"From top to bottom, left to right!"

The Kind Lawyers Conversation Day 2025

 22 August 2025

Work Club Olderfleet

477 Collins Street, Melbourne, VIC 3000

Conversation Day 2025 was a bold and thoughtful exploration of what it means to practise law with kindness, integrity and authenticity.

Throughout the day, practitioners came together to examine what it means to shift mindset and culture, and to consider how lawyers can align their values with their day-to-day work, even in challenging professional environments.

Through candid conversations, interactive workshops and practical sessions, the day explored Kind Lawyering - what it is, what it isn’t, and why it matters. We examined how cultural norms have shaped the legal profession, the ethical and relational dimensions of kindness, and how lawyers can hold their ground without losing their humanity.

From early-career lawyers to experienced practitioners, Conversation Day invited participants to rethink the role of kindness in legal practice, not simply as an interpersonal quality, but as an ethical consideration and an increasingly important professional skill.

PROGRAM

8:30 – 8:50 am
Morning networking & registration

9:00 – 9:15 am
Welcome to Country
by Wurundjeri Elder John Terrick

9:15 – 9:35 am
Hosts welcome
Hosts: Pepe & Joe

Morning Sessions

9:40 – 10:40 am
Session 1 – Kind Lawyering Isn’t What You Think It Is
Hosts: Pepe & Joe
Activators: Ann-Maree David, Emily Knowles, Brintyn Smith

What really gets in the way of kindness in law?

Aggression, competitiveness, bullying and toxic culture are easy to blame. But what about silence, inaction, doing nothing because “it’s always been done this way”?

Kindness doesn’t just fail when people are unkind or aggressive. It fails when good people look away. When they stop questioning, stop caring, stop believing the system can be better, or that they have the power to change it.

This session invited honest reflection and collective curiosity. Participants explored the invisible forces that keep us stuck and considered the deeper work of kind lawyering through TKL’s four foundations for kindness: accountability, connection, alignment and community.

10:40 – 11:05 am
Morning Tea
Sponsored by Leaders in Business

11:10 am – 12:10 pm
Session 2 – The Kind Lawyer Archetype Doesn’t Exist (Yet)
Host: Joanna Abraham
Activators: Sitarah Mohamadi, Nick Mann, Audrey Mims

Legal culture doesn’t just shape what we do. It shapes who we’re allowed to be.

This session explored how privilege impacts who feels welcome in the law and who has to contort themselves just to fit in.

Participants considered how the profession quietly rewards sameness — in background, tone and even life stage — and how that can make authenticity costly. From cultural background to gender, age to life experience, the session explored how these dynamics show up in subtle ways, and why diversity and inclusion are not side issues but central to the kindness movement.

The conversation was about expanding what is seen as professional, valuable and enough.

12:15 – 1:15 pm
Workshop 1 – From Aggression to Advocacy: Practising Kind Communication
Hosts: Joe & Pepe
Activators: Marguerite Picard, Jordan Vaka, Sallyanne Hartnell

This hands-on session explored how language can support or sabotage client outcomes.

The workshop focused on how lawyers communicate under pressure — especially in writing — and the difference between assertive advocacy and reactive aggression. Through real-life scenarios and interactive exercises, participants considered how to regulate tone, shift unhelpful default habits and communicate with purpose.

The session introduced the “10 Guidelines of Kind Communication” as a practical anchor for correspondence, supported by a framework to help participants make choices that lead clients closer to resolution, rather than further away. The workshop explored how to sharpen a message, reduce harm and build influence through brave advocacy rather than force.

1:15 – 1:45 pm
Lunch
Sponsored by the College of Law

Afternoon Sessions

1:50 – 2:50 pm
Session 3 – Kindness: An Ethical Duty or a Personal Choice?
Host: Jono Naef
Activators: Jennie Pakula, Amanda Graham, Marianne Marchesi

What if kindness in law was not optional?

This panel explored the idea that kindness could have an ethical dimension within legal practice. Lawyers are taught that their ethical obligations require them to be zealous advocates of their clients’ interests. Yet this is too often translated into a need for aggressive lawyering, while kindness, compassion, empathy, vulnerability and reflection can be seen as signs of weakness.

The discussion examined whether kindness should be understood not simply as a personal value, but as something that forms part of a lawyer’s professional and ethical responsibilities.

The panel explored:

• Whether professional obligations around competency, honesty and courtesy are enough, or whether kindness could and should be recognised as a separate obligation.

• What happens when duties to the client, the court and the profession seem to pull in different directions.

• Whether taking a “kind lawyer” approach is consistent with fundamental ethical duties.

• Whether kindness can be both strategic and ethical, or whether using it as a tool risks compromising its integrity.

• In emotionally charged matters, where kindness sits alongside candour, truth-telling and vulnerability, and whether there are ethical grey zones where kindness might blur, backfire or be misunderstood.

The session considered the proposition that kind lawyering isn’t about “being nice”, but about whether kindness has a rightful place in our ethical framework — and what changes when we treat it that way.

2:50 – 3:50 pm
Workshop 2 – The Long Game: Kindness as a Professional Strategy
Host: Ben Deverson
Activators: Dr Phil Stahl, Amanda Little, Artemis Evangelidi

Kindness isn’t just interpersonal. It’s strategic.

While the earlier workshop, Aggression vs Advocacy, focused on real-time interactions and responses to conflict, this session looked at the macro, or “long-game”, behaviours that influence sustained matters, team dynamics and emotionally complex decision-making.

Participants explored how kindness can support internal strategy: holding tone, regulating emotion, framing communication and protecting clarity when things become messy. Rather than reactive conflict handling, the workshop focused on the deliberate, future-focused application of values and strategy.

The session provided a practical toolkit for using kindness strategically in legal practice, including tone and timing tips, a reverse case study to challenge old habits, a “say this, not that” guide for difficult moments, and a self-audit to identify where kindness tends to slip.

3:55 – 4:55 pm
Session 4 – Wellness Deconstructed: The Cost of Caring in Complex Systems
Host: Brintyn Smith
Activators: Zebunnissa Khan, Lara Wentworth, HH Robert Benjamin

Wellness isn’t soft. It’s structural.

This session unpacked the emotional cost of legal work, including vicarious trauma, moral injury and emotional enmeshment. Participants explored the difference between empathy and over-identification, and how to maintain boundaries without losing compassion.

The session offered tools for sustainable practice and reframed kindness as clarity with required care, rather than martyrdom.

5:00 – 5:30 pm
Close – Patron Announcement + Closing Keynote
Closing Keynote: Her Honour, Chrissa Loukas-Karlsson

5:30 – 7:30 pm
Social networking with entertainment by Natasha Lieschke