Professor Lisa Toohey teaches and researches in the fields of public international law, particularly international trade law, and the peaceful settlement of international disputes. At a domestic level her teaching and research is focussed on the use of legal information, legal design and innovation, and dispute resolution.
Underpinning her research is a passion to understand how individuals and groups understand and interpret their rights in order to resolve disputes at international, domestic, and transactional levels – and how better designed systems and information can improve access to justice. This includes a focus on how states in the Asia-Pacific region engage with the international law system and resolve disputes, how mediation can be better used to address multi-issue public international law disputes, how individuals in civil disputes access and interpret legal information, and how legal design can be used as a tool to better facilitate understanding of legal information.
In 2020, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue her research at the University of Texas at Austin, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Lisa is a nominated member of the Asian WTO Research Network, a member of the Sparke Helmore Transformation Working Group, and a founding member of the UNSW China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Centre. She has served two terms as an elected director on the Executive Council of the Society of International Economic Law, been a Senior Fellow of the Institute of International Economic Law at Georgetown University in Washington DC, and is a founder and past President of the Australasian Dispute Resolution Network.
Lisa also has a strong record of service at Faculty and School level, including roles as Faculty Associate Dean (Equity Diversity and Inclusion), Law School Deputy Head (Research), Law School Deputy Dean (Research), Law School Deputy Dean (Academic), Program Convenor, Member of the University of Newcastle Academic Senate from 2017-2019, as well as Associate Dean (Education) and a member of UNSW Academic Board in her previous role at the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. Lisa is a Senior Member of Universities Australia Executive Women Group and an Adjunct Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales.
Prior to academia, Lisa practised commercial law in Australia at Corrs Chambers Westgarth and in Vietnam at Baker & McKenzie, where she developed expertise in WTO law, dispute resolution, and intellectual property and telecommunications. She has worked across East, Southeast, and Central Asia on international law and dispute resolution projects funded by the Australian, US and Canadian governments and with international donors such as the Asian Development Bank. These projects have developed trade law and dispute resolution capacity within the region, including in Vietnam, Azerbaijan and Myanmar, and through work in Australia with visiting delegations from Thailand, China, and Iraq. She has taught as a visiting professor at the Centre Franco-Vietnamien de Formation à la Gestion at the National Economics University of Vietnam, at Naresuan University Thailand, at the University of Lausanne, and at the National Taipei University of Business.
Educating Lawyers for Innovation: Where to from Here and Why?
Abstract:
Futurists such as Susskind emphasis the importance of lawyers being innovative in order to respond to technological disruption in the legal profession. However, as this paper highlights, there are particular challenges that lawyers face in being comfortable and competent at innovation. These challenges are multi-level, stemming from personal, socio-cultural and structural factors. This paper presents our empirical research into how best to educate tomorrow’s lawyers to innovate. It presents both the data from that research and our practical experience in the classroom and the boardroom to explain why we believe that deeply collaborative, multi-disciplinary, human-focused approaches, such as a design thinking methodology, provide the greatest promise for equipping lawyers for tomorrow’s world.