LAW4330 · Family law assistance program: Professional practice

Overview

Students undertake a practical placement in a specialist family law program based at a community legal centre which endeavours to meet the legal needs of its community. Under supervision by qualified solicitors, students provide legal advice to clients, undertake ongoing casework, brief Counsel, and in appropriate cases, represent clients in Court and attend Court to instruct Counsel in hearings. Students also attend the duty lawyer service at the Dandenong Family Court each Monday to assist and advise unrepresented litigants. Students acquire a diverse range of practical legal skills including: the capacity to undertake legal research and apply legal research to factual scenarios; the ability to synthesise professional, technical and ethical knowledge acquired in the law degree and apply it in a practical legal context; skills in critical thinking and legal judgment; the capacity to independently devise legal solutions for complex legal problems; and the capacity to identify and respond to ethical, moral and professional dilemmas in legal practice. Students also develop an appreciation of social justice issues and have a heightened awareness of the operation of the justice system, law reform and policy issues. The skills learnt in this unit will be useful for students who wish to practice law (especially family law), along with students interested in policy, government and social justice career pathways.

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Independently undertake legal research into complex areas of family law and related legislation, including children's and property issues, child support and spousal maintenance and, using such research: (a) Assess and articulate adversarial and non-adversarial options for clients, including the strengths and weaknesses of available legal options; (b) Pro-actively develop solutions to complex legal problems; and (c) Demonstrate a capacity for recognising and appropriately responding to the strategic and ethical implications of different legal approaches.
2. Effectively communicate (both orally and in writing) legal advice, information, options for litigious and non-litigious pathway, arguments and strategies with a wide range of audiences involved in the justice system.
3. Demonstrate practical legal skills of interviewing, advocacy and drafting; and appropriate use of non-adversarial methods and principles for the resolution of client disputes (mediation, negotiation collaboration, arbitration).
4. Assess their own capabilities and performance as future legal practitioners by having developed skills of self-management, and to independently synthesise this information to aid in the exercise of sound professional and ethical decisions.
5. Independently identify a practical, law reform or policy problem of relevance to the clinic, isolate and critically analyse the legal principles relevant problem, and articulate these issues through an advanced theoretical and technical knowledge of the designated problem.

Workload

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is one half-day Legal Service client intake session per week for 16 weeks (including non-teaching period) plus one and a half days per week client follow-up, which equals two days per week, and including one onsite seminar day and 4/5 online seminars over the clinical period. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, client interviewing and advice sessions, supervision and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.