CDU’s legal clinic was born out of a national Government funding initiative, launched in January 2010, designed to encourage partnerships between community legal centres and universities throughout Australia, by providing clinical placement opportunities for students studying family law.
CDU, in conjunction with the Hume Riverina Community Legal Service (HRCLS), located in Wodonga, Victoria, was successful in obtaining a significant portion of the $AU360,000.00 made available by the Government for the development of such programs. In addition to the partnership forged between CDU and the HRCLS, six other community legal centres and their university counterparts were successful in obtaining funding to run similar clinical legal education programs for law students.
Whilst the concept of clinical legal education is not new to Australian universities, CDU’s legal clinic is unique in a number ways:
- Approximately 80% of CDU’s law student cohort undertake studies externally and online from urban, regional and remote locations across Australia, and the world.
- The clinical placements themselves are administered off-campus by an external agency located some 3800 kms, or 2400 miles, by road from the CDU Darwin campus.
- The program is integrated into CDU’s substantive Bachelor of Laws curriculum, rather than as a stand-alone alternative to studies in substantive law.
- The multi-jurisdictional nature of governance in Australia, combined with the geographical location of the HRCLS, demands that program participants extend their learning beyond the limits of the particular jurisdiction in which they reside and study, and indeed beyond the jurisdictional ambit of CDU’s law curriculum itself.
In 2010, three brave students undertaking placement at the clinic were cast in short documentary film about the clinic, its objectives and what students could expect to take from the experience.
