in UK law schools’ (2025) 59(2) The Law Teacher 200

⁷ Rachael O’Connor, ‘Working-class imposterism in the law school: “I always have this in the back of my head that I’m expected to fail”’ (2025) 59(2) The Law Teacher 217

⁸ Ewan Ingleby et al, ‘Teaching with technology and higher education: a brave new world?’ (2019) 1(1) PRACTICE 73