Events
Events
ACJI hosts a variety of public lectures, seminars, events and executive and continuing education featuring experts from Australia and overseas.
Upcoming Events
Upcoming events will be updated as soon as they are available.
Past Events
Tackling the Credibility Crisis in Empirical Legal Research
Empirical research methods have a growing presence in legal research. These include making the case for reforms, investigating law in action, and evaluating the impact of interventions. The appetite for empirical findings is also strong: scholars, research partners, funders and graduate research students are all keen to bring empirical methods to bear on important questions about law and its operation. Still, methodological expertise is in short supply in law schools, and there are many barriers to high-quality empirical legal research. Are these the perfect conditions for a credibility crisis?
On Thursday 7 September 2023, in a lunchtime webinar, Dr Jason Chin (College of Law, Australian National University) tackled the pressing problem of the credibility crisis affecting empirical legal research and what can be done to address it. This event was held as part of the 2023 Social Sciences Week. |
Disability, Access to Justice and Accessible Legal Information
In this talk, Professor Rosie Harding will draw on qualitative empirical research interviews with disabled people, supporters, and health and social care professionals on their experiences of supporting everyday legally relevant decisions. A joint event hosted by the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation and the Castan Centre for Human Rights.
Date and time: 29 March 2023 About this eventEasy read information uses pictures and symbols, often alongside highly simplified written language, to enable people with cognitive impairments to access written information. Accessible information can be a reasonable adjustment under disability discrimination laws, and is supported by Article 9 and Article 21 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). In this talk, Professor Rosie Harding will draw on qualitative empirical research interviews with disabled people, supporters, and health and social care professionals on their experiences of supporting everyday legally relevant decisions. She will combine these insights with reflections from experience of translating legal information into accessible formats as part of a practical follow-on intervention. Professor Harding will argue that greater access to easy read legal information would help improve access to justice for intellectually disabled people. It would also support the implementation of the right to enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis to others (Article 12 CRPD) by shifting emphasis away from the disabled person’s ability to understand complex legal information onto the importance of accessible communication by legal professionals. This event is a partnership between The Australian Centre for Justice Innovation and the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law as part of Monash Law. SpeakersProfessor Rosie Harding FAcSS, University of Birmingham Moderator: Dr Jess Mant, Monash University |
Lessons for Lawyers from Banksia
Join us for this webinar featuring our Director Associate Professor Genevieve Grant and Professor Michael Legg of UNSW's Law and Justice.
Date and time: Tuesday 29 March, 12:30pm to 1:45pm
About this event
In Bolitho v Banksia Securities Ltd (No 18) (remitter) [2021] VSC 666 (11 October 2021), Justice John Dixon catalogued a range of ‘egregious conduct that betrayed the solemn trust fundamental to the civil justice system’.
In this webinar, Professor Michael Legg and Associate Professor Genevieve Grant will discuss the lessons of the Banksia remitter judgment for practitioners. Haven’t had time to read all 700 pages of the decision? This webinar will highlight the key implications across civil procedure, litigation and legal ethics.
Speakers
Michael Legg is a Professor in the Faculty of Law, UNSW. He specialises in complex litigation, including regulatory litigation and class actions and in innovation in the legal profession. He is the author of Case Management and Complex Civil Litigation (2011) published by Federation Press, co-author of Principles of Civil Procedure in New South Wales (4th ed 2020) published by Thomson Reuters, co-author of Annotated Class Actions Legislation (2d ed 2018) published by LexisNexis and co-author of Artificial Intelligence and the Legal Profession published by Hart. He is also the editor of Regulation, Litigation and Enforcement (2011) published by Thomson Reuters and The Future of Dispute Resolution (2013) and Resolving Civil Disputes (2016), both published by LexisNexis and The Impact of Technology and Innovation on the Well-Being of the Legal Profession published by Intersentia. His research has been cited in judgments from the Federal Court of Australia, Supreme Court of New South Wales, Supreme Court of Victoria and Supreme Court of New Zealand, and in law reform reports by the Australian Law Reform Commission, Productivity Commission, NSW Law Reform Commission and Victorian Law Reform Commission. Michael has 20 years of experience as a legal practitioner having worked with leading Australian and US law firms. He is admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of NSW, Federal Court of Australia, High Court of Australia and in the State and Federal courts of New York. He holds law degrees from UNSW (LLB), the University of California, Berkeley (LLM) and the University of Melbourne (PhD). He is the Director of the Law Society of NSW Future of Law and Innovation in the Profession (flip) research stream in the Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation at UNSW Law. Michael is a member of the Law Council of Australia's Class Actions Committee and a member of the Law Society of NSW's Future Committee. | Associate Professor Genevieve Grant is Director of the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation in the Law Faculty at Monash University. She is co-author of Luntz & Hambly's Torts: Cases, Legislation and Commentary (LexisNexis, 9th ed, 2021) and Victorian Statutory Compensation Systems (LexisNexis, 2021, with Jason Taliadoros). Genevieve's research uses empirical methods to evaluate justice system performance, including the design and operation of dispute resolution, civil justice and injury compensation systems. This work cuts across the fields of litigation and dispute resolution, legal technology, injury compensation and legal ethics. Genevieve has experience investigating the perspectives of a range of stakeholders and users (including litigants, compensation claimants, users of online dispute resolution platforms, courts, family law disputants, consumers of legal services, medical examiners and administrative decision-makers). |
ACJI / the Department of Business Law and Taxation (Monash Business School)
Socio-Legal Sessions
Are you getting started with empirical research, or keen to learn about the way socio-legal approaches are used?
In each seminar in this series, a socio-legal scholar will present an example of their work. They will focus on the research methods, design and process, including any collaborations involved.
The series will provide opportunities for students and colleagues with varying levels of experience with empirical work to come together to discuss how to do this kind of research, along with common pitfalls and good practices.
Associate Professor Mai Sato, Director of Eleos Justice, Monash Law5 October 2020 In this session, A/Prof Sato will discuss her experience researching attitudes to the death penalty in Japan. The project she will focus on involved using survey methods and deliberative polling (about which a documentary film was made). Mai will reflect on the design and reception of the research, and its impact on the position of key stakeholders on the death penalty. | |
Dr Anita Foerster, Monash Business Law & Taxation24 August 2020 Dr Anita Foerster was recently engaged by the UK-based public-interest environmental law organisation ClientEarth to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the Victorian Climate Change Act, together with colleagues at RMIT and UNSW. In this presentation she will reflect on the research approach and methods used, including qualitative research interviews and quantitative data collection and analysis. Challenges in developing a robust methodology given contextual, budget and time constraints will also be discussed. | |
Associate Professor Catrina Denvir, Monash Business Law & Taxation29 June 2020 | |
Associate Professor Kate Seear, Monash Law1 June 2020 |
Taking Justice Online: Promises, Pitfalls, Perimeters
A Critical Perspectives Workshop hosted by the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation (Monash Law), 26 November 2019
Topics & Background
Navigators; solution explorers; e-filing; ODR; online adjudication. Digital technology in various guises has emerged as the new saviour for beleaguered legal systems, promising to lead our courts and tribunals to a future of fast, affordable and democratised justice. It is an exciting promise that has seen a global explosion of investment.
However, behind the excitement lie deep uncertainties as to the scope, perimeter and ambitions of potential reforms, and a lack of shared vocabulary about what is involved. Key questions – such as how reforms enhance or distort the judicial function, and how public law principles may constrain their operation – remain to be explored. And in the background hover ADR and case management, those former saviours whose promises of a generation ago remain unfulfilled.
Call For Papers
On 26 November 2019 the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation (Monash Law) is hosting a roundtable for researchers considering the impacts of key online technologies on justice. The event will combine discussion of contested concepts, burning questions and works-in-progress. The event is a timely opportunity for researchers in this fast-moving field to come together to share insights, get feedback from colleagues and chart the way forward.
To participate, please submit a short abstract of a work-in-progress (150 words max) plus up to 3 burning questions you have about the field to acji@monash.edu.
Submissions close on 30 September.
Please contact A/Prof Genevieve Grant (genevieve.grant@monash.edu) with any queries.
Recent Events...
Digital Civics and Legal Capability in the Community: Expanding Access to Justice
RSVP: Register here
Technology is increasingly recognised as an important means of enabling community members to participate in the design and delivery of services. At the same time, as the demand grows for technology-based solutions to legal problems, there are pressing questions about the relationship between community members' digital and legal capabilities. In this exciting event, two internationally-recognised experts will present cutting edge developments from the cross-disciplinary fields of digital civics and assisted digital services. This seminar will be of interest to anyone committed to understanding how technology can best be used to promote access to justice.
Patrick Olivier is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Monash University and his research spans the application of social and ubiquitous computing, the development of new approaches to interaction (including as novel sensing platforms and interaction techniques) and human-centred design methods. Patrick coined the term Digital Civics -- now a central focus of his research -- a cross-disciplinary area of research that explores ways technology can promote new forms of participation in the design and delivery of local services including education, public health and social care and town planning. Before joining Monash in December 2018, Patrick was Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computing, Newcastle University, UK where founded and lead Open Lab, a centre for cross-disciplinary research in digital technologies, where he was director of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the EPSRC Digital Economy Research Centre. | Dr Catrina Denvir is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Business Law and Taxation, Monash Business School, Monash University. She joined Monash from Ulster University where she Directed the Legal Innovation Centre - a joint initiative between the School of Law and the School of Computer Science and Intelligent Systems. The research Catrina conducts is inherently interdisciplinary and engages issues relevant to law, technology, legal services, legal education (public and professional), ethics, sociology, psychology (behaviour) and public policy. She has published widely on the subjects of: technological innovation in the legal profession; the role of law in everyday life; public understanding of the law; design of legal services; access to justice; industrial action, and; research methodology. She has a keen interest in applying methodologies from other fields, to the study of the law and has expertise in a broad range of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. |
Legal Tech and Design Masterclass
Get introduced to the NewLaw landscape and learn about how Human-Centred Design is being used to enhance justice.
The Legal Tech and Design Masterclass will be a hands-on workshop where the public can learn about human-centred design and the use of legal tech in the profession. Facilitated by Rachel Kessel, of Monash University and the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation, this is a window into what it is like to study NewLaw. Rachel, who was named Academic of the Year at the 2018 Lawyers Weekly, Women in Law Awards, is passionate about teaching and the intersection of law and technology. Come along to take a peek into the future of what digital lawyers might be doing by 2029.
RSVP: Register here
NATIONAL WELLNESS FOR LAW CONFERENCE: Making Wellness Core Business
Date: 14-15 February 2019
Presented by: Faculty of Law, Monash University and Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne
Sponsors: Australian Centre for Justice Innovation and the Health Law and Wellbeing Group
View the flyer here.
View the Twitter feed from Forum.
Day 1: Wellbeing in Legal Education: Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham Street Carlton.
Day 1 Will include colleagues from medicine and health sciences to share experiences and learning on wellness and the tertiary learning experience and transition to professional life.
Day 2: Wellbeing in the Profession: Faculty of Law, Monash University, Monash University Law Chambers, 555 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
Day 2 will include keynote speakers and panels with members of the judiciary, practitioners and
researchers on wellbeing in the profession. Attendees at Day 2 may be eligible for 6 CPD units.
Mental Health Courts: What can we learn from the US experience?
Magistrate Felicity Zempilas from Western Australia's mental health court, the START Court, will speak about the findings from her recent Churchill Fellowship which saw her travel to the United States in 2018. She reflects on latest practice and policy developments in the United States mental health courts that will be relevant to those working in mental health courts and other problem-oriented courts, and those interested in therapeutic jurisprudence and responses to offenders with mental illness. Magistrate Zempilas' talk will be followed by a panel discussion of magistrates and other experts.
Date: Thursday 11 October
Time: 5.30pm - 7.30pm
Venue: Monash University Law Chambers, 555 Lonsdale Street, Auditorium
Event Flyer
About Magistrate Felicity Zempilas
Felicity Zempilas graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Western Australia in 1993. She was admitted as a practitioner of the Supreme Court of Western Australia in December 1994.
After completing articles, Felicity commenced as a lawyer in the criminal section of the Aboriginal Legal Service in Perth. She took up a position as a state prosecutor with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in 1996, during which time she also completed a year’s secondment to the Office of the State Coroner in 2000. Felicity later commenced permanently as Counsel Assisting the State Coroner in 2003 and worked part time in that position, assisting in a large number of inquests. During that time she had two children; Max (born 2002) and Poppy (born 2006).
Felicity was appointed as a Magistrate in August 2009 and worked in the Goldfields, Esperance and Western Desert Regions until early 2014, hearing matters involving criminal, civil, family and mining law and covering a broad geographical area. This included presiding in the Aboriginal Sentencing Community Court. She then worked as a Magistrate in Perth, focussing mainly on criminal, civil and mining law and, since the beginning of 2017, is now the dedicated Magistrate in the Adult Mental Health Diversion (Start) Court. She was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2017 to study mental health courts in the United States.
Rethinking drug policy in Victoria
With Associate Professor Kate Seear, Fiona Patten MLC, Mick Palmer AO APM, Magistrate Tony Parsons and Associate Professor Becky Batagol as MC.
Monash Law’s Australian Centre for Justice Innovation and Law, Health & Wellbeing Group have partnered to host a panel discussion exploring the justice system implications of the Victorian Parliament's recent inquiry into drug law reform. This landmark inquiry recommends major reforms to Victoria's approach to alcohol and other drug use, with a strategy that focuses on prevention, harm reduction and improved health outcomes. It provides a roadmap towards implementing significant changes to the state's drug policy, and a move away from traditional criminal justice responses.
Our panel of experts will talk about some of the most significant recommendations in the report, reflect on their implications for health outcomes, social policy, policing and law enforcement. They will also consider how the suggested reforms sit against other recent developments in Victoria's drug policy, such as the development of the state's first supervised injecting facility and the expansion of specialist drug courts. The panellists will also analyse the potential of the inquiry's recommendations to improve social, economic and health outcomes for people who use alcohol and other drugs in Victoria.
Date: Monday 30 July 2018
Time: 5:30-7pm
Venue: Monash Law Chambers
555 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
About the speakers
Associate Professor Kate Seear is a lawyer, and academic in the Faculty of Law at Monash University. She is also the Academic Director of Springvale Monash Legal Service. She holds a prestigious Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship. Through this research she explores how Australian and Canadian law understands alcohol and other drug ‘addiction’. She is the author of numerus books, articles and reports on alcohol and other drug policy and law, the relationship between drug law and public health, stigma and human rights. |
Tony Parsons is the Supervising Magistrate at Melbourne’s Drug Court and a member of the Premier’s Ice Action Task Force. After completing his LLB at the University of Melbourne in 1984, Tony became principal of Slades Barristers & Solicitors in 1987 and specialised in criminal law. In 2000 Tony was appointed Managing Director of Victoria Legal Aid and in 2008 he was appointed as a Magistrate. For thirty-eight consecutive years and counting has been a member of the Melbourne Football Club. |
Mick Palmer AO APM Mick Palmer was a Director of Australia21 from 2012-2016 and also served as Deputy Chair during that time. He is a 33 year career police officer with extensive experience in police leadership and reform in community, national and international policing. He served as Commissioner of the Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Service agency from 1988-1994 and as Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) from 1994 until March 2001. |
Fiona Patten is the leader of the Reason Party, and Member of the Victorian Legislative Council for the Northern Metropolitan region. She came to politics after 20 years of lobbying for the rights of organisations involved in the sexual rights movement – including small businesses, sex workers, HIV/AIDS organisations, adult media and online anti-censorship groups. Since being elected in 2014, Fiona has campaigned for evidence-based policies including drug law reform, safe access to abortion clinics and voluntary assisted dying. |
Event MC - Associate Professor Becky Batagol Dr Becky Batagol is an Associate Professor of Law at Monash University. She is a researcher and teacher with a focus on family law, family violence, non-adversarial justice, dispute resolution, therapeutic jurisprudence, gender, child protection and constitutional law. Becky is the co-author of Non-Adversarial Justice (2nd ed, 2014). Becky is a Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Justice Innovation and co-convener of the faculty's Feminist Legal Studies Group. |