They also discuss the individual and broader impacts of the legal clinic to date
Over the past week, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University School of Law dean Diana Bowman and Anika Legal CEO and co-founder Noel Lim have shared with Australasian Lawyer the story of how their legal clinic was born and outlined what law students need to be a part of this program that grants hands-on experience in assisting with the legal needs of the disadvantaged. In the final part of this interview, Bowman and Lim tell us the impact the program has had on clients and students, and discuss future plans.
Have there been particularly memorable or standout outcomes resulting from this program?
Noel Lim: Our current supervising lawyer, Sharon Tate, started off as an Anika Legal intern. We often see these students come in as interns and then grow to be amazing lawyers. Many of them continue volunteering at Anika, and in some cases, we employ them.
There have been so many individual cases [that have ranged from] crazy to heartwarming. We had an event last year where one of Anika's clients was on the panel. She was on the verge of homelessness – the VCAT was actually saying, “you should prepare your kids to go to foster care”. With the support of Anika, they were able to avoid homelessness, and the intern [who handled the case] was there [at the event].
We have also contributed to systemic advocacy. Interns contributed to a report we wrote about how renters were being exploited out of their rental bonds by unscrupulous agents and landlords. We laid out three recommendations to stop this happening, and within four months, the government adopted all three policy recommendations. This means that in the future, we won't have renters being exploited and they won't need Anika's support in the first place. Students being a core part of that work is for me a real career highlight.
Diana Bowman: The phrase current [participants] and Anika alumni use every single time is “life changing” because of the opportunity and the ability to see both systemic change happen because of the work with Anika as well as individual situations being resolved in a positive way. And it gives me the goosebumps to think about the number of students who are out there making a difference and supporting our communities in ways that would not be possible without Noel and his team.
How do you plan to take this partnership further?
Diana Bowman: Our policy at RMIT Law is to be high touch and high tech, so we are looking across the university as well as outside into the tech innovation sector to see what new tools that we can bring into the law school to enable us to – not necessarily replicate the Anika model per se – but create other opportunities where students are doing life changing work with Anika ourselves. We’re looking at how to get more of our students involved in this type of work, how we can draw on the RMIT Law ecosystem of alumni and stakeholders, and how we can ensure collectively that we can protect as many Victorians as possible who are facing really difficult times in this cost of living crisis.
Noel Lim: We've got that alignment, we have that level of trust in each other. I think the sky's the limit for what we can do together, and it's exciting to try and realise the potential that this partnership has.
