6. Becoming a reflective practitioner

In the Introduction section to this part of this course, we suggested that you make a note of some existing strengths and developing areas as you worked through these materials. If you did this, well done! If not, you were probably applying the common technique which legal professionals use of scanning large volumes of information to extract key points as quickly as possible. Unlike in professions such as teaching, traditionally legal professionals have not been taught to build-in time for self-reflection. However, this is gradually changing with Continuing Professional Development requirements in many parts of the profession requiring this skill.

What is self-reflection?

There are different types of reflection, including “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action” (Schön, 1990). The former concerns how you think and deal with situations while you are in them. The latter is about looking back on what happened afterwards, to see what you can learn about it for the future (as you have done in the activities in these materials). It is this type of experiential learning which this course is encouraging in relation to emotional competence and professional resilience more generally. One way to picture this is as a cycle (based on Kolb, 1984 and Maughan and Webb, 2005):

Figure 9

Of course, you should not reflect on your emotional responses in isolation, you also need to factor in what your thoughts and actions were as well. However, within the legal profession, it is the reflection on emotions (and, by extension, wellbeing) which is probably most likely to be ignored or skipped over, despite the evidence of its importance.

This reflective way of thinking may come more easily to some legal professionals than others, but it can become ingrained through practice. This video demonstrates the importance of self-reflection in your professional life, and the challenges it can involve.

Self-reflection in practice

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STEPHANIE BELL

Emotional intelligence is the ability to reflect on how you're feeling and how it's impacting on what you're doing. So, for example, if you're feeling very anxious about another case, then you go along and you have a meeting with a client, you have to be aware of how you feel when you go into that meeting and to regulate your emotion, so you're able to engage with and connect with the person who you're seeing because you're often discussing very difficult things. You're giving advice.

Your client needs to feel listened to. And they need to feel that you care about their case that you haven't got this more important thing you've got on tomorrow or some QC in chambers who's putting pressure on you to do some work for them. And that's what really matters to you. Clients need to feel and they deserve to have your full attention and your full ability. So there's the ability to recognise in yourself how you're feeling. And sometimes, you can't change how you're feeling. But you can bear in mind in your interactions with people.

PAUL NEVIN

So I don't think there is one type of healthy legal professional. However, I would think there would be traits that would be common to all. And from my perspective, I would say that would be self-awareness. I think self-awareness is invaluable. But, of course, self-awareness on its own can be torturous because certainly from my own point of view before I really looked at myself, I thought that I wasn't a bad bloke. I wasn't that bad. I was quite a decent bloke. But when I had an honest look at myself, some of the ways I operated in relationships and things like that left stuff to be desired.

And I think that's all right. I think that's human. And so with self-awareness has to come self-acceptance. And I think when you reach a place that you accept yourself and you can be happy enough with yourself, warts and all I suppose as Cromwell would say, that's a healthy place to start from because you can admit your limitations. You can admit your mistakes.

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The final activity in this part is designed to help you practice reflective thinking over the next few weeks.

There is no final comment on this activity, because we hope it won’t be the end of your thinking around emotional competence and professional resilience. Well done on working your way through this part. You can access the other parts of the course resources About the Authors [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]   and Additional resources as well as joining the on-going conversations at #FitforLaw and in our Fit for Law Facebook group.