The Cost of Law: VSU & Funding Crisis Forces Closure of Award-Winning UTS Community Law Centre

Story: Wenee Yap
Nov 2007

$218,000. This is about a third of the cost of a single-storey house in a moderately-priced Sydney suburb. It is the cost of two full-fee degrees in law or medicine. It is also, according to a UTS Faculty of Law brief, the projected cost of running the UTS Community Law Centre during 2007.

The commercial value of these services? Over $900,000 per year, in an estimate from the same UTS:Law report.

Over its 11 years of operation, dedicated staff and volunteers of the Community Law Centre have given free legal assistance to over 6,700 UTS students and staff; the Centre has also won prominent awards, including the UTS Human Rights Award (1999), the Combined Community Legal Centres Group Award (2005) presented by the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW, and the inaugural UTS Equity and Diversity Award (1999) for its seminal and groundbreaking community-based research and other initiatives. During its lifetime, the centre received grants for projects like the ental Health: Know Your Rights!?website, research into ambling and Crime?and publications such as the Young Peoples Rights Guide?

Despite its vital and valuable contribution to the UTS community, a critical funding crisis caused by voluntary student unionism will force the UTS Community Law Centre to close its doors at the end of this year.

"I think it's devastating. It's a tragedy of enormous proportions, and we can thank the current Federal Government and its policy of Voluntary Student Unionism, together with economic rationalism and bottom-line management, for the closure of the centre," said past director of the UTS Community Law Centre, UTS:Law Senior Lecturer Dr Ian Ellis-Jones. From 1997-2002, Dr Ellis-Jones chaired the Centre's management committee, led high-level research into social issues like problem gambling, drug law reform and the sex workers' industry, and also worked regularly as a volunteer solicitor at the Centre. "The work that I did at the centre was very gratifying, and I am very sad and angry about its closure," said Dr Ellis-Jones. "Community law centres help to ensure that there is some equity and social justice operating in our legal and justice systems so that the less fortunate can have access to legal services that might, and probably would be otherwise unavailable to them."

Current Director of the Centre, UTS:Law Senior Lecturer Jennifer Burn also expressed her sadness at the Centre's imminent closure. We made representations to the University Union and the Council, said Burn. Since the UTS Union withdrew funding in 2005 post-VSU, the UTS Faculty of Law has picked up the bill but can no longer do so. "We prepared funding submissions to external agencies," Burn said. "None of the applications were successful. We haven't been able to secure funding to continue our work."

Dr Ellis-Jones acknowledged the changing nature of legal practice in Australia, observing that the practice of law is becoming increasingly mercantile and commercial, and as a result more unaffordable. "Access to law, equity in the law, and social justice just don't seem to register on the radar these days."

Milton Das, a current fourth year Communications (Writing and Cultural Studies)/Laws student and volunteer at the Community Law Centre, agrees. "Somewhere along the line in your life, you're gonna need legal advice. The community law centre offered this for free and has helped heaps of students along the way. For me, volunteering was an opportunity to get exposure to the practical application of the law, for a meaningful cause."

"I only wish the so-called "big end of town" did more than it does to help in this area,"said Dr Ellis-Jones. "True, there are many fine firms, and practitioners in those firms, who are doing their bit for social justice and greater equity in the law, but, sadly, not enough do. The practice of law in this country and in most other Western nations has become, for the most part, a business rather than a profession, and a very mercantile business at that as well."

In the words of Alan Jay Lerner, "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot." At the risk of sounding over-sentimental the UTS Community Law Centre was our Camelot."


----Case Study----

Who needs the services of the UTS Community Law Centre?

Students and staff seeking advice about issues ranging from domestic violence, motor vehicle accidents, consumer debt problems, family law, tenancy disputes.

"Perhaps the most personally satisfying case I was ever involved in was when a UTS student from China came to see me one morning back in the late 1990s when I was working at the centre as a volunteer solicitor," said Dr Ellis-Jones. "While driving, the student had collided with an elderly pedestrian and faced a number of serious criminal charges, dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm. "

"It was one of the freak occurrences which can happen to any of us when we lose our concentration for less than a second," explained Dr Ellis-Jones. He took on the case despite having little background in criminal law.

"I really grew to see the inner goodness in this young man, and to appreciate the significance of those immortal words of Omar Khayyam, namely: "The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,/ Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit/ Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,/ Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it." I quoted those lines to the magistrate in my plea in mitigation for the guy. He lost his licence for 6 months, which was a most exceptional result in all the circumstances, and it was perhaps the most satisfying thing I have ever done in the law, in my 30 years of being a practising lawyer."

----Achievements & Initiatives of the UTS Community Law Centre----

Public Space: The Journal of Law & Social Justice inaugural edition, 'Sex and Mercy' published in April 2007 with UTS Faculty of Law

Launch of new subject, Community Justice Studies, an opportunity for law students to undertake placements & research, develop and deliver plain language presentations or short courses about community legal issues, with organisations like the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), NSW Law Reform Commission, Women Legal Service and Law and Justice Foundation.

The Anti-Slavery Project - sponsored by the UTS Community Law Centre, dedicated to eliminating slavery and helping enslaved and trafficked persons

Research partnerships with Harvard Law School, the University of Sydney and Student Associations for the University of Western Sydney and Southern Cross University

Also provides free, confidential legal service to staff and students of the Sydney Institute of Tafe (SIT)

Professional links with solicitors from Clayton UTZ, Blake Dawson Waldron, Allens Arthur Robinson, Legal Aid Commission of NSW and prominent silks including Peter Bodor QC and Malcolm Ramage QC

Practical Legal Training and valuable legal industry exposure for student volunteers
Range of research grants and community legal publications

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With thanks to UTS:Law Senior Lecturers Dr Ian Ellis-Jones & Jennifer Burn for their assistance in researching this article. Your commitment to social justice is inspiring. Thanks also to Milton Das, Communications (Writing)/Law student & UTS: Community Law Centre volunteer (2006-2007)