STUDENT TRANSFORMED BY CLINICS EXPERIENCE
Written by James Brandis, Senior Communications and Content Coordinator.
Professor Bryan Horrigan, former Dean, Faculty of Law and Thalia Thirunavukarasu, former student and Client Services Officer Monash Law Clinics.
Thalia Thirunavukarasu is a final year Law and Arts student who has found Monash Law’s Clinical Legal Education experience to be transformational.
It’s a long way from the beginning of her legal studies when clinics weren’t even on her radar.
“I didn’t know that Monash had a clinical program when I was choosing my university. I knew that Monash was a good university for law, and I knew that it had a wide range of electives, so that was my incentive for choosing Monash,” recalls Thalia.
Read Thalia's full story and watch her interview with Professor Bryan Horrigan.
Thalia was first introduced to Clinical Legal Education in second year when she was thinking about electives in her Law studies.
“I think I was really excited by the idea of doing something practical, actually working at a legal clinic and working with lawyers and giving advice. I thought that was a really exciting way to use one of my electives,” she says.
Clinical Legal Education is a practical, clinically focused opportunity to work with in-house Monash Law Clinics, or with our partners, and provide legal services to members of the community who wouldn’t otherwise have access to justice.
I still felt kind of young and inexperienced as a law student, but our clients really trusted us to give them sound legal advice and keep their best interests at heart.
All Clinical Legal Education students have support systems around them in the form of trained supervisors and other resources. Nobody’s ever left to just do it on their own. Monash Law Clinic’s obligations to clients and the legal requirements demand that students are always under the supervision of properly trained people.
“I came to the clinics in law student mode. I thought our supervisors would give us lectures and maybe teach us how to become a lawyer, but the clinics process is very much learning by doing and learning by observing,” says Thalia.
“I had a client appointment on my first day of clinic. My supervisor was very supportive and took me through the whole process, what it would look like, what I would need to do. But it’s really you who’s leading the client appointment and that was unlike any of the other units I’d done before.”
So, what would be Thalia’s advice to students considering a Clinical Legal Education elective?
“I would absolutely recommend that all students do a clinical placement elective. Even make room for two because it’s very common after you’ve done one, you’ll probably want to do another!”