Reflective practice is a simple, time-efficient and evidence-based way to enhance your professional performance and improve your wellbeing.
We maximise what we learn from an experience when we step back and actively reflect on it. This is because the act of purposeful reflection helps us develop the skill of metacognition (thinking about thinking), improves our ability to self-assess, and promotes resilience and innovative thinking.
You already reflect on your day-to-day experiences as part of your work, but reflective practice is a structured approach to help you process what has happened and improve future performance.
It encourages:
- self-awareness: being conscious of your actions, decisions, feelings and thoughts, and the skills, knowledge, values, attitudes, and beliefs that may influence them
- critical analysis: evaluating what went well in a specific situation or experience, what did not, and why
- processing and learning: taking the time to understand and learn from difficult experiences, identify when further learning is needed, and consider how you might apply your new insights or skills to future challenges.
Reflective practice is widely used in other professions, and it is increasingly taught in legal education. It is beneficial regardless of how advanced you are in your career.
The ability to reflect and respond effectively is a specific capability in our Early Career Lawyer Capability Framework [link].
