Professor Michael Doherty

Professor of Legal Design and Associate Head (Student Experience)

Profile

Prof Michael Doherty was appointed as Professor of Law at Lancaster in 2019. He is Associate Head of the Law School and the lead for student experience. He is a former Chair of the Association of Law Teachers, and his scholarship covers both substantive law and scholarship of teaching and learning.

Michael has a longstanding interest in Public Law, has taught the subject for over 30 years and is author of the textbook, Public Law. This is now in its third edition and is co-authored with Dr Noel McGuirk (Routledge, 2022). He has taught, researched and published on human rights and on environmental law.

His current research and pedagogy focus is in the developing field of legal design - applying design thinking to legal problems and processes. He has co-edited a leading collection on legal design and technology (published by Edward Elgar, 2021), and is currently completing another collection on 'Transforming Higher Education with Human-Centred Design'.

His research explores many facets of legal design such as the cultural barriers to bringing design thinking into law, the implications of information design practices for the rule of law, and has applied design thinking to legal education and curriculum development.

Book launch
Oral presentation

Design Thinking 4 Higher Education
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Empathy in curriculum design
Oral presentation

Legal Design Summit
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

The utility of user personas in higher education development projects
Invited talk

Chair of the Association of Law Teachers
Election to learned society

Association of Law Teachers / Routledge, Teaching Law with Technology Prize
Prize (including medals and awards)

Stan Marsh Prize for Best Conference Poster
Prize (including medals and awards)

Chris Gale Prize for best conference paper @ Association of Law Teachers Conference
National/international honour

Chris Gale Memorial Prize for Best Joint Paper at the Association of Law Teachers Conference
Prize (including medals and awards)

  • Centre for Law and Society
  • Security Lancaster (Policy, Law and Ethics)