LAW4813 · In-house clinical placement: Client legal assistance

Overview

Students undertake a practical placement at a community legal centre which endeavours to meet the needs of its community. Under supervision by qualified solicitors, students provide legal advice to clients and undertake ongoing casework in a variety of diverse specialized areas of law such as health law, family law dispute resolution and taxation law. Students acquire subject matter skills and expertise and learn a diverse range of practical legal skills essential for legal practice 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 to provide non-adversarial options to clients for dispute resolution; and the capacity to identify and respond to ethical, moral and professional dilemmas in legal practice. The unit also enables students to develop an appreciation of social justice and access to justice issues and have a heightened awareness of the operation of the justice system, law reform and policy issues.

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 in order to assess the strengths and limitations of available legal options for clients.
2. Effectively communicate (both orally and in writing) legal advice, information, options for litigious and non-litigious pathways, 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-reflection and self-management, with the ability to independently synthesise this information to aid in the exercise of sound professional and ethical decisions.
5. Independently identify a law reform or policy problem of relevance to the clinic, isolate and critically analyse the relevant legal principles that underpin that problem, and articulate recommendations for reform through a theoretical and technical knowledge of the designated problem.

Workload

The minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 1 full day per week plus follow up research and casework. Students will be required to spend this day on research, case preparation and consultation with their supervisor. 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.