Law clinics make a difference in the heart of the community

22 November 2024

In domestic and family violence, there’s an insidious tactic sometimes used by perpetrators to make it difficult for victim-survivors to get legal assistance.

Lawyers call it getting ‘conflicted out’, where a perpetrator engages with local legal service providers and has enough of an interaction with those providers that they are then unable to represent the victim survivor because it presents a conflict of interest.

It’s a particularly effective tactic in rural and regional areas, where legal services are already sparse.

When Adrian and Jenny Riordan heard about this tactic, they realised that the Cybec Foundation had to take action – and that an expansion of Monash Law’s community legal clinics could be the key.

The clinics offer law students in the last year or two of their Monash degree with real-world practical experience in a range of legal environments. The Cybec Foundation – established in 2002 by Adrian’s late father, Roger Riordan AM and his wife Patricia – helps to fund the clinics. It was on a visit to the clinic that Adrian and Jenny discovered how victim-survivors of domestic abuse were being conflicted out of legal representation by their abusive partners; they knew that the Cybec Foundation had to do more.

“There's so much of a need in our community for many different forms of support, and certainly, the whole area of law and justice is a big one,” Jenny says. “But more and more, we see the need for the domestic violence cohort.”

All-round benefit

This realisation prompted a new donation of more than $1 million from the Cybec Foundation to expand the Monash Law Clinics into rural and regional locations, where victim survivors are least served, and where more legal services are most needed.

Supporting the clinics benefits everyone involved, Jenny says. Not only does it help those in the community, but it also provides enormous value to the students themselves. “Law students get so much out of it, to the point where it helps them decide on a career path into that area,” she says.

Under supervision from a practising lawyer, students provide legal advice, in specialist areas such as family law, National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), tax and mediation.

“They're at the point of their degree when they're trying to work out where they want to take their career and perhaps what area they might want to specialise in,” says Melissa Fletcher, Senior Manager of Partnerships and Clinics at the Monash Law Faculty.

Melissa Fletcher, Senior Manager of Partnerships and Clinics at the Monash Law Faculty.

“It gives them the opportunity to experience the real legal work in that sector, to get some mentorship and guidance from a current practitioner in that area, and to build their skills and professional networks.”

Sustainable impact

Adrian sees the value in providing students the opportunity to experience alternatives to the traditional path of going straight into big city firms. “I spent the first 10 years of my career working in smaller companies; you didn't have lots of budget, but you had all the freedom in the world to be creative and learn stuff,” he says.

The long-running support also provides a level of security and stability that can be hard to come by, but which is incredibly valuable for programs like this, Fletcher says. “The beauty of the funding that the Cybec Foundation has given us is that we can offer a three-year contract, which means we can employ the right people,” she says.

“We can actually build something sustainable that has real impact over a considerable period of time.” The program can now expand to offer placements for up to 36 students each year, serving the needs of more than 150 clients a year.

Lawyer Assisted Family Dispute Resolution clinic students and supervising lawyers.

This sustainability is vital, particularly in rural and regional areas where it can take time to build relationships and trust with the local community. It will also help to build capacity in the long-term, by bringing legal professionals back into rural and regional areas.

“We give them the opportunity to get in and experience what a day in the life of a community lawyer is like,” Fletcher says. “That's the transformative nature of this – for everyone.”