Why wait until graduation before gaining experience in real legal practice? As a Murdoch student, you can benefit from the Murdoch Law Clinic by developing your legal skills and deepening your knowledge of the law in context, while providing vital legal services to the community.
Socially rewarding skill development
Since 1997, our Clinic through its collaboration with The Southern Communities Advocacy Legal and Education Service Inc (SCALES), has placed students within a real legal practice, offering legal advice and representation to clients that are marginalised or disadvantaged. Our longest collaboration is with SCALES, a community legal center servicing the Rockingham and Kwinana areas. We also collaborate with Aboriginal Family Law Service, offering services to rural and remote Indigenous women experiencing family violence.
The Murdoch Law Clinic program allows students to work independently on their own cases and interview clients, undertake research, develop case theories, and formulate advice, providing services to approximately 800-900 people every year.
In addition to representing clients, the clinical program includes non-litigation strategies for legal change, like community education and law reform.
How you can benefit
Clinical Legal Education is an invaluable experience by allowing you to apply your knowledge and skills to real-world situations and cases. If you have a keen interest in the practice and social justice, you can experience first-hand legal practice, receive feedback on your efforts and participate in guided reflection on the professional role and its responsibilities to the larger society.
You could work on a range of legal matters and use a variety of skills, including interviewing, formulating advice, advocacy, and representation. Some of the cases our students have been involved in include:
- a High Court case that became the precedent for safe third country issues in asylum law
- Supreme Court action around the rights of juveniles while detained
- countless cases to keep people from homelessness
- cases that were taken to the United Nations, on torture, the right to housing, the right to health care, and more
- law reform through parliamentary enquiries at both a state and federal level
- reports and submissions to the United Nations, both the committee system and the special rapporteur.
Our Clinic can help you develop a clear idea of what area you would like to specialise in by allowing you to explore the role of law in society, what legal practice can achieve, and its limitations.
