Bio
R. Lisle Baker is a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, where he teaches upper level courses in Positive Psychology for Lawyers, Character and Fitness for Professional Success, Law Practice Planning: Law as a Career and an Enterprise, and a new first year course, Professional Identity formation and Well-being, drawing on material in the upper level courses. He has written or co-authored articles on such topics as resilience, exercise, delivering bad news well, integrating insights from positive psychology into legal education, designing a positive psychology course for lawyers, and learning how to pay attention. He is an honors graduate of Williams College and Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau. In 2016, he earned a Master of Applied Positive Psychology degree from the University of Pennsylvania. At Suffolk Law School, he has convened a conference in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 titled Integrating Positive Psychology into Legal Education, and more recently, a conference on Preventing Self-inflicted Harm by Law Students and Lawyers. In 2023 he was given the IPPA Outstanding Practitioner Award at the World Congress on Positive Psychology in Vancouver, CA in recognition of his teaching, scholarship, and service, including helping persuade the American Bar Association that well-being should be part of the program of instruction for law students in forming their professional identities. Before joining the Suffolk Law faculty in 1973, he practiced with the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow and argued public policy as a regular participant in the first season of the public television series, The Advocates. He is now in his 41st year as an elected city councilor in Newton, Massachusetts, currently chairing the Zoning and Planning Committee of the Newton City Council.
