Becoming a great lawyer with the capacity for genuine impact on individuals and society requires more than just a sound understanding of the law – particularly when it comes to assisting those marginalised by the system.
“While theoretical approaches to refugee law are important, we believe students gain a unique learning experience through undertaking applied casework where they must navigate the details and reality of an individual refugee client’s file – and the processes of accessing justice and assistance for refugees,” explains UTS Law academic and refugee law expert, Dr Anthea Vogl.
“By putting their legal knowledge and skills into practice drafting a submission that will be used in an actual legal refugee status determination process, students can cultivate a sense of personal ethics and responsibility towards the client and the legal system itself. They are also exposed to the limits of current processes and the broader social justice issues experienced by refugees and other legally-marginalised groups.”
Getting the model right, in both theory and practice, is crucial. Together with UTS Law colleague Dr Sara Dehm, Vogl was awarded a UTS Social Impact Grant in 2018 for an innovative project aiming to drive best practice community legal sector collaboration and optimise the design and implementation of student legal clinics in Australia.
The Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS), a legal centre providing specialist legal advice free of charge to people seeking asylum, was the community partner of choice for the research.
“This project will advance a teaching-focused clinical partnership between RACS and UTS Law that will benefit UTS students, community sector organisations and assist refugee and asylum seeker communities,” Dehm says.
“A further, future output will be a report into best practice collaboration between universities and community sector organisations. To date, no such report exists in Australia.”
The funding enabled a series of collaborative, scoping workshops and consultations with RACS experts involved in designing and implementing student and pro bono clinics, providing critical inquiry and evaluation of the strengths, challenges and ways forward in effective clinical partnerships.
“RACS has a history of innovation in this space and a commitment to university, community and private sector collaboration, and the project will draw on the combined expertise within RACS and our research team,” says Vogl.
With UTS Law introducing a student legal clinic in 2019 in partnership with RACS, the project is timely. Vogl says that the consultations and subsequent report will inform the design and evaluation of the clinic, which will give law students the opportunity to provide much-needed legal assistance to asylum seekers in NSW.
“RACS has an ongoing need for student and pro bono assistance in providing legal services to asylum seekers in the context of limited Government funding," explains Vogl.
Alongside the demonstrated pedagogical and social value of clinical work for students, they will directly enact personal and social responsibility toward asylum seekers unable to fund their own legal assistance.”
The collaboration deepens UTS’s ongoing engagement with the legal sector in a profoundly practical way. Students gain from practice-based clinical learning and internship opportunities, and from actively contributing to the community and greater good. RACS is able to access the expertise and assistance of UTS Law academics and students to meet the needs of their ever-growing client base.
With the report expected to be published in 2020, early outcomes from RACS/UTS consultations are already being implemented with the first cohort of students as part of the clinical law elective subject, Refugee Law and Practice.
“Recording our experiences will hopefully assist RACS and other community legal centres to design, implement and evaluate future clinics and collaborations, and provide a valuable reference that can be used by other Australian law faculties,” Dehm says.
The project is part of a broader initiative to increase opportunities for practice-based learning for students at UTS Law, with a particular focus on facilitating students’ ability to understand and contribute to the unmet legal and social needs of refugees and asylum seekers.
“We believe this will greatly enhance the effectiveness of the design and delivery of clinical legal teaching – not only at UTS, but by contributing to scholarship in best practice legal education further afield,” Dehm adds.