The Bond Law Review is an open access, double blind peer reviewed journal that publishes articles, features, comments and notes on the whole spectrum of legal topics and issues. The journal is overseen by the Bond Law Review Editorial Committee. All issues of the journal are available online from the home page. Please follow [BLR on Twitter](https://twitter.com/BondLawReview) and like the [BLR Facebook page](https://www.facebook.com/bondlawreview/). The Bond Law Review is currently accepting submissions for both its 2026 general edition and an upcoming special edition. Authors intending to submit manuscripts should do so via the ‘For Authors’ page and are encouraged to review the submission guidelines before submitting. Submissions to the general edition are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year. Submissions for special editions are subject to specified deadlines. Details of the forthcoming special edition are set out below.

**CALL FOR PAPERS** #_Bond Law Review_: Kindness in Law Special Issue _Rethinking legal process, professional conduct, dispute resolution and the broader systems within which they operate_ **Guest Editor**: Perpetua Kish (Chair, The Kind Lawyers) **General Co-Editor**: Rachael Field (Bond University)

For this themed special issue of the Bond Law Review, we invite papers from legal practitioners, academics and professionals from other disciplines that explore how kindness can operate as a rigorous and responsible approach to law, conflict management and dispute resolution. We are interested in contributions that engage with law as it is experienced - by individuals and their families, practitioners, the court systems and communities - and consider how legal work might be undertaken with greater awareness of impact, alignment with values, and responsiveness to human complexity. Authors are encouraged to reflect on the limits of their own discipline or method, and on what becomes possible when we work across professional boundaries. We strongly encourage co-authored submissions, particularly where authors bring the benefit of a multidisciplinary professional lens. This special issue invites contributors to consider how a framework of ‘kind law’ – and one that is grounded in responsibility, awareness of ‘cause and effect’ and values-alignment, might shift both process and outcome for all stakeholders. We welcome work that offers practical insights into how lawyers and other professionals can reduce harm, maintain rigour, and better support pathways to resolution that are sustainable, humane and just. We welcome contributions that examine a particular area of law, dispute type, or practice setting, as well as those that explore methods of practice, professional culture, or system design. Reflective and critical pieces that question the place, limits and risks of where a ‘kind law’ approach is taken, are also encouraged. All articles in the special issue will meet the academic standards of scholarship and peer review. **Submission requirements:** * Submissions are due by 31 August 2026. * Indicative word count for articles is 8000 – 10000 words. * Submissions must be lodged via the Scholastica website. Please make sure you acquaint yourself with the instructions for authors at: https://blr.scholasticahq.com/for-authors. * To ensure consideration for this special issue, please include “Kindness in Law” as your first keywords on the Metadata page of the online submission form. If you have questions about the theme, please email: admin@thekindlawyers.com. If you have questions about the Bond Law Review and the submission process please email rfield@bond.edu.au. **Open Access** This is a Diamond Open Access journal that does not levy any Article Processing Charge for the processing or publication of a paper and download statistics are provided for each article. All accepted papers are published and made available at no cost to the author or the reader. Article copyright remains with the author. Published articles are made available under an Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives Creative Commons Licence [(CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Under the terms of this licence, authors retain full rights (i.e., are not bound by the terms of the licence, and can use their works in any way, including commercially), while others are only permitted to copy and distribute their work in an unadapted form for non-commercial purposes.

This journal meets the Australian Research Council’s peer review guidelines for [ERA](https://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia), Australia’s national research evaluation framework. All BLR journal content is archived with the [Portico](https://www.portico.org/) digital preservation service. >_We pay respects to traditional custodians of lands where our contributors and editors work. We particularly acknowledge the people of the Yugambeh language group, upon whose ancestral lands Bond University now stands._

Just How Common is the Common Law? A Historical and Comparative Perspective