Meena Singh returns home to Monash Law
When Meena Singh walks back into Monash Law as Professor of Practice, she is not simply taking up a new role. She is returning to a place that has played a role in her family's story for decades.
A Yorta Yorta woman through her mother's heritage and an Indian woman through her father's heritage, Singh's connection to Monash stretches across generations. Her sisters studied at the University. Her mother, Auntie Diane, studied and later worked at Monash, including serving as Elder-in-Residence at the Clayton campus. Singh herself eventually followed the family path, completing her law degree at Monash after first studying arts at the University of Melbourne.
"Monash has always kind of been part of family life in some way," Singh said.
"It's been a really long connection. Always really proud to be associated with Monash."
Now, after a distinguished career spanning legal practice, advocacy and public leadership, Singh is returning to help shape the next generation of lawyers.
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A career built around listening
Much of Singh's professional life has focused on lifting up voices that have been struggling to be heard, or worse, completely ignored.
Before joining Monash Law, she served as Victoria's Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People from April 2022 to December 2026. She appeared three times before the Yoorook Justice Commission - on the third occasion with Liana Buchanan, then Principal Commissioner, and Elias Jarvis, a member of the Commission’s Youth Council. Meena also served as the Acting Principal Commissioner during 2025.
The Commissioner advocates for the rights, safety, and wellbeing of Aboriginal children and young people for young First Nations people. Meena Singh described the role as a unique privilege to sit beside Aboriginal children and young people on both the worst and best days of their lives.
“Whilst some days feel insurmountable and there are countless systems that work against you and collectively us as Aboriginal people, I depart as your Commissioner with hope, because that is the number one lesson I learnt from you, is to have hope and fight for your rights,” Singh said in her parting message to Aboriginal children and young people as Commissioner.
Earlier, she worked in criminal law, legal aid and community legal services, experiences that continue to shape her understanding of justice and the law.
In fact, it was at Victoria Legal Aid when the true value and purpose of her legal studies was revealed to her.
"It was certainly an unbelievable eye-opener," Singh said.
" When I saw all the legal issues that people were dealing with and how they were born out of personal circumstances, it made me realise just how precarious life is for too many people in our community. And especially if you experience that precariousness at a younger age - there were so many people who I would see in criminal law practice as adults who had had such disrupted upbringings.”
Meeting clients facing homelessness, family violence, instability and disadvantage challenged many of her assumptions about the world.
" Working at Legal Aid and working with the diversity of clients that I did was, in itself, a privilege. I learnt so much from those individuals," Singh said.
“It's no small feat to walk into a room with a complete stranger and basically tell them the worst parts of what's happening in your life and hoping you'll get some sort of support for it.”
"The resilience that so many people had to show again and again for themselves, for their family members, in outrageous circumstances. It was a real honour working at Victoria Legal Aid, working with those clients and being trusted with their stories.”
These early experiences reinforced the importance of really hearing people's stories and using her power to amplify them - a principle that runs through all of Singh’s work and her career.
Then Commissioner Meena Singh delivering the keynote address at the 2025 Monash Law Gala Dinner.
Why stories matter in the law
Meena Singh brought her own story to the Monash Law Gala Dinner in 2025 when she delivered the keynote at an event that celebrated 50 years of clinical legal education at Monash Law. Professor Steven Vaughan, Dean of the Faculty of Law, recalls being moved by her story and the powerful way she elevated the stories of so many who had come into contact with Monash Law Clinics.
"When Meena gave the keynote at our Gala Ball last year, she spoke about fifty years of clinical legal education and the roughly 100,000 Victorians our clinics have assisted. What has stayed with me is how she read that number. She treated it as 100,000 separate stories, each told by someone who needed a person on the other side of the desk to actually listen to them. That is the standard she sets, and it is the standard we want our graduates to hold themselves to," Vaughan said.
"Meena's appointment matters to us for reasons well beyond her record, considerable as that is. She has spent her career in the rooms where the law's promises get tested against people's actual lives. Having that perspective inside the Faculty, available to our students week in and week out, is a genuine privilege."
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For Singh, the opportunity to share experiences from people’s actual lives through storytelling is not something that’s separate from the law. It sits at its heart.
Reflecting on her work as a criminal lawyer, she described her experience explaining to clients why storytelling matters and what advocacy meant in practice.
“ When I was a duty lawyer at the Magistrate's Court and representing people, I would say, "All that the magistrate knows about you is what is written in this summary. My job is to make you a real live person, to explain the circumstances that got you into this, and to suggest what would be the most appropriate response." So you're telling a story,” Singh said
Her relationship with storytelling is deeply informed by both her Indigenous and migrant heritage.
"For First Nations communities, for migrant communities – pre-writing, our stories were handed down, and they were the stories that reinforced law and reinforced values. They reinforced practice and relationship with country and all of our relationships with each other.”
Without somebody storytelling and without somebody hearing, Singh warns that law can sometimes reflect a single worldview. Better outcomes, she argues, require lawyers and decision-makers to engage with a wider range of experiences.
"It's important to know your own story. It's important to know your own positionality and who you are and where you've come from," Singh said.
Meena Singh’s sister Jeanette and mum Diane at the 2025 Monash Law Gala Dinner.
Bringing legal education closer to community
Although Singh did not have the opportunity to participate in a clinical legal education program during her own law degree, she sees immense value in experiential learning.
Clinical programs expose students to the realities of people's lives and the practical challenges of accessing justice. They provide opportunities not only to develop legal skills, but to deepen empathy and understanding.
In particular, Singh is excited by the possibilities offered through Monash Law Clinics and initiatives such as the Justice Bus. This is a concept that has been close to her heart for years.
During her time at the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, she and colleagues dreamed about taking legal assistance directly to communities. Later, while visiting New York, she recalls seeing a mobile legal service operating outside a community court and immediately recognised its potential.
"It's just that embodiment of taking law to where people are," Singh said.
While it might just look like an exercise in taking access-to-justice to distant locations, legal outreach is about more than convenience. It’s also an opportunity for students and lawyers to understand the realities faced by people living remotely.
“Traditionally we as lawyers can get stuck behind our desks. Putting lawyers out in the spaces where the issues are arising - there's a physical tangibility about seeing how far it is for people to travel from a particular location to the nearest legal hub, or the nearest medical center. When you're grounded in a metro or even a big regional city, you can take for granted access to things.”
"To really situate yourself in that inaccessibility brings a different level of connection and understanding to what people deal with."
A new chapter for Meena Singh at Monash Law
Without minimising her extensive career, Singh speaks about joining Monash Law with the enthusiasm of someone embarking on a new adventure.
After years spent examining what is failing within systems, she’s looking forward to an environment focused on learning, creativity and possibility.
"I'm really looking forward to being around minds that are in a wonderful, expansive learning space and a really hopeful environment," Singh said.
She’s particularly interested in exploring questions of youth justice, public perceptions of young people and how legal institutions can better respond to the challenges children face.
"How do we design something that is different when it comes to youth justice?" Singh asked.
"How do we shape public perception in a much different way to actually care about children and young people?"
As Professor of Practice, Singh hopes to continue the work that has defined much of her career and continue helping individuals be heard while finding ways to improve the systems around them.
"My history or background of work has really been a lot about how do I change systems, and how do I get individuals heard within those systems – and ultimately change those systems for better outcomes."
Then Meena Singh presenting the keynote at the 2025 Monash Law Gala Dinner.
Learning with students, not just teaching them
Meena Singh hopes students will embrace her collaborative way of working and take away an understanding that there is more than one way to be a lawyer and more than one way to use a law degree. She expects they will bring curiosity and ask difficult questions, all while remaining true to themselves.
Professor Vaughan is confident that these curious students will take away much more than just the insights from discussing difficult questions.
"Our students will learn a great deal of law from Meena. I suspect what they will carry with them is her conviction that justice has to be made real for particular people in particular circumstances, or it isn't yet justice. If they leave Monash holding onto that, we have done our job," Vaughan said.
Always the storyteller and story-hearer, she anticipates that the learning will go both ways.
"I'm hoping to learn from them just as much," Singh said.
"That energy and that 'why?' Why is it like this? It'll very much be a two-way street."
For someone whose journey has always been shaped by stories, community and a commitment to justice, Meena Singh’s return to Monash Law is less like a new beginning than it is a homecoming.
For students walking through the doors of Monash Law Clinics in the years ahead, it promises an opportunity to learn from a lawyer, advocate and leader who has spent her career ensuring that people’s stories are heard.