STUDENTS at the University of Canberra (UC) are making justice more accessible to vulnerable people through a new clinic which provides free legal support.

The initiative, called Citizen Centred Justice (CCJ), is a collaboration between the UC Medical and Counselling Centre, Canberra Law School and pro-bono law firm, Adjacent Law & Health, and is the first of its kind for the university.

Under the supervision of a qualified lawyer, law and legal studies students work together to communicate with clients and research what their case may require in order to provide them assistance and advocacy.

While students can’t provide direct legal advice as they’re not fully qualified, they are actively involved in interviewing, drafting legal materials and trying to identify legal solutions to the issues clients raise.

It’s an experience the students involved in the program have described as “eye-opening”.

“I think it’s been a really valuable experience for all of us,” says Laura Dinh, a law student in her final year of study at UC.

“We learn the theory in law school but it’s been great to put it into practice in the clinic.

“This experience really helps develop those soft skills like teamwork and learning how to deal with clients in a compassionate way.”

Clients are referred to the CCJ by the UC Medical and Counselling Centre, where a health practitioner has identified a legal issue in someone’s situation that should be attended to.

CCJ’s legal supervisor and director of Adjacent Law & Health, Allison Ballard, says vulnerable citizens in these situations are often reluctant to speak to a lawyer.

“If people are having issues with their employment, with their housing, with family, they tend to raise those concerns with their health practitioners, they’ll talk to their doctor or psychologist,” she says.

“When it comes to legal matters though there’s not a lot the health practitioner can do, but if they can actually put that patient in touch with a lawyer then the lawyer can work with the health practitioner to try and generate a holistic solution for the patient.”

Ms Ballard believes CCJ is the first student-led legal clinic in the country, and that more initiatives of its kind could provide greater access to justice throughout Australia while giving important first-hand experience to students. 

“Even well-paid people, unless they have a special litigation fund, would struggle to find three or four thousand dollars to have a letter written by a lawyer, let alone vulnerable citizens,” says Ms Ballard.

“While I was at Legal Aid I could have worked there 24 hours a day seven days a week and I would not have begun to make a dent in the amount of legal need that is out there in the community.

“There simply is not enough funding for community legal centres. They’re the ones out there on the ground at the grassroots level providing access to justice for vulnerable members of the community.”

Ms Ballard also says the initiative prepares future lawyers for serious and possibly traumatic experiences that will confront them throughout their career due to the confronting nature of many legal issues.

“Within the legal profession the amount of mental-health concerns and suicide is quite high, says Ms Ballard.

“Our approach is if we get to the students early and make them mindful that, as a profession, lawyers are at risk of these sorts of things and let them know it’s okay to seek help then they don’t have to suffer in silence.”

As part of the program, students are supported by a counsellor who can debrief them should they find any of the work distressing.

It’s something that Laura and other students at the clinic say provides them with a pivotal and foundational understanding of their work. 

“Some cases are very confronting, especially for us final-year law students who haven’t had experience in the field,” says Laura.

“It’s great to get that support from one of the counsellors in the centre who helps us with career development. We can go to them to debrief about any of these matters we find quite confronting.” 

Ms Ballard believes this multidisciplinary approach between health professionals and lawyers represents an important future for the legal field.

“Think about if in every doctor’s surgery in the country there was someone embedded or related to legal services, so the health practitioners could refer patients to get at least some preliminary advice or education around legal issues they could be facing,” she says.

“If there were more clinics like this it could only be a good thing, more people could access justice.”