July 18, 2025
On June 27, 2025, people gathered online from all over the world to take part in a one-day symposium on Legal Education and the Human Lawyer, co-sponsored by OsgoodePD, the Association of Law Teachers, and The Law Teacher journal. The symposium focused on what is unique and important about human legal expertise and how we can support students in developing these capacities. Speakers were organized into three panels that tracked the sub-themes of the symposium: human values, sense making and human connection. But almost every presentation touched on at least two of these themes.
The first panel, primarily focused on human values, engaged with the idea that human lawyers will continue to be essential in bringing human values to bear in the use of law to structure human relationships at the level of individuals, communities and society. Speakers presented on virtue ethics, AI and legal education, climate conscious legal education and access to justice.
The second panel focused on the theme of sense making – the idea that human lawyers will continue to be needed to make sense of complex legal problems and to exercise judgement in creating strategies or solutions for these problems. Speakers presented on the importance of creativity, empathy and imagination in legal education, the role of creativity in legal research, the ways in which writing can strengthen students’ capacity for problem setting and the role of emotions in sense making.
Finally, the last panel focused on human connection, the importance of connecting with others to support, counsel, guide and create in legal work. Speakers talked about the role of lawyers as companions, looked at the emotional work of lawyers from a number of perspectives and extolled the benefits of clinical legal education with a memorable “love letter” to clinical legal education to end the day.
One of the speakers, Michele Leering, described the symposium as “a wonderful opportunity for us to be able to step back and reflect collectively on our roles as legal professionals, and what the world needs from us.” That perfectly captured my hopes for the day and I’m happy to say that those hopes were realized. It was a wonderful day of teaching and learning from both presenters and attendees, including lively conversations with passionate and dedicated educators. Many, many thanks to the speakers, sponsors and the OsgoodePD team for all their work in making it happen.
I am really looking forward to continuing the important conversations we began at the symposium. Videos, slides and transcripts of the presentations will be posted in the next few weeks at educatinghumanlawyers.com for anyone who missed the event or would like to revisit it. And we are planning a special issue of The Law Teacher on the same topic next year.
For more information on Legal Education and the Human Lawyer, visit the link below.
Audrey Fried – Director, Faculty & Curriculum Development at OsgoodePD