• What is clinical legal education?
• What do students do at SCALES?
• What kind of clients do students work with?
• Do students get to go to court?
• Who teaches clinical courses?
• What is the supervisor/student ratio?
• Clinical courses offered.
• How are students selected for a clinic? How do you enrol?
• Time Commitment
• How are students graded?
• Will being in a clinic help me learn how to be a lawyer?

Clinical legal education is a teaching method that combines theoretical concepts and actual legal practice. Its purpose is to help students learn from their own experience and from their reflection on that experience.

Students are given the opportunity to exercise professional judgment while representing actual clients. Students are responsible for all aspects of the client's case. The students' experiences then become the subject of critical review and reflection. This review teaches students how to better evaluate their own legal work and the legal work performed by others. Clinical teaching helps to make law school the beginning, not the end, of a legal education by assisting students to develop models and techniques for systematic and self-conscious review of their experiences.

Students engage in all of the tasks normally associated with the legal client work. Students bear primary responsibility for interviewing, investigation, planning, negotiation, strategic analysis, research, writing (letters and legal submissions), and advocacy.

SCALES clients are usually those who would not otherwise be able to obtain legal assistance. Like other community legal centres the clients are low income. SCALES tries to focus its services on people who are most in need of assistance and this includes: young people, people in public housing, indigenous people, people with disabilities, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and women who have experienced family violence.

In some cases students are able to deliver pleas in mitigation in the Children’s Court; appear on behalf of clients on tenancy matters in the Local Court and advocate on behalf of clients in Homeswest Tribunals. Other students are able to work on and prepare submissions for the Migration Review Tribunal, Refugee Review Tribunal, Federal Court and High Court. Students can then also attend the Tribunal or Court and watch the arguments in those cases.

All of the supervisors are qualified legal practitioners and some are registered migration agents as well. The supervisors have a background in working in community legal centres, aboriginal legal service, legal aid and private practice. Students get to work with a variety of supervisors who have expertise in diverse areas of law.

SCALES also has a number of administrative support staff who manage the office. The administrative staff have tremendous experience in advocacy and community work.

The supervisor/student ratio varies between 1 to 4 and 1 to 7.

LAW390 Clinical Legal Education (General Clinic) 8 pts

This course is offered at our Rockingham office and is the best opportunity to immerse yourself in legal practice. The course runs for 20 weeks and is offered twice each year; starting at the beginning of semester one and semester two.

It involves attending one full day per week at the SCALES office in Rockingham where you will interview clients, prepare legal research, advise clients and assist them with ongoing legal issues including representing or assisting them in court all under the supervision of our solicitors.

SCALES is a general legal practice, so you will have opportunity to work in many different areas including criminal, family, social security, criminal injuries compensation, discrimination, immigration, civil disputes and many more.

You also need to attend a weekly seminar at Murdoch South Street campus, which will reflect on and develop the skills you are learning in practice.

LAW3901 Clinical legal Education (General Clinic; Summer) 4pts

This course is offered in our Rockingham office and is simply a shorter version of the LAW390 unit. It runs for 10 weeks over the summer semester usually beginning in the first week of December and finishing just before the start of first semester.

It involves attending one full day per week at the SCALES office in Rockingham where you will interview clients, prepare legal research, advise clients and assist them with ongoing legal issues including representing or assisting them in court all under the supervision of our solicitors.

SCALES is a general legal practice, so you will have opportunity to work in many different areas including criminal, family, social security, criminal injuries compensation, discrimination, immigration, civil disputes and many more.

You also need to attend a weekly seminar at Murdoch South Street campus, which will reflect on and develop the skills you are learning in practice.

LAW385 Advanced Clinical Legal Education (Advanced Clinic) 4pts.

This unit has three streams:
- Advocacy
- Immigration
- Human Rights (intensive)

The Advocacy stream is a perfect opportunity to get on your feet in court as you represent clients on tenancy and other matters. It will develop you advocacy skills in a real life setting while providing all the support and assistance necessary from our legal staff. This course is based at our Rockingham office, and runs con-current with the general clinic. You must be available for one day at SCALES usually Tuesdays and occasionally Wednesdays.

The Immigration stream looks specifically at refugee and humanitarian law, by assisting asylum seekers and their families. This course gives you fist-hand knowledge of this complex area of law, while also allowing you to gain insight into the situation for refugees in many other countries around the world. It is taught within a socio-legal context which critiques current global practice using a human rights framework. It is taught from our Murdoch (South Street) office and runs concurrently with the general clinic, it requires attendance of about one full-day per week.

The Human Rights (intensive) stream looks specifically at the human rights framework and uses it both domestically and internationally to argue for our client’s human rights. We have taken cases to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the Committee against Torture and the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This unit also gives you an opportunity to work on policy and law reform by contributing to submission to parliamentary committees, inquiries and shadow reports.

It is taught across a two week period in both winter and summer and requires a fulltime commitment for the period of those two weeks. Seminars, meetings and briefings are scheduled at different times in the fortnight, but students also need to commit to a fulltime load during the course of the fortnight with some time available for follow-up in the week immediately following the intensive. It is taught from our Murdoch (South Street) office.

If you have any questions about any of these course, please contact the course co-ordinator Anna Copeland at a.copeland@murdoch.edu.au

Any law student can enrol in the Clinical Legal Education unit. As places are limited, preference is given to students who are due to graduate first. Students with any queries about enrolment should speak to one of the clinical supervisors. Students wishing to enrol in the Advanced Clinical Legal Education unit must have completed the Clinical Legal Education unit or have other relevant work experience. If there are places available we accept cross-enrolments from law students from outside of Murdoch University.

In Clinical Legal Education Students’ obligations involve:

Client intake sessions are the set days when students will see new clients at the Clinic. This also includes weekly/fortnightly file reviews of ongoing files which involve discussion of client matters/issues; analysis of legal, factual and ethical issues; and the development of appropriate problem-solving strategies.

This may involve further appointments with clients, research, the drafting of correspondence or documents or other related work. Such work can often be done from home or from the SCALES office at Murdoch University so students can avoid multiple trips to Rockingham.

These will involve a reflection on work at the clinic, the development of practical skills and substantive law and procedure.

TOTAL approx. 2 days per week

The clinical units use the same grading scale (HD-P) that is used in other units at Murdoch. The clinic is not bound by a grading curve. There are no examinations, rather student evaluations are based on performance of the lawyering tasks associated with the representation of a client and on a student's ability to reflect and learn from those experiences.

Absolutely. Teaching students how to be skilled, responsible members of the profession is the central goal of clinical education. Students in clinics learn how to be lawyers by engaging in the practice of law in a controlled educational environment that promotes self-reflection on each lawyering task. The direct nature of the work helps students to understand and apply the professional obligations and ethical standards that are part of being a lawyer.