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Legal Leadership Essentials (LAWS90226)
Graduate courseworkPoints: 12.5Online and On Campus (Parkville)
About this subject
Contact information
March
Lecturer
Anthony Kearns (Coordinator)
Email: law-masters@unimelb.edu.au
Phone: 13 MELB (13 6352), International: +(61 3) 9035 5511
Website: law.unimelb.edu.au
July
Lecturer
Anthony Kearns (Coordinator)
Email: law-masters@unimelb.edu.au
Phone: 13 MELB (13 6352), International: +(61 3) 9035 5511
Website: law.unimelb.edu.au
Overview
Availability(Quotas apply) | March - On Campus July - Online |
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Fees | Look up fees |
This subject will provide students with an understanding of key concepts in the field of leadership and enable them to more effectively assume leadership responsibilities within organisations, legal practices and/or the community more broadly. The subject aims to give students not only a theoretical understanding of leadership but practical skills and approaches that they can enact both during the course and subsequently to enhance their careers and impact. The subject focuses on the particular challenges and opportunities for lawyers seeking to have impact in modern organisations and the community through leadership. The modes of instruction will include experiential learning, transformative learning, collaborative learning and guest speaker presentations. Students will draw on their own experience of leadership (as both leaders and followers) as well as biographical and hypothetical case studies in leadership. This subject is designed for students who have worked in organisations or legal practices and who have an interest in assuming leadership responsibilities.
Principal topics include:
- A brief modern history of leadership (tracing the evolution of leadership from the industrial age to the present)
- Lawyers as leaders (the role of advocacy, emotional stability, expertise and objectivity in modern leadership)
- Harnessing human motivation
- Authority and leadership
- Leading in complexity
- Leading change
- The psychology of judgment and decision making (as individuals and in groups)
- Self as leader (preferences for behaviour, emotional intelligence, self-awareness and cognitive flexibility)
- Sustainable leadership
Students in the Melbourne Law Masters program who would like to take this subject as an elective should have a minimum of 2-5 years relevant work experience.
Intended learning outcomes
On completion of this subject, students should be able to:
- Understand the evolution of leadership and the principles and importance of effective leadership in modern organisations and the community more generally;
- Demonstrate a deep understanding of human motivation, the performance of human systems and the drivers of human behaviour.
- Demonstrate a deep understanding of group dynamics and the importance of diversity, inclusiveness and psychological safety in using groups to solve complex problems.
- Demonstrate a deep understanding of the principles of complex adaptive systems and the tools for influencing them.
- Demonstrate a deep appreciation of the key mindsets and behaviours of effective modern leaders including: cognitive flexibility, emotional agility, pragmatic optimism, comfort in complexity, advanced judgment and decision-making, self-compassion, integrity and values congruence;
- Understand the importance of self-awareness, self-compassion and reflective capability in developing a sustainable leadership practice.
Generic skills
- Well-developed analytical competencies in legal leadership and management;
- Problem solving abilities, including through the collection and evaluation of information;
- Capacity to communicate, orally and in writing;
- Ability to evaluate and synthesise existing knowledge in the area;
- Capacity for critical, ethical and independent thought and reflection;
- Capacity for self-directed learning, organisation and time management.
Last updated: 8 November 2024