Professor Alex Nicholson

Profile

I am a lawyer, educationalist, and academic leader.

After running my own video production business for 7 years, I began my legal career as a solicitor, working at global business law firm DLA Piper, specialising in commercial dispute resolution. In 2014, I left legal practice to take up a post as a Senior Lecturer in Law at Sheffield Hallam University, and two years later was promoted to Deputy Head of Law, a position that I held for 6 years. During that time, I completed an Executive MBA and a PhD, and led a team of academics and practitioners in the delivery of a uniquely applied and transformative legal education programme, in which students at all levels gained credit-bearing work experience within the Department's own fully regulated, on-campus law firm, "SHU Law".

In 2022, I joined the University of Leeds, where I am now Professor of Legal Education. Between 2023 and 2026, I served a three year term as Director of Student Education, responsible for the strategic direction of learning and teaching across the School of Law. I now serve as the School's Director of Community Engagement.

Alongside my full-time roles, I have held a range of advisory and governance positions within the education and charity sectors.

Responsibilities

• Director of Community Engagement

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.

Primary investigator (PI)

• Reinforcers or reformers: an exploration of how legal educators perceive their role and its relationship with the legal profession following the introduction of the SQE

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
• Socio-Legal Studies Association

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 Criminological and Legal Education