TRANSFORMING COMMUNITY LEGAL AWARENESS
Written by Faiyaz Zaman, Street Law Officer 2024.
County Court of Victoria.
The Street Law Program was created in 2019 as a partnership between Monash Law Clinics and the Monash Law Student Society.
From 2019 to 2023, the program engaged more than 140 student volunteers and delivered 71 presentations to approximately 1800 community members. In the past year we’ve seen significant growth with 84 volunteers, 28 presentations, and approximately 1500 participants.
Feedback from schools and organisations this year has indicated a very high satisfaction rate, with all respondents expressing interest in a future presentation in 2025. In their feedback, participants highlighted our confident, clear and enthusiastic presenters who were sensitive to the needs and interests of attendees, delivered highly relevant legal and university related information and generated strong participant engagement. Overall, we have expanded our mission to enhance legal literacy in the community.
In addition to our external impact, the Street Law Program has focused on developing the skills of our student volunteers and giving them authority to engage with the community they are presenting to. This involved hosting internal training workshops, practice presentations and our upcoming community legal panel.
We hope to continue our work and aim to expand our reach with the Justice Bus, an upcoming pilot program that will bring our program to rural areas. This Justice Bus idea has been developed as a result of strong interest from rural communities wanting to access legal information and learn about university experiences.
As Street Law Officer 2024, I would like to thank Professor Jeff Giddings and Sally Andersen from Monash Law Clinics, LSS Education Director Collette, my deputy team – Dipannita Dey, Lucy Weeraratne, Sabrina Fong, Farhang Fallah, and Tom Davis – and our dedicated facilitators for their hard work in making the program a success this year.