COURSE CATEGORY
Professional Skills
Building cultural intelligence in client relationships
Published 3 September 2026.
Strong client relationships begin with understanding the people behind the matter. Cultural intelligence helps legal professionals recognise how culture, identity, communication and personal experience can shape expectations, trust and interactions. Led by Dr Rachael Jacobs, this reflective and practical session explores cultural intelligence as an ongoing professional skill, using concepts including the cultural iceberg, the invisible backpack and cultural competence.
Through guided journalling activities, participants will examine their own assumptions and perspectives, developing greater awareness and sensitivity when working with clients from different cultural backgrounds. The goal is not to become an expert in every culture, but to build the curiosity, adaptability and awareness needed to engage clients more effectively.
By attending this session, you will:
- Understand how culture can influence communication, expectations, relationships and client experiences.
- Explore the cultural iceberg and invisible backpack to recognise visible and unseen influences on behaviour.
- Reflect on your own cultural perspectives, assumptions and potential biases through guided journalling activities.
- Develop cultural competence as an ongoing professional skill that can strengthen client relationships.
- Apply greater cultural awareness, curiosity and sensitivity to your everyday client interactions.
Completion of this course will earn you 1 CPD unit.
TARGET AUDIENCE
All practitioners
CPD POINTS
1
TYPE
Video-based interactive module
Course Author: Dr Rachael Jacobs
Senior Lecturer, Western Sydney University
Rachael Jacobs (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Arts Education at Western Sydney University and a former secondary teacher (Dance, Drama and Music). Her research interests include assessment in the arts, language acquisition through the arts and decolonised approaches to embodied learning. In 2014 she completed her PhD on assessment in the arts, which she subsequently turned into a piece of performed research presented to an audience of teachers and policy makers. She has since authored over 20 peer-reviewed research papers and academic book chapters on arts education, creativity and teacher education, and edited two textbooks on arts and creativity in schools.
Rachael’s research has attracted funding for research projects that partner with arts companies and Education departments all over Australia. In 2016 she contributed to the arts education component of the OECD report on the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 and she is currently assisting in the analysis for UNESCO’s International Commission on Futures of Learning. She has received finding to conduct research projects from the Tasmanian Department of Education, the NSW Department of Education, Asylum Seekers Centre, ITAC (the International Teaching Artists Collaborative), and other bodies. In 2021 she received a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts to develop anti-racist education programs in NSW schools, taught through the arts. Working with Hannah Grant from Collective Impact Arts, she has been awarded multi-year funding for IEC Transitions, a program researching the effectiveness of Drama for assisting migrant and refugee students’ language, literacy and transition skills.
Rachael has delivered keynote presentations on her research to the World Alliance for Arts Education, ASME, (Australian Society of Music Educators), Drama Queensland, Drama Victoria, the World Alliance for Arts Education, the Tasmanian Department of Education’s Dance and Drama conference, Brisbane Catholic Education and Adult Learning Australia. She has partnered with Western Sydney community organisation and social enterprise, Creative Think+Do, to develop a creative multilingual professional learning program for teachers. She is currently the Academic-in-Residence at Creative Think+Do, evaluating programs for social change in Western Sydney.
Rachael has facilitated arts projects in community settings in Australia and internationally, including in refugee communities, prisons and women’s refuges. She has achieved two ATLC (Australian Teaching and Learning Council) citations for outstanding contributions to teaching and learning in higher education. Rachael is an Honorary Key Recipient of the Golden Key Society for services to education and community and was the University of Southern Queensland Faculty of Education’s Alumni of the Year in 2013. In 2019 Rachael received the Vice Chancellor’s Citation for teaching excellence from Western Sydney University.
Rachael’s educational and community work extends well beyond universities and schools. She is a community activist, a freelance writer, aerial artist, South Asian dancer and choreographer. She is a founding member of the community activism group Teachers for Refugees, is a board director of children’s arts organisation Wide Eyed Wonder and climate activism organisation, Sweltering Cities. She also runs her own intercultural dance company specialising in Indian dance forms.
