ML
Michele Leering
Community Advocacy & Legal Centre
Executive Director Emerita (Justice & Health Partnerships)
Biography
Michele Leering (PhD, CM) is a Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Faculty of Law in Ontario, Canada, and the former Executive Director and Lawyer at the Community Advocacy & Legal Centre, a non-profit community legal clinic. In addition to her role as a community justice lawyer, she led participatory action research projects on poverty, homelessness, and access to justice and conducted legal needs studies. Her work focuses on transforming legal services to be more holistic and evidence-based, addressing the multifaceted and intersecting needs of clients and marginalised communities.
Dr. Leering promotes a wide diversity of legal approaches, including early intervention and prevention, legal health promotion, systemic change, and robust community legal education initiatives. Her work emphasises the importance of legal literacy, capability, and empowerment. She advocates for a justice ecosystem and believes in the power of trusted intermediaries – service providers, including healthcare and communities – for reaching people who need legal help.
Her recent doctoral research explored integrative reflective practice as a legal professional competency and its role in fostering access to justice innovations. She has also completed research on health justice partnerships in four countries as an intervention for access to justice and health equity, examining how to evaluate their impact ("Measuring What Matters").
Dr. Leering is a member of the International Legal Aid Group and has collaborated with organisations such as the Open Society Justice Initiative to share information about legal clinics as a vibrant model for enhancing access to justice and legal empowerment globally.
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