Janine Hill-Buxton: Skills no textbook can teach
50 Years / 50 Voices: Learning law and changing lives is a commemorative volume marking the 50th anniversary of the ongoing Monash Law Clinical Program, a pioneering initiative in clinical legal education undertaken by the Faculty of Law at Monash University. 50 alumni of the Monash Law Clinical Program shared their story with 50 current students of the same program. This is an excerpt from the book.
Read more about 50 years of Monash Law Clinics and buy 50 Years / 50 Voices here
Ask Janine Hill-Buxton about her proudest moments in law, and she won’t tell you about policy or titles or courtroom wins. She’ll tell you about Monash Law Clinics – the messy, unpolished, deeply human place where it all began.
‘The most fun I have is with the student clinic,’ she says, smiling, half-ironically but fully serious. The clinic isn’t just where she teaches. It’s where she returns, again and again, to remember why she became a lawyer in the first place.
It’s not the structured work of law reform or managing lawyers that lights her up. It’s watching students sit across from real clients, sometimes for the first time, and feel the weight and dignity of what law can actually do.
‘It makes law human,’ she says. And for Hill-Buxton, that’s never been a slogan. It’s been a truth she learned the hard way and has never forgotten.
Hill-Buxton’s path to law wasn’t conventional. She didn’t come straight out of high school with a clerkship dream and a polished LinkedIn profile. She came later, already a practising accountant, already in a career that made sense on paper but left her wanting more.
She traces the real beginning to a moment from her teens. After a car accident, needing legal advice, she found herself at Springvale Legal Service, confused and unsure where to begin. She never forgot what it felt like to sit on the other side of the law. ‘The community was suffering out there,’ she says. ‘People weren’t getting help.’
Years later, she saw an ad for a receptionist position at that same legal service. Without hesitation, she applied for the job. She wasn’t chasing prestige. She was chasing proximity, to people who needed someone to show up.
So when Hill-Buxton decided to study law, undertaking the Professional Practice unit was a given. Her two clinical placements in 2005 and 2006 were not just a component of her degree. They were, without question, the defining experiences of her legal education.
Read more about 50 years of Monash Law Clinics and buy 50 Years / 50 Voices here
Hill-Buxton was placed at Springvale, where the issues were never neat. The area was less fortunate then, filled with newly arrived migrants and families with limited English. They also had limited options, and limited trust in the system. The interpreters were overworked. The files were heavy. The emotions were real.
Her supervisor handed her 30 active files. There were car accidents, criminal matters, job losses, debts, families unravelling. But what stayed with Hill-Buxton wasn’t the legal complexity; it was the courage and quiet of the people she served.
‘People who couldn’t speak English, who had been ripped off, or lost jobs, or had no one else,’ she recalls.
Every miscommunication, every desperate phone call, every small victory chipped away at her old ideas of what a lawyer was meant to be. ‘It wasn’t about getting a law degree and earning a living,’ Hill-Buxton says. ‘It was about actually helping somebody.’
That shift, from theory to action, from ego to service, redefined not just her approach to her law degree, but her life. Monash Law Clinics taught her that law isn’t just something you know; it is something you do. It demanded presence, empathy and clarity. It asked you to sit in the mess with someone and help them find a way out.
When Hill-Buxton graduated in 2006, she carried the clinic with her. First into private practice, then into her work at Victoria Legal Aid. But it’s in her current role, as Director of Legal Practice at South-East Monash Legal Service, that those lessons continue to take root.
Now, Hill-Buxton sits beside students as they take their first tentative steps into real practice. In the beginning, she guides them closely, in what she affectionately calls the ‘babysitting’ phase. But by mid-semester, she lets go. Because learning to lead a client conversation, to hold someone’s story with care and clarity, is something no textbook can teach.
She teaches her students to be trauma-informed. To pay attention not just to what’s said, but how. To stay open without being overwhelmed. To understand that empathy isn’t softness; it’s strength with boundaries.
Hill-Buxton’s own career is full of cases that changed lives: a $226,000 win for a client; a man who found his biological father; a red light fine overturned due to police misconduct.
If you ask her what she’s proudest of, she doesn’t hesitate: it’s the students. The ones who walk out of the clinic a little more sure of who they are, and what the law is really for. The ones who say, ‘Now I understand.’
‘Every student should have to do Prof Prac,’ Hill-Buxton says. Not as a chore, but as a rite of passage. Because the clinic isn’t just about skills. It’s about growing a spine and softening your edges. It’s about learning how to speak plainly, listen deeply and stay when things get hard.
‘You learn to deal with people in the worst possible situations,’ she says. ‘You learn how to do stuff.’ And long after the textbooks fade and the AI tools change, she believes those human skills – making calls, interviewing, walking someone through fear – will remain essential.
For Hill-Buxton, Monash Law Clinics made law come alive. It made her a better lawyer, a better mentor, a better mother. Her five children watched her study late at night, and saw what it meant to show up for others. To her, that was as much a legacy as any case outcome.
In the end, she says, ‘Clinic put us ahead of a lot of other people, because we didn’t just learn the law. We learned how to use it.’
Read more about 50 years of Monash Law Clinics and buy 50 Years / 50 Voices here
Get involved with Monash Law Clinics
Monash Law Clinics combine legal education with real-world impact, supporting access to justice while equipping students with practical, ethical and professional skills.
If you are a student interested in undertaking a clinical unit as part of your studies, explore the available clinical placements and elective options.
Whether you’re an alum, practitioner or organisation keen to support the clinics through hosting placements, partnerships, volunteering or funding, there’s a way to be involved. To learn more, contact Emily Collard, Industry & Alumni Engagement Manager, at emily.collard@monash.edu.