Profile Information

The Centre for Professional Legal Education is a community of legal educators, researchers, practitioners and administrators who collaborate in defining, understanding, engaging in and promoting best practice in the teaching of law, with a particular emphasis upon professional legal education, and in developing and delivering professional legal training programs of the highest quality.

Students, employers, university administrators and government regulators have all called for legal education to become more professionally-focussed, more skills-based, more authentic, more global, more clearly articulated and more effective in preparing graduates for professional practice. At the same time, law schools continue to play important roles in preserving the rule of law, providing equitable access to legal services, and promoting thoughtful law reform and social justice, roles which do not always align with efforts to professionalise the law degree. There is a pressing need for scholarly and critical reflection upon who and what law schools teach, the ways in which law schools teach and assess students, and the wider role and responsibilities of law schools. The Centre for Professional Legal Education brings together academics, practitioners and administrators, and facilitates an ongoing disciplinary conversation about the nature and purpose of professional legal education.

Bond Law has already acquired for itself a reputation for providing the best law teaching and the best law student experience in the region. The establishment of this Centre has strengthened Bond law’s reputation, ensuring that we are renowned not only for our teaching practice but also for our contribution to scholarly discussion and debate about the purpose, form and practice of legal education and the role of law schools in contemporary society.

The CPLE’s activities stimulate and enrich legal education by:

• Undertaking individual and collaborative legal education research projects
• Supporting industry through profession-specific research projects
• Disseminating information on legal education
• Providing opportunities to legal professionals for professional development
• Consulting with regulatory bodies domestically and internationally to facilitate the development of policy
• Designing improvements to teaching and learning in law;
• Developing collaborative networks to stimulate research and funding opportunities for legal education.

 Executive committee

• Executive Director: Professor Nick James
• Director of Research: Professor Rachael Field
• Director of Advanced Legal Training: Associate Professor Libby Taylor
• Assistant Professor Hugh Zillmann
• Professor William Van Caenegem
• Associate Professor Bobette Wolski
• Associate Professor Kay Lauchland
• Assistant Professor Kate Galloway
• Assistant Professor Tammy Johnson
• Assistant Professor Jackson Walkden-Brown
• Assistant Professor Francina Cantatore

Advisory board

• Professor Jeff Giddings, Griffith University
• Professor Sally Kift, James Cook University
• Ms Caroline Strevens, University of Portsmouth
• Professor Michael Weir, Bond University