Community Legal Centre

Australia has approximately 200 Community Legal Centres (CLCs)[1]. They are independent not for profit organisations [2] aiming to advance legal–and, by extension, social and political–equality by making the law accessible to the poor and otherwise marginalised members of Australian society. One distinctive feature of CLCs that also underpins their aspiration for equal access to justice is that they provide legal advice and traditional casework for free, primarily funded by federal, state and local government. Apart from these direct client orientated services CLC workers and volunteers are also active in other, diverse, areas through which they attempt to realise systemic change. For example, they lobby for law reform, undertake test case litigation, critique police powers and behaviours, monitor prisons systems and conditions, and develop community education programs. These programs may include anything from published books and pamphlets to radio programs and conference presentations.

Community legal centres emphasise the demystification of the law and the empowerment of communities in their relation to the law, particularly by encouraging communities to be involved in their activities. For example, they often adopt constitutions mandating close consultation with the communities they serve, and insist upon harnessing the skills and expertise of ‘non-lawyers’ (e.g. social workers, administrators, or ‘everyday’ people with good communicative or special language skills) as well as lawyers. Additionally, their education programs are often preventative: that is, they aim to give people skills to solve their own problems without recourse to lawyers.

Community Legal Centres are partly funded by a complex and variable mix of state and federal government monies, offered both directly (e.g. through grants) and indirectly (e.g. through legal aid). They are also funded by the proceeds of casework. However, they rely most heavily upon the efforts and support of extensive volunteer networks. Without the willingness of both lawyers and non-lawyers to staff them without payment, they would not survive.

CLCs first developed in Victoria in the early 1970s, but spread quite rapidly through the other states. There are currently more than 160 CLCs in operation across Australia (Noone 2001: 132). Although from the outset they shared some similarities with the already established American and British neighbourhood law offices, in their insistence upon effecting systemic change and their largely voluntary support base they had characteristics distinct from each. They can be understood to have grown out of broader concerns for social justice that gained momentum in the 1960s and which found expression in the anti-war and women’s movements, aboriginal rights campaigns, and other pushes for far-reaching social change in both the Australian and global contexts (Chesterman 1996: 11-43). However, CLCs are a unique expression of these social justice and protest movements and do not claim particular ties to any other campaigns. Furthermore, while some CLCs have developed close links with others, centres for the most part serve their own particular geographic or special interest communities. This means that throughout their history different CLCs have usually held common platforms in only general, rather than specific, terms.

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