Professor Julian Webb

Phone number +61 3 83442547 Email julian.webb@unimelb.edu.au Find an Expert Find an Expert

LocationRoom 0745

Overview

Julian Webb joined Melbourne Law School in 2014 and teaches in the areas of legal ethics, civil procedure, and regulatory theory. He previously held chairs at the Universities of Warwick and Westminster in the UK. He has been an honorary or visiting professor at the University of Exeter, University College, London, the Southampton Institute, and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in the USA, and a visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Julian's research focuses particularly on technological and regulatory disruption in the law and legal services, as well as issues of ethical theory and practice in the legal profession. In 2016 he was identified in a study by the International Bar Association as one of the world's fifteen most cross-cited scholars on innovation and disruption in legal services, while his recent paper 'Legal Technology: The Great Disruption' (in Abel et ed, Lawyers in 21st Century Societies) was shortlisted in the Australian Legal Research Awards 2023. Julian is also recognised as an international expert on legal education policy and development. A former Director of the HEA’s UK Centre for Legal Education; he subsequently led the research phase of the Legal Education and Training Review for England & Wales (2011-13) and was a consultant to the Hong Kong government’s Comprehensive Review of Legal Education and Training in 2016-18. More recently, with the support of the UN Development Programme, he has worked with the Bar Council of the Maldives to develop a national framework of academic standards and training regulations for the legal profession.  

Julian was a founding editor of the international journal Legal Ethics and is currently on the advisory boards for the International Journal of the Legal Profession, Revista Educacion y Derecho, and Legal Ethics. He also edits, with Professor John Paterson (University of Aberdeen), the 'Law, Science and Society' book series published by Routledge. His published works include Professional Legal Ethics: Critical Interrogations (Oxford UP, 2000, with Donald Nicholson), Lawyering Skills and the Legal Process (Cambridge UP, 2005, with Caroline Maughan) and the edited collection, Leading Works in Legal Ethics (Routledge, 2023).

Other Faculty and University Responsibilities

  • Chair, Human Research Ethics Committee (LNR) 1.D

Memberships and Affiliations

  • Master of the Bench (Academic), Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, London
  • Global Faculty, Singapore Academy of Law, Legal Industry Framework for Training and Education
  • Member, Academic Course Accreditation Committee, Victorian Legal Admission Board (2021-24)
  • Chair, NHMRC Human Research Ethics Committee, Grampians Health & St John of God Hospital, Ballarat.

Membership of professional associations:

  • International Association of Legal Ethics
  • Australasian Society of Computers and Law
  • Socio-Legal Studies Association (UK)

Teaching (2024)

The Melbourne JD