Dr Alex Nicholson
- Position: Associate Professor in Law
- Areas of expertise: legal education; legal strategy; contract law; tort law; clinical legal education; dispute resolution; SQE; legal profession; employability
- Email: A.Nicholson@leeds.ac.uk
- Location: 1.03 The Liberty Building
- Website: LinkedIn | ORCID
Profile
I joined the School of Law as an Associate Professor in May 2022, and have served as the school’s Director of Student Education since August 2023. I specialise in legal education, legal strategy, and the law of private obligations.
I began my legal career as solicitor, working for a global business law firm and specialising in commercial litigation. In 2014, I took up my first academic role, as a Senior Lecturer in Law at Sheffield Hallam University, where I lectured in contract law, tort law, and dispute resolution. In 2016 I was promoted to Deputy Head of Law, a post which I held for six years. During that time, I led a team of academic and practitioner staff in the design and implementation of an applied legal education programme, in which all students at all levels of study gained credit-bearing legal work experience in an on-campus, teaching law firm: “SHU Law”.
Responsibilities
- Director of Student Education
Research interests
My research interests span legal education, legal strategy, and the law of private obligations.
More specifically, I am particularly interested in: the relationship between legal education and the professions; opportunities that exist for the use of law to create value for organisations; and the intersections between law and technology.
My work encompasses a range of doctrinal, socio-legal, and empirical (qualitative) approaches, and I have a particular interest in using customer value theory as a framework for evaluating legal, educational, and sociological phenomena.
<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://essl.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>Qualifications
- PhD, Sheffield Hallam University
- MBA Executive, Sheffield Hallam University (Distinction)
- PGDip Legal Practice, University of Sheffield (Distinction)
- LLB Law, University of Sheffield (1st class)
Professional memberships
- Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Solicitor Member of the Law Society (Non-practising)
- Society of Legal Scholars
- Association of Law Teachers
Student education
I teach primarily in the area of private obligations, including contract law and torts.
I am able to supervise dissertation and research students in the areas of: legal education; legal strategy; law and technology; biblical law; and the law of private obligations, broadly conceived.
Research groups and institutes
- Legal Professions Research Group
- Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education