International Guidelines for Wellbeing in Legal Education

The IBA’s 2021 report Mental Wellbeing in the Legal Profession: A Global Report (the IBA’s Wellbeing Report) identified a ‘global crisis’ in the wellbeing of lawyers, across jurisdictions and sectors. The report called on all parts of the legal profession, including law schools, to implement the key principles it formulated to promote positive wellbeing (see Appendix 1 – The IBA Wellbeing Principles).

These IBA International Guidelines for Wellbeing in Legal Education (the Guidelines) apply the IBA Wellbeing Principles specifically to the provision of legal education. It is recognised that legal education encompasses a wide variety of forms and types of provision. However, the main focus of these Guidelines is on the stages of legal education and training which students commonly undergo to become a legal professional. Some of these stages will be explicitly vocational in nature. Others will be academic and may be focused on law as an academic discipline. For the purposes of these Guidelines, the providers of this legal education and training will be referred to as ‘law schools’. Such law schools are commonly part of a wider organisational setting, such as a university. For the purposes of these Guidelines, these settings will be referred to as ‘higher education institutions’.

Some stages of legal education and training may be undertaken part time by students undergoing workplace training. Conversely, not all students who participate in these stages will pursue, or obtain, a role in the legal profession. Nevertheless, the role of this education and training in shaping the understanding of law and the legal profession, socialising students into professional and cultural norms, and creating the lawyers of the future, mean it is crucial to implement the IBA Wellbeing Principles in this context. Despite this being the key focus of the Guidelines, it is also acknowledged that many jurisdictions will either mandate, or encourage, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for existing legal professionals. The Guidelines can and should be adapted by relevant training providers to meet the needs of post-qualification legal professionals.

The Guidelines follow the definition of wellbeing adopted within the IBA’s Wellbeing Report. This definition mirrors the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s description of good mental health as ‘a state where: “[…] every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community”’. This document draws on a growing body of research and evidence which demonstrates that legal education can and does have an impact on the wellbeing of both students and staff. There is evidence from several jurisdictions, most notably Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, that such effects can be detrimental.
For students, the law school experience can generate greater levels of stress, anxiety and depression, and lower levels of overall wellbeing than are experienced by the general population. The causes of this are varied, but include the academic demands and individualistic nature of legal education, high levels of competition to enter the legal profession, pressures relating to professional identity formation and (in common law jurisdictions at least) the legal system’s adversarial norms. For law school staff, pressures relating to workload and resources can have equally detrimental effects, which in turn may negatively impact students’ experiences of legal education. Law schools must seek to ameliorate such detrimental effects where possible.

At the same time, it is possible for law schools to enhance students’ wellbeing in positive ways, with a range of initiatives demonstrating beneficial impacts, from the use of tutors providing ongoing pastoral support (UK-context), to integrating wellbeing into curriculum design and delivery. Therefore, the Guidelines seek to move beyond the amelioration of detrimental effects and to promote flourishing within law schools. For flourishing to be authentic and long-lasting within legal education, it must encompass the entire law school community, enabling coordinated improvements in the wellbeing of both staff and students and ensuring that one group’s wellbeing is not prioritised at the expense of the other’s. Therefore, these Guidelines cover both staff and student wellbeing together.