A soft launch of Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer was held at the Australian Law Academics Association annual meeting in Adelaide, 3-5 July 2024. Professors Nicole Graham, Kate Galloway and Margaret Davis presented on a panel entitled “Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer – A Grass Roots Approach to Changing Legal Education”.
PANELLISTS: Kate Galloway, Nicole Graham, Margaret Davies
Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer – a grass roots approach to changing legal education
ABSTRACT: This panel-format session provides an overview of a major new open-access legal education book entitled Becoming a Climate Conscious Lawyer (edited by Julia Dehm, Nicole Graham, Zoe Nay, published by LTU eBureau). This online book is the grass-roots response of legal educators around Australia to the growing demand for student learning materials on the impact of climate change on the discipline and profession of Law, and how law is itself changing in response to a climate-changed world. Most legal educators’ research expertise sits outside climate change, and yet simultaneously most of us teach areas sitting squarely at the forefront of innovative uses of existing legal concepts, doctrines and rules. The panel brings together some editors and authors of the book to consider strategies for curricular innovation which both satisfies the need for Priestley compliance and takes seriously the plasticity of law as an agent for change. The panel will discuss how every area of law can support the next generation of lawyers to practise as ‘climate conscious’ legal professionals with the relevant expertise and competencies to deliver legal services and promote climate justice to a wide range of clients in a climate transformed world.