Handbook

This course involves an examination of the fundamental approaches to justice lawyering through the medium of contemporary issues in legal aid and legal service provision for disadvantaged individuals and communities and an opportunity for students to develop advanced skills in interviewing and legal problem solving. It will familiarize students with practical mechanisms for making strategic legal responses to problems for communities, NGOs and individuals. The course will also provide an international comparative approach to legal aid provision as well as domestic legal systems.

This course is part of a general offering of human rights and social justice topics within the UNSW Law School and aims to provide students with an engagement with the substance, institutions and techniques of justice lawyering.  Students will be able to build on and incorporate experiences in other clinical courses and internships.

The specific topics covered will vary from year to year and may include:

• introduction to the roles and functions of legal service providers in Australia and internationally,
• current issues and challenges in global justice lawyering,
• theoretical models of justice lawyering and how these provide access to justice,
• acting for and working with communities including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, NGOs and individual clients,
• change lawyering in legal careers in social justice (complex multi-layered case studies drawn from legal practice),
• public service lawyering,
• human rights, and
• public advocacy

The course will contain an advanced interviewing component and a clinical component allowing students to interview clients and work with lawyers in providing assistance at Kingsford Legal Centre.  The course will incorporate a range of theoretical frameworks around service provision to disadvantaged communities as well specific models for providing legal service.  Access to justice issues will be addressed through discussion of legal aid service provision and the range of ways in which legal need is met.  The course will develop students' ability to adopt a problem solving approach to complex legal issues.

The courses 'Public Interest Litigation: Origins and strategies' and 'Legal aid and global justice lawyering: Issues in Practice’ are complementary courses and interested students are encouraged to enrol in both.

The course will be taught intensively over the summer period. This course will be particularly useful for students considering a career in global justice lawyering.