The USP Community Legal Centre: Combining Legal Education and Legal Services in a Developing Island Country (Working Paper) [2004] JSPL 9; (2004) 8(1) Journal of South Pacific Law

THE USP COMMUNITY LEGAL CENTRE: COMBINING  LEGAL EDUCATION AND LEGAL SERVICES IN A DEVELOPING ISLAND COUNTRY

EDWARD R. HILL∗

INTRODUCTION

Since July, 2002, the University of the South Pacific Community Legal Centre has been advising and representing clients in the Port Vila community.  Each afternoon during semesters, the Legal Centre, which occupies a small premise in downtown Port Vila, accepts clients who receive advice and representation from final year LLB students under the supervision of a member of academic staff who has been admitted to practice in Vanuatu. The centre also has a full time coordinator who is responsible for the day to day administration of the Legal Centre. 

The operation of the Legal Centre serves a dual purpose; it services members of a community who have little access to legal advice or to the justice system and it provides an opportunity for students to learn professional legal skills and ethics at a high level in a real practice environment.    

The Community Legal Centre is, in many ways, not dissimilar to legal centres operated elsewhere in Commonwealth and common law countries.  Students learn and are assessed for academic credit while learning practical skills and performing legal services in the community.  The Springvale Community Legal Centre in Melbourne and the UTS Community Law and Legal Centre in Sydney are examples of legal centres based on a similar model in Australia.   Other similar legal centres are located in the UK, Canada, the United States and elsewhere.   Some of these centres focus on legal information, some on the actual representation of clients in disputes.  Some focus on specific areas of the law and some operate in a more general legal context.   More recently, in the developng world, programs which combine education and the provision of legal information and, or services have emerged.  An example is the Street Law program in South Africa which, in the last 15 years, has expanded to a 16 universities.^[1]   While the USP Community Legal Centre is broadly similar to other centres, there are significant differences, in respect of the community in which the Legal Centre operates, the constraints under which it operates and what it does.   These make the USP Community Legal Centre unique in the Pacific and perhaps in the world.