reflective practice for lawyers
Many thanks to Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. for forwarding this Legal Week article on how lawyer’s might benefit from reflective practice. I discussed the related practice of active listening here and here. Reflective practice is a fairly new concept. Academic Donald Schoen introduced it in 1983 in response to the eroding state of American professionalism. According to the article, practitioners interpret the concept in many different ways. “At its very simplest, reflection means deliberately thinking about what you are doing or have just done rather than working on autopilot and by precedent.” Thus, lawyers engaging reflective practice resist the temptation to “fit problems into neat and predefined boxes.” Instead, they explore an issue from different vantage points in order to meet the client’s real needs and larger interests. Lawyers might also use the practice to audit themselves or their businesses. Reflecting on the way they handled a particular matter or proceeding, they look “at what they did, why they did it in that way, what they could do better and what they could adopt or adapt from others.” I agree with the author that this kind of introspection can be a bit time-consuming, but if “the outcome is improved practice and more empowered individuals, it is time [] well spent.”
Great post, Arnie; thanks to you I understand what the original article was trying to say!
Very belateldy I have come across your excellent summary of how reflective practice might be enacted in the legal profession. But a small correction: the originator of the "reflective practice" concept was named Schon (most properly with an umlaut over the "o") not Schoen. I have recently expanded on him a bit in the Wikipedia entry. he was my research supervisor in the early 1980s.