Summary

I am Professor of Legal Education, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and immediate past Chair of the Association of Law Teachers.

I am investigating how principles of positive psychology may influence the well-being of staff and students in Higher Education and my current interest lies in the link between well-being and ethics and in the recent High Court decision in the Solicitors Regulation Authority v James and its implications.

I am currently co-leading an international research team that is gathering and analysing the perceptions of well-being of academic staff in Law Schools in order to understand more about the current social contexts in HE and ensure support for improved student well-being can be provided without this being at the expense of staff well-being.

I am a member of the executive committee for the Legal Education Research Network (LERN), a Member of Advisory Board at the Centre for Professional Legal Education, Bond University, and a Visiting Fellow University of Northumbria.

Biography

I was admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court in 1981 and worked in private practice for 15 years.  I joined the University of Portsmouth in 2001 as a Senior Lecturer tasked with the development and accreditation of a suite of qualifying Law Degrees. I was appointed Head as the Department was formed in 2008 and remained so until 2021.  

I was appointed Professor of Legal Education at the University of Portsmouth in 2021.   I have just completed a new book entitled Wellbeing and the Legal academy due to be published by Springer later this year and jointly edited with Dr Emma Jones Sheffield Law School

Research interests

I am interested in research that provides people with a means to help themselves. My research concerns primarily issues of well-being and motivation in legal education and practice.

My current research interests include:

• The promotion of work life balance in University Law Schools
• Intentional curriculum design for well-being in Law Students
• Understanding how coaching supports a positive response to rejection in the workplace
• Sleep disturbance, mental health, wellbeing and educational impact in UK university students
• the link between well-being and ethics and in the recent High Court decision in the Solicitors Regulation Authority v James and its implications.