Extract: Over the past thirty years the need for legal professionals to become culturally competent have been repeated in numerous reports and inquiries. The Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program (ICCLAP) was designed to address this apparent gap in legal education. Led by a team of Indigenous legal academics - the project’s core aims were to consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, key stakeholders and legal academics to conceptualise what ICC means in the context of legal education; identify knowledge gaps, professional development needs, and guiding principles for embedding ICC; develop workshops and resources for legal academics; and foster a community of practice to support the embedding of ICC in law curricula.
{"title":"Special Issue Editorial","authors":"Marcelle J. Burns","doi":"10.53300/001c.9770","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.9770","url":null,"abstract":"Extract: Over the past thirty years the need for legal professionals to become culturally competent have been repeated in numerous reports and inquiries. The Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program (ICCLAP) was designed to address this apparent gap in legal education. Led by a team of Indigenous legal academics - the project’s core aims were to consult with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, key stakeholders and legal academics to conceptualise what ICC means in the context of legal education; identify knowledge gaps, professional development needs, and guiding principles for embedding ICC; develop workshops and resources for legal academics; and foster a community of practice to support the embedding of ICC in law curricula.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42152143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who is the Fairest of them All?","authors":"A. Wood, N. Watson","doi":"10.53300/001c.7740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.7740","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-03-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43054325","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent years, there has been growing concern about poor mental health and wellbeing of both law students and those in the profession. These concerns have been building for the last two to three decades, and have gathered pace in the last few. As concerns about the impact of lawyering on those in the profession have grown, a separate but related set of developments have been unfolding across universities. Universities all over the world have been developing a heightened awareness of student needs, sensitivities and mental health, and have been considering how teaching methods, materials and styles may impact these. As part of this, a number of North American universities have begun to grapple with the question of whether content to which students are exposed in their degree should contain a ‘trigger warning’. A trigger warning is a cautionary note designed to alert students to potentially sensitive material in a syllabus, and which may, in some circumstances, allow them to be exempted from course content. Trigger warnings have generated significant debate in the United States academy. In other parts of the world, such as Australia, these debates are also gathering pace, with the appropriateness of trigger warnings for clinical legal education now also being considered. This paper explores whether trigger warnings are necessary in clinical legal education. This paper unfolds in three parts. First, drawing upon theoretical concerns about the politics of emotion, including ideas from Sara Ahmed and Judith Butler, I consider the philosophical and conceptual aspects of trigger warnings, including the dangers of academics defining which content is ‘triggering’ and which is not. Second, I explore some of the pedagogical implications that would flow from the use of trigger warnings in law clinics. Third, I examine some of the practical implications of the deployment of trigger warnings in clinics. I argue that academics should be cautious about calls to impose trigger warnings in clinical legal education, because they introduce a series of major philosophical, practical and pedagogical problems. I also argue that although trigger warnings may appear, on the face of it, to align with the values that many clinicians would see as being at the heart of clinical legal education, including social justice, respect for clients, minorities and disadvantaged populations, trigger warnings have the potential to paradoxically instantiate power dynamics, to entrench injustice, and to foreclose intellectual curiosity. They also have a series of implications for the ethics and politics of legal practice, some of which I consider to be both substantial and antithetical to the proper practice of clinical legal education.
{"title":"Do Law Clinics Need Trigger Warnings? Philosophical, Pedagogical and Practical Concerns","authors":"Kate Seear","doi":"10.53300/001c.7671","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.7671","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, there has been growing concern about poor mental health and wellbeing of both law students and those in the profession. These concerns have been building for the last two to three decades, and have gathered pace in the last few. As concerns about the impact of lawyering on those in the profession have grown, a separate but related set of developments have been unfolding across universities. Universities all over the world have been developing a heightened awareness of student needs, sensitivities and mental health, and have been considering how teaching methods, materials and styles may impact these. As part of this, a number of North American universities have begun to grapple with the question of whether content to which students are exposed in their degree should contain a ‘trigger warning’. A trigger warning is a cautionary note designed to alert students to potentially sensitive material in a syllabus, and which may, in some circumstances, allow them to be exempted from course content. Trigger warnings have generated significant debate in the United States academy. In other parts of the world, such as Australia, these debates are also gathering pace, with the appropriateness of trigger warnings for clinical legal education now also being considered. This paper explores whether trigger warnings are necessary in clinical legal education. This paper unfolds in three parts. First, drawing upon theoretical concerns about the politics of emotion, including ideas from Sara Ahmed and Judith Butler, I consider the philosophical and conceptual aspects of trigger warnings, including the dangers of academics defining which content is ‘triggering’ and which is not. Second, I explore some of the pedagogical implications that would flow from the use of trigger warnings in law clinics. Third, I examine some of the practical implications of the deployment of trigger warnings in clinics. I argue that academics should be cautious about calls to impose trigger warnings in clinical legal education, because they introduce a series of major philosophical, practical and pedagogical problems. I also argue that although trigger warnings may appear, on the face of it, to align with the values that many clinicians would see as being at the heart of clinical legal education, including social justice, respect for clients, minorities and disadvantaged populations, trigger warnings have the potential to paradoxically instantiate power dynamics, to entrench injustice, and to foreclose intellectual curiosity. They also have a series of implications for the ethics and politics of legal practice, some of which I consider to be both substantial and antithetical to the proper practice of clinical legal education.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46696820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores the wellbeing of law students. In Australia, empirical research has consistently indicated that law students experience elevated levels of psychological distress. Christine Parker has critiqued wellbeing scholarship, questioning empirical research methodologies, reporting style and data analysis. She contends that wellbeing scholars are facilitating a 'moral panic'. Her concern is that wellbeing is being individualised to the extent that important social, political and economic problems are being ignored. Consequently, she proposes that traditional legal ethics discourse, and the concept of 'sociological imagination', offer potential as universal wellbeing interventions. This article contends that Parker has misinterpreted the position of wellbeing scholars. It argues that wellbeing scholars operate according to a more complex conceptual framework than she suggests. It proposes that Parker’s exploration of the empirical evidence is incomplete, and that her criticism of the research methodologies is unjustified. It suggests that theories regarding the cause of law student psychological distress are most potent when regarded as additive. It proposes that both wellbeing scholars and legal ethics scholars should explicitly promote a conception of a lawyer who is both psychologically healthy and supported by a community directed towards a meaningful public purpose.
{"title":"Alert but not Alarmed: A Response to Parker’s Critique of Wellbeing Scholarship in Law","authors":"C. Carroll","doi":"10.53300/001c.7672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.7672","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the wellbeing of law students. In Australia, empirical research has consistently indicated that law students experience elevated levels of psychological distress. Christine Parker has critiqued wellbeing scholarship, questioning empirical research methodologies, reporting style and data analysis. She contends that wellbeing scholars are facilitating a 'moral panic'. Her concern is that wellbeing is being individualised to the extent that important social, political and economic problems are being ignored. Consequently, she proposes that traditional legal ethics discourse, and the concept of 'sociological imagination', offer potential as universal wellbeing interventions.\u0000\u0000This article contends that Parker has misinterpreted the position of wellbeing scholars. It argues that wellbeing scholars operate according to a more complex conceptual framework than she suggests. It proposes that Parker’s exploration of the empirical evidence is incomplete, and that her criticism of the research methodologies is unjustified. It suggests that theories regarding the cause of law student psychological distress are most potent when regarded as additive. It proposes that both wellbeing scholars and legal ethics scholars should explicitly promote a conception of a lawyer who is both psychologically healthy and supported by a community directed towards a meaningful public purpose.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43422190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
John Rawnsley, D. Woodroffe, Eloise Culic, J. Richards, Lauran Clifton
The cultural characteristics of Aboriginal groups are significantly diverse and the interface between Aboriginal people and the dominant Australian culture and justice system is highly complex. The justice system, and its many parts, interacts with Aboriginal people and culture in many different ways, and is imposing. The consideration of cultural competency is necessary in understanding how justice is applied in Australia. The organisation considered by this paper delivers legal services and justice agency programs to Aboriginal people. As a non-government community organization, it is one part of a broader justice system. Governed by an Aboriginal board, the service is in a unique position to use its cultural authority to influence how cultural competency is understood from a public policy and law reform context. The service recently implemented a Cultural Competency Framework 2017-2020 (Framework) as an iterative process to outline how it is a culturally appropriate organization. The framework includes a series of strategies and actions with mechanisms for accountability. This paper will explore the legal service’s organizational approach to developing cultural competency and its application to the provision of legal aid services and justice programs. In turn, it serves as a valuable example of how a legal organisation can make a meaningful commitment to developing cultural competency. So long as Aboriginal issues or people are referred to in any context, consideration of the suitability of how an organisation approaches cultural competency, and develops its people, is relevant.
{"title":"Cultural Competency in a Legal Service and Justice Agency for Aboriginal Peoples","authors":"John Rawnsley, D. Woodroffe, Eloise Culic, J. Richards, Lauran Clifton","doi":"10.53300/001c.7613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.7613","url":null,"abstract":"The cultural characteristics of Aboriginal groups are significantly diverse and the interface between Aboriginal people and the dominant Australian culture and justice system is highly complex. The justice system, and its many parts, interacts with Aboriginal people and culture in many different ways, and is imposing. The consideration of cultural competency is necessary in understanding how justice is applied in Australia. The organisation considered by this paper delivers legal services and justice agency programs to Aboriginal people. As a non-government community organization, it is one part of a broader justice system. Governed by an Aboriginal board, the service is in a unique position to use its cultural authority to influence how cultural competency is understood from a public policy and law reform context. The service recently implemented a Cultural Competency Framework 2017-2020 (Framework) as an iterative process to outline how it is a culturally appropriate organization. The framework includes a series of strategies and actions with mechanisms for accountability. This paper will explore the legal service’s organizational approach to developing cultural competency and its application to the provision of legal aid services and justice programs. In turn, it serves as a valuable example of how a legal organisation can make a meaningful commitment to developing cultural competency. So long as Aboriginal issues or people are referred to in any context, consideration of the suitability of how an organisation approaches cultural competency, and develops its people, is relevant.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49419577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this short article we report on a novel consultation event held in 2017. Fifty-two Indigenous and non-Indigenous legal academics convened in Melbourne to draft and promulgate standards to be followed by law schools across Australia for promoting Indigenous cultural competency. The consultation took the general form of a mini-public. A mini-public is a decision-making body whose members are randomly selected from – but demographically representative of – a broader public. Public decision-making by mini-publics is now routine. Yet ours was a distinctive variation, in that the mini-public purported to represent not the whole public of a jurisdiction, but only a particular professional class within it – in this case legal academics in Australia. We convened this mini-public of legal academics in order to give greater legitimacy to the promulgated guidelines for cultural competency in law school curricula. The article explores the content of the consultation, centring on its suggestions for improved breadth, content and quality of legal teaching, as it touches the lives of Indigenous people. Most of all, however, the article assesses the unique use of a mini-public to represent an unusually small and highly formally educated public. We generally rely here on our own qualitative observations about the novel consultative process and its methods.
{"title":"A Mini-public of Academics: Experimenting with Deliberative Democracy and Indigenous Cultural Competency in Legal Education","authors":"A. Wood, R. Levy","doi":"10.53300/001c.7595","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.7595","url":null,"abstract":"In this short article we report on a novel consultation event held in 2017. Fifty-two Indigenous and non-Indigenous legal academics convened in Melbourne to draft and promulgate standards to be followed by law schools across Australia for promoting Indigenous cultural competency. The consultation took the general form of a mini-public. A mini-public is a decision-making body whose members are randomly selected from – but demographically representative of – a broader public. Public decision-making by mini-publics is now routine. Yet ours was a distinctive variation, in that the mini-public purported to represent not the whole public of a jurisdiction, but only a particular professional class within it – in this case legal academics in Australia. We convened this mini-public of legal academics in order to give greater legitimacy to the promulgated guidelines for cultural competency in law school curricula.\u0000\u0000The article explores the content of the consultation, centring on its suggestions for improved breadth, content and quality of legal teaching, as it touches the lives of Indigenous people. Most of all, however, the article assesses the unique use of a mini-public to represent an unusually small and highly formally educated public. We generally rely here on our own qualitative observations about the novel consultative process and its methods.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42347257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
UNSW Law Faculty has one of the most advanced offerings nationally for Indigenous law students, aimed both at providing pathways for entrance into legal studies, and academic and pastoral support throughout degree programs. In 2017, research was conducted into the experience of Indigenous students in the Faculty of Law, to evaluate what has been done well, what could be done better, and where the Faculty should look to next in growing its support for Indigenous law students. The research includes original primary research, in the form of a digital survey of present and past Indigenous law students, and two focus groups, one with current students and one with graduates. This paper will outline two of the issues that Indigenous students say are most challenging about attending law school. These are: the experience of imposter syndrome and the lack of institutional flexibility around the complex lives of many Indigenous law students. The research also discusses factors that are protective against discontinuation of studies, including fostering of cultural safety in the classroom and on campus, and attention to the needs of the whole students, including mental health and the needs of student parents. With the voices of the students firmly at the forefront, the paper includes recommendations for some priority areas in Indigenous student support in tertiary legal education.
{"title":"Retaining Our Best: Imposter Syndrome, Cultural Safety, Complex Lives and Indigenous Student Experiences of Law School","authors":"Melanie Schwartz","doi":"10.53300/001c.7455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.7455","url":null,"abstract":"UNSW Law Faculty has one of the most advanced offerings nationally for Indigenous law students, aimed both at providing pathways for entrance into legal studies, and academic and pastoral support throughout degree programs. In 2017, research was conducted into the experience of Indigenous students in the Faculty of Law, to evaluate what has been done well, what could be done better, and where the Faculty should look to next in growing its support for Indigenous law students. The research includes original primary research, in the form of a digital survey of present and past Indigenous law students, and two focus groups, one with current students and one with graduates.\u0000\u0000This paper will outline two of the issues that Indigenous students say are most challenging about attending law school. These are: the experience of imposter syndrome and the lack of institutional flexibility around the complex lives of many Indigenous law students. The research also discusses factors that are protective against discontinuation of studies, including fostering of cultural safety in the classroom and on campus, and attention to the needs of the whole students, including mental health and the needs of student parents. With the voices of the students firmly at the forefront, the paper includes recommendations for some priority areas in Indigenous student support in tertiary legal education.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48668188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2014, we co-facilitated the specialist elective ‘Race and the Law’ as an LLB summer school intensive. Our pedagogical design was informed by Indigenous philosophy and knowledge (Watson, 2014; Morgan, 2012; Moreton-Robinson, 2007) and by Critical Race and Whiteness Theory (Delgado & Stefanic, 2012; Goldberg, 2001; Moreton-Robinson, 2009). Our aim was to prompt students to think critically about the ongoing significance of race to law (and law to race), how systems of race structure social relations, the capacity of mainstream law to operate as a racialised system of power, and whiteness as a position of privilege. We also sought to empower students by engaging them in a reflexive praxis through which they could develop self-awareness of the significance of race and respond to its influence in their personal and professional lives. As Liptsitz argues, there is a ‘possessive investment in whiteness’ because of the close relationship between white supremacy and the accumulation of assets, or what he calls the ‘wages of whiteness’ (Lipsitz, 2006). This ‘possessive investment’ became evident in our class discussion once we turned attention to an examination of special measures, affirmative action and other mechanisms that aim to equalise opportunities and alleviate the material inequities mediated by race – that is, the wicked problem, racism. In this paper, we share our reflections on our success in using theory as a practice to challenge the wicked problem of racism in the law classroom, and within the law curriculum. In addition, we reflect on the value of team teaching in this complex and dynamic teaching space and the significance to legal institutions and the profession of engaging law students in critical learning on race and whiteness.
{"title":"Dealing with the ‘Wicked’ Problem of Race and the Law: A Critical Journey for Students (and Academics)","authors":"Marcelle J. Burns, Jennifer Nielsen","doi":"10.53300/001c.9043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.9043","url":null,"abstract":"In 2014, we co-facilitated the specialist elective ‘Race and the Law’ as an LLB summer school intensive. Our pedagogical design was informed by Indigenous philosophy and knowledge (Watson, 2014; Morgan, 2012; Moreton-Robinson, 2007) and by Critical Race and Whiteness Theory (Delgado & Stefanic, 2012; Goldberg, 2001; Moreton-Robinson, 2009). Our aim was to prompt students to think critically about the ongoing significance of race to law (and law to race), how systems of race structure social relations, the capacity of mainstream law to operate as a racialised system of power, and whiteness as a position of privilege. We also sought to empower students by engaging them in a reflexive praxis through which they could develop self-awareness of the significance of race and respond to its influence in their personal and professional lives. As Liptsitz argues, there is a ‘possessive investment in whiteness’ because of the close relationship between white supremacy and the accumulation of assets, or what he calls the ‘wages of whiteness’ (Lipsitz, 2006). This ‘possessive investment’ became evident in our class discussion once we turned attention to an examination of special measures, affirmative action and other mechanisms that aim to equalise opportunities and alleviate the material inequities mediated by race – that is, the wicked problem, racism. In this paper, we share our reflections on our success in using theory as a practice to challenge the wicked problem of racism in the law classroom, and within the law curriculum. In addition, we reflect on the value of team teaching in this complex and dynamic teaching space and the significance to legal institutions and the profession of engaging law students in critical learning on race and whiteness.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71024903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Marcelle J. Burns, Simon N. M. Young, Jennifer Nielsen
The Law Admissions Consultative Committee’s Model Admission Rules 2015 require new practising lawyers to have an ‘awareness’ of the difficulties of communication attributable to cultural differences, including ‘the difficulties of communication encountered by Indigenous peoples’ (LACC: 31). While there is no doubt that effective cross-communication is essential to providing ethical legal representation for clients from diverse cultural backgrounds, this paper will argue that in the context of the First Peoples of Australia greater regulatory attention to these issues is urgently needed and that the ‘difficulties of communication’ need to be framed differently. Numerous reports and inquiries have shown that First Peoples’ encounters with the Australian legal system are fraught with a lack of cultural understanding on the part of non-Indigenous legal actors. Given the ongoing and systemic over-representation of First Peoples in the criminal justice system and child protection regimes, there is a critical need for lawyers to develop Indigenous cultural competency as one step towards addressing this gross injustice, and making the Australian legal system more responsive to the needs and aspirations of First Peoples. Canadian developments, particularly in the wake of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, underline the scale and significance of this need, and provide some broader context for a reconsideration of legal education and professional admission requirements in Australia. This paper will argue that Indigenous cultural competency should be a mandatory requirement for admission to legal practice in Australia, and that the ‘deficit discourse’ on First Peoples’ engagement with the legal system must be discarded, to ensure that legal ethical and professional responsibilities are inclusive of the needs of First Peoples.
{"title":"‘The Difficulties of Communication Encountered by Indigenous Peoples’: Moving Beyond Indigenous Deficit in the Model Admission Rules for Legal Practitioners","authors":"Marcelle J. Burns, Simon N. M. Young, Jennifer Nielsen","doi":"10.53300/001c.7956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.7956","url":null,"abstract":"The Law Admissions Consultative Committee’s Model Admission Rules 2015 require new practising lawyers to have an ‘awareness’ of the difficulties of communication attributable to cultural differences, including ‘the difficulties of communication encountered by Indigenous peoples’ (LACC: 31). While there is no doubt that effective cross-communication is essential to providing ethical legal representation for clients from diverse cultural backgrounds, this paper will argue that in the context of the First Peoples of Australia greater regulatory attention to these issues is urgently needed and that the ‘difficulties of communication’ need to be framed differently. Numerous reports and inquiries have shown that First Peoples’ encounters with the Australian legal system are fraught with a lack of cultural understanding on the part of non-Indigenous legal actors. Given the ongoing and systemic over-representation of First Peoples in the criminal justice system and child protection regimes, there is a critical need for lawyers to develop Indigenous cultural competency as one step towards addressing this gross injustice, and making the Australian legal system more responsive to the needs and aspirations of First Peoples. Canadian developments, particularly in the wake of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, underline the scale and significance of this need, and provide some broader context for a reconsideration of legal education and professional admission requirements in Australia. This paper will argue that Indigenous cultural competency should be a mandatory requirement for admission to legal practice in Australia, and that the ‘deficit discourse’ on First Peoples’ engagement with the legal system must be discarded, to ensure that legal ethical and professional responsibilities are inclusive of the needs of First Peoples.","PeriodicalId":43058,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71024833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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