Understanding and measuring the impact of legal scholarship

Legal scholarship has the potential to improve law and justice, including through supporting policy development, the development of the law in the courts, and legal practice. Government and universities increasingly recognise the importance of scholarship having real world impact and seek to measure and reward influence. That is a challenging task, particularly in the context of legal scholarship, and is sometimes made more difficult by other policies and practices. This article explains the reasons why it is important to understand and measure the diverse impacts of legal scholarship and how that might best be done, drawing on a survey of legal researchers across Australian universities.