Professor Lisa Webley

Professor Lisa Webley

Birmingham Law School
Chair in Legal Education and Research

Contact details

Address
Birmingham Law School
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Professor Lisa Webley’s research concerns the regulation, education and ethicality and professionalism of the legal profession, and broader access to justice and rule of law concerns. She has been the Principal Investigator on several large research projects and has undertaken funded empirical research for public bodies and organisations including the European Commission; the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Trade and Industry. She is head of research in CEPLER.

Lisa is General Editor of Legal Ethics and Co-Director of the Legal Education Research Network. She holds visiting professorships at the Sir Zelman Cowen Centre at Victoria University Australia and at the University of Portsmouth, and has been a visiting scholar at Melbourne University and Hong Kong University. She holds a Senior Research Fellowship at IALS, University of London. She is co-author (with Harriet Samuels) of the Complete Public Law: Text, Cases and Materials (OUP) and Legal Writing (Routledge). She was awarded the OUP Law Teacher of the Year prize 2016. 

Qualifications

  • PhD (Lond) 
  • MA (Higher Education) (Westmin)
  • MA (Legal Practice) (Westmin)
  • PgDiplLP (CoL Chester)
  • LLB Hons (Law with French) (Birm)
  • DiplEJF (Limoges) 
  • Cert Soc (Birkbeck)

Biography

Lisa Webley SFHEA FRSA GCILEx  joined Birmingham Law School at the beginning of 2018 and is the research lead in the Centre on Professional and Legal Education Research (CEPLER).She has carried out funded empirical research for a number of public bodies and organisations including: the European Commission; the Ministry of Justice (formerly the Department for Constitutional Affairs); the Department for Trade and Industry; the Law Society of England and Wales; the Legal Services Commission; the Legal Services Board; and the Victoria Law Foundation Australia.  She also undertakes academic and professional consultancy work, including consultancy for City law firms and for legal regulators.  

She held a full-time research position at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (1995-2000), followed by Senior (2000-2003) and Principal Lectureships (2003-2007), and a Readership (2007-2011) at the University of Westminster; she was the Chair in Empirical Legal Studies from 2011-2017.  She was also the Director of Learning and Teaching in the Law School (2003-2007), and then Faculty Research Director for Social Sciences and Humanities across the faculty (2013-2017). She was also Director of the Centre on the Legal Profession. 

Lisa has also taught previously at Birkbeck College and the University of Exeter. She has held a number of visiting positions: Visiting Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney Australia (2002) and the Victoria Law Foundation, Melbourne Australia (2004); Adjunct Professor on the Dickinson Penn State School of Law semester abroad programme (2004 & 2005); Visiting Professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, Cleveland State University, Ohio USA (2007); Visiting Professor on the University of Stetson JD programme (2008-2016). She was formerly a director and trustee of the Hackney Law Centre and a member of the Academic Committee of the Civil Mediation Council.

Teaching

Professor Webley teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate courses offered by Birmingham Law School, currently public law and lawyer regulation. She has previously taught comparative constitutional law, family law, legal skills, the English legal system and research methods, with occasional classes on dispute resolution in a civil and family law context. She is Director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies’ two-week intensive Introduction to Legal and Empirical Research Methods course for MPhil/PhD students and involved in the National Law PhD Training Programme. She provides empirical research methods training at a number of leading universities world-wide.

  • Public Law
  • Lawyer Regulation

Postgraduate supervision

Professor Webley supervises students undertaking empirical socio-legal research. She is keen to hear from candidates who wish to undertake research on:

Lawyer regulation, education, professionalism and legal ethics
Legal service delivery and the impact of technology
Access to justice and family justice
Public law and practice.


Find out more - our PhD Law  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Other activities

  • Member of the Law Society of England and Wales’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee
  • Member of the Ministry of Justice’s Research Advisory Group on Developing Financial Guidelines for Divorcing Couples
  • Member of the Interlaw Diversity Forum and the Apollo Diversity Awards Judging Panel
  • Member of the University of Westminster Press Board
  • On the Editorial Advisory Boards of: The International Journal of the Legal Profession; The Law Teacher; Mediation Theory and Practice.

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Webley, L 2024, Legal Writing. 5th edn, Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429504808

Webley, L & Samuels, H 2021, Complete Public Law Text Cases and Materials. 5th edn, Oxford University Press, Oxford. <https://global.oup.com/academic/product/complete-public-law-9780198853183>

Article

Bano, S & Webley, L 2024, 'Family Mediators and Family Mediation: When Norms Collide', Oxford Journal of Law and Religion. https://doi.org/10.1093/ojlr/rwae003

Mclachlan, S, Kyrimi, E, Dube, K, Fenton, N & Webley, LC 2022, 'Lawmaps: enabling legal AI development through visualisation of the implicit structure of legislation and lawyerly process', Artificial Intelligence and Law. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10506-021-09298-0

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Webley, L 2023, Auchmuty, Legal Education and Equality. in V Barnes, N Honkala & S Wheeler (eds), Women, Their Lives, and the Law : Essays in Honour of Rosemary Auchmuty. 1st edn, Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 245-260. <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/women-their-lives-and-the-law-9781509962082/>

Duff, L & Webley, L 2021, Gender and the legal academy in the UK: a product of proxies and hiring and promotion practices. in U Schultz, G Shaw, M Thornton & R Auchmuty (eds), Gender and Careers in the Legal Academy . 1st edn, Oñati International Series in Law and Society , Bloomsbury Publishing. <https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/gender-and-careers-in-the-legal-academy-9781509923113/>

Webley, L 2020, Ethics and the family mediation process. in M Roberts & M Moscati (eds), Family Mediation: Contemporary Issues . 1st edn, Bloomsbury Professional Ltd.

Webley, L 2019, AI and the legal profession: ethical and regulatory considerations. in 경제규제와 법(Journal of Law & Economic Regulation). 2 edn, vol. 12, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.

Webley, L 2019, Legal help by student lawyers: harnessing the thinking behind digital expert systems: harnessing the thinking behind digital expert systems. in M Maclean & B Dijksterhuis (eds), Digital Family Justice: From Alternative Dispute Resolution to Online Dispute Resolution? . 1st edn, Oñati International Series in Law and Society, Hart Publishing.

Chapter

Webley, L 2020, Sociology of the Legal Professions’. in J Přibán (ed.), Research Handbook on the Sociology of Law. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 215.

Commissioned report

Webley, L 2020, The Opportunities and Threats Posed by Lawtech to the Legal Industry in Jersey: A collaborative research project between the University of Birmingham and Jersey Finance Ltd. Working Paper Series, Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research, Birmingham UK and Saint Helier Jersey. <https://www.jerseyfinance.je/check-file?file=wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Jersey-Finance-Lawtech-Report-The-Opportunities-and-Threats-Posed-by-Lawtech-to-the-Legal-Industry-in-Jersey.pdf>

Webley, L 2019, The impact of the development and implementation of technologies in the legal sector on the education standards and training requirements for lawyers regulated by CILEx Regulation: Report Prepared for CILEx Regulation. Working Paper Series, Centre for Professional Legal Education and Research. <https://cilexregulation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/The-impact-of-technologies-in-the-legal-sector-on-education-standards-and-training-requirements-for-lawyers-.docx>

Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary

Webley, L 2024, Gender and the Law School. in E Jones, F Cownie & A Bradney (eds), Concise Encyclopedia of Legal Education. Edward Elgar.

Other contribution

Webley, L 2020, Ethics, Technology and Regulation. Legal Services Board. <https://www.legalservicesboard.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Lisa-Webley-LSB-Final-Version-April-2020-1.pdf>

Review article

McLachlan, S & Webley, L 2021, 'Visualisation of law and legal Process: An opportunity missed', Information Visualization, vol. 20, no. 2-3, pp. 192-204. https://doi.org/10.1177/14738716211012608

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Lawyer regulation; equality and diversity in the legal profession; legal education; legal ethics; access to justice; dispute resolution; family justice; AI in relation to law; use of technology in legal services delivery.

Media experience

Interviews with the BBC and with print media including national and international press and legal professional press; contributions to the Huffington Post and The I.

Expertise

  • Lawyer regulation
  • Equality and diversity in the legal profession
  • Legal education
  • Legal ethics
  • Access to justice
  • Dispute resolution
  • Family justice
  • AI in relation to law 
  • Use of technology in legal services delivery
  • Public understanding of the law and the legal system

Policy experience

Research and consultancy for government departments, public bodies, NGOs and legal businesses in the UK, EU and Australia including: the European Commission; the Ministry of Justice (formerly the Department for Constitutional Affairs); the Department for Trade and Industry; the Law Society of England and Wales; the Legal Services Commission; the Legal Services Board; and the Victoria Law Foundation Australia.