Legal Professionals Mental Health Symposium

Additional information on Keynote Speakers:

Dr Dawn D’Amico

Dawn D’Amico is a psychotherapist, author, and educator who specializes in trauma. She provides keynote speaking appearances, seminars, continuing education credits, and private psychotherapy internationally.

Dawn has served as a keynote speaker at many events including the Keynote Speaker for the Chief Judges Conference for the State of Wisconsin on Trauma and Mental Health, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and Canadian Lawyers and Mental Health Association, the Canadian Criminal Lawyers Association, Lawyers as Collaborative Leaders, Australia and the TATA Institute for Social Sciences, Mumbai, India among many others. 

Dawn’s Area of Expertise includes Primary Trauma, Secondary Trauma, and Generational Trauma and the myriad of mental health issues that accompany trauma. She is the author of Trauma and Well-Being Among Legal Professionals and the Companion Handbook to Trauma and Well-Being Among Legal Professionals.

Associate Professor Vivien Holmes

BA /LLB(Hons.); Grad.Dip.Public.Admin; M Soc.Sci (Int'l Developt.) Barrister & Solicitor Vic, NT & ACT; Snr Fellow, Higher Education Academy

Vivien teaches at the ANU College of Law and undertakes research in the fields of legal ethics, legal education and the legal profession. Her current research includes the intersection between values and lawyer wellbeing. See 'Values: the flip side of the well-being coin' in Strevens & Field Educating for Well-being in Law. Positive Professional Identities and Practice. (Routledge, 2019), ‘Ethical Climate, Job Satisfaction and Wellbeing: Observations from an Empirical Study of New Australian lawyers’ Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics (forthcoming) with Stephen Tang & Tony Foley and ‘Sexual Harassment & Legal Profession Regulation: Is Strengthening Ethical Culture the Answer?’ Law Institute Journal (forthcoming) with Tony Foley, Julian Webb and Susan Ainsworth.

Prior to joining ANU, Vivien worked as a litigation solicitor in private and government practice, a government legal policy officer, the Registrar of the NT Supreme Court, the NT Registrar of Probates, the NT Deputy Coroner and a Judicial Registrar of the NT Magistrates' Court. She has been a member of the Social Security Appeals Tribunal and is a member of the ACT Law Society’s Complaint Committee.

Additional information on Panellists:

Dr Michelle Sharpe (panel moderator)

Micelle has been a practising barrister since 2002, and is currently the current convenor of the Women Barristers Association. 

Michelle was a founding member of the Bar’s Health and Wellbeing Committee in 2006, and continues to serve on the Committee.  She is a longstanding advocate for better recognition and normalisation of the particular health and wellbeing challenges facing lawyers, and the identification of ways to respond to those challenges.  She has presented several well-received sessions on these topics for the Victorian Bar’s CPD Program.

Her Honour Magistrate Johanna Metcalf

Her Honour has served as a Magistrate since 2009, having previously served as the Director of the Courts and Tribunals Policy Unit in the Victorian Department of Justice.

Her Honour serves in a particularly challenging area of the Court’s work, as the Supervising Magistrate in the Sexual Offences List. 

Her Honour is also no stranger to the stresses associated with cases that have a high public profile, having presided over (amongst others) the 2014 bail hearing of child sex offender Ali Jaffari, and the recent committal hearing of former Jewish Day-School Principal and alleged child sexual offender Malka Leifer.  

Commissioner Fiona McLeay LLB LLM

Fiona was appointed Victorian Legal Services Commissioner and CEO of the Victorian Legal Services Board in January 2018. Prior to her appointment she was the CEO of Justice Connect, a leading not for profit organisation that provides free legal assistance to individuals and organisations by leveraging the pro bono skills of the private legal profession. Fiona has also held a range of senior roles at World Vision Australia, including that of General Counsel. Before joining World Vision, she worked at Clayton Utz, including as Special Counsel. Fiona has an LLB from the University of New South Wales and holds LLMs from both New York University and the University of Melbourne. She has also studied at both Harvard and Stanford Business Schools in the USA.

Desi Vlahos LLB, GradDip Education, GradCert Literary Studies, Cert III Fitness training

Desi is a full-time mentor at Leo Cussen in the blended Practical Legal Training course. With her passion for education, Desi’s focus is in assisting her trainees gain the critical literacy needed for entry into the profession whilst igniting the creativity required for the future of practice.

Desi is also a strong advocate for the mental health of her trainees, the well-being of new lawyers and the profession as a whole. She is a certified mental health first aid trainer and regularly delivers the mental health first aid course providing participants with the support skills to assist people who are developing a mental health problem or in a mental health crisis.

In 2019 Desi contributed to a book chapter on time perspective in relation to wellbeing and productivity in Lexis Nexis’ ‘Wellness for Law: Making Wellness Core Business.’ And in 2020 Desi joined the International Bar Association’s taskforce on wellness in the legal profession.