CLIENTS TRANSFORMING MONASH LAW CLINICS
Written by Emily Singh, Principal Lawyer/Practice Manager.
Fintech Clinic students in the classroom.
Reflecting on the past year at Monash Law Clinics I’ve found myself contemplating,
What if community legal centres did not exist?
It’s certainly a scary reality to imagine, but is it truly imaginary? When people in our community who are in desperate need of legal assistance, advice and representation can’t obtain adequate assistance, my imaginary scenario is a reality.
As a sector, community legal centres do not meet the current need. We know this. We fail as a society to ensure access to justice for all. It’s as simple as that. But how does failure to meet the need for legal assistance look in real terms?
It means people who have the means can succeed in baseless litigation, adding to
or sparking a cycle of debt for victims of financial abuse. It means those victims have little chance of having their story heard, understood, and receiving relief from the often monumental, life changing debt left in the perpetrator’s wake.
It means tenants in social housing and private rentals live in squalor, and housing services/rental providers are not held accountable. It means people can’t access the basic income support they should be entitled to.
It means people who have the means to pay for representation understand their options, and achieve better outcomes, or more lenient sentences, than those who don’t.
It means the better resourced party, whether that’s a company, private individual or authority, wins. Not because they should, but because they can. And it fuels sometimes-endless cycles of poverty and disadvantage.
It means all of this, and so much more.
For those people that we are able to support through various specialist and generalist services, I have to believe our assistance is not only transformational for them, but will feed into broader systemic change, law reform and fundraising efforts.
Experiencing a legal problem is, almost always, an incredibly stressful event in a person’s life. As a community legal centre, clients coming to Monash Law Clinics are invariably people experiencing disadvantage. Our clients’ legal issues are often connected to abuse, trauma, violence, discrimination or marginalisation. And without adequate legal assistance, they may be unable to resolve the problem they are experiencing, often leading to further disadvantage or a denial
of rights.
We are a vital resource that empowers individuals, protects and upholds basic rights, and can help break the cycle
of disadvantage, which is sometimes transformational in the short term, and sometimes impactful for generations.
It’s critical for us, as educators of the next generation of the profession, that we teach our students that legal services are, and must always be, much more than just a means to resolve legal issues. This is what will transform the future of the profession, and hopefully lead to a time where community and access to justice is at the heart of legal education, and the entire legal and justice system.
In 2023/2024 we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know thousands of people within the Victorian community, and to walk alongside them as they face, or embark on a journey to resolve a problem. As I always say to my clients, “don’t thank me, let me thank you for allowing me and my students to be part of your journey.”
It’s not only the clients of a legal service who can have transformational experiences. All of us are changed with each human encounter. It’s our clients’ experiences and stories that feed into all our attempts to transform the playing field. Together we
will improve laws, systems and access to assistance for the communities of the future, so they don’t have to rely on being one of the lucky few that are able to secure adequate representation to fight their fight on an even playing field.