ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the links between psychological distress amongst law students and the way law and legal culture are taught, and offers strategies for promoting well-being for law students. It explores the role legal education can play in promoting mental health and well-being in law students, and consequently in the profession. The book considers the current Australian experiences, but the research is relevant to law schools in other common law jurisdictions. It reflects a growing body of scholarship on a new focus in legal education. The book assists law schools wanting to enable students to develop in compassionate, mindful and emotionally intelligent ways, while learning the law at their cognitive best. It provides some insights from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to the potential causes of the distress of law students and lawyers, and the remarkably robust and persistent character of this distress.
