Michele Leering
Michele Leering (PhD, CM) is a Visiting Scholar at Queen’s University Faculty of Law and former Executive Director/Lawyer of the Community Advocacy & Legal Centre (CALC), a non-profit legal clinic in Ontario, Canada.
In addition to practicing law conventionally as a community justice lawyer, she led local participatory action research projects into poverty, homelessness, and access to justice, and undertook legal needs and local capacities studies.
Her recent doctoral study explored integrative reflective practice as an essential legal professional competency and enabler of innovation and people-centred justice. For her work on access to justice, Michele was inducted in 2022 as a member of the Order of Canada.
Hear from Michele at Health Justice 2025
Michele has worked to transform legal services to be more holistic and evidence-based to respond more effectively to the multi-faced and intersecting needs of clients and marginalized communities.
She promotes a wide diversity of legal approaches including early intervention and prevention; promoting legal health, systemic change and law reform; and robust community legal education initiatives – reflecting her passion for encouraging legal literacy, capability and empowerment. She believes in the power of trusted intermediaries – service providers (including healthcare), community helpers, and others – for reaching people who need legal help, and advocates for a people-centred justice ecosystem. Michele has researched health justice partnerships in four countries as an access to justice and health equity intervention (Measuring What Matters), to supplement her practitioner-based knowledge gleaned from CALC’s local work and experiences shared by members of Ontario’s HJP Community of Practice. Michele has been a member of the International Legal Aid group and has worked with the Open Society Justice Initiative, Namati, and others internationally to share information about legal clinics as a vibrant model for meeting access to justice and legal empowerment needs.
Power in Partnership
Join us for two days of interactive and energising learning at Health Justice 2025.
Hear from international and local speakers on how power shows up in our work, and what it takes to power authentic engagement. Discover the latest in research, join the CollabLab, and find hope in energising conversations about how we can change our systems for a better future.
Date: 3 & 4 December, 2025
Location: University of Technology Sydney
Whether you’re working in legal, health, community services, government, policy, research or funding, you’ll find plenty of sessions to get inspired by at Health Justice 2025. With limited places to ensure a highly participatory event, get your tickets now and secure your seat.
In a world of growing complexity and uncertainty the importance of robust and innovative social, health and legal services cannot be understated. Innovation is, by its nature, challenging, meaning that gatherings like this one are all the more important.
The conference is a fantastic opportunity to really get to meet colleagues, friends, and other practitioners and professionals across both the legal profession as well as health. These events are so important because they really start the conversation around what our respective professions need in the future, and what our community needs.
