What is a Community Legal Centre?
Community Legal Centres provide free, quality legal information, advice, representation, casework and education. We focus on working with people who are experiencing disadvantage, such as financial hardship, family violence, homelessness or discrimination. We use what we learn from the experiences of the people we work with to advocate for changes to laws and policies to make Victoria a fairer place for everyone.
There are 49 Community Legal Centres in Victoria, with a workforce of more than 4,000 staff and volunteers. We are part of a network of more than 170 Community Legal Centres across Australia.
Last year, Community Legal Centres provided more than 100,000 legal services for Victorians. A further half a million Victorians accessed self-help tools available on our websites to understand their rights and responsibilities and to help them find solutions to their legal issues.
Community Legal Centres are community-driven and led, which means that we adapt and respond to the needs of our communities. This makes every Community Legal Centre different and uniquely placed to support people locally.
Recognising that issues in people’s lives are intersecting and rarely have only a legal component, community lawyers are often integrated with other social and community service providers. You will find community lawyers embedded in places like hospitals, schools, financial counselling services and maternal and child health centres.
We also focus on providing legal education in our communities, to help Victorians understand their rights and responsibilities, and on advocating for changes to laws to make Victoria fairer, based on what we learn from the experiences of the people we assist.
You can read more about who Community Legal Centres are and what they do here.
Commonly Asked Questions
Do I have to pay for advice from a Community Legal Centre?
Our services are free. We believe everyone is entitled to know their rights, understand how the law affects them and achieve fair outcomes – no matter how much money they have or what their social status is, or where they live.
Due to high demand for legal services, each Community Legal Centre has criteria in place to ensure resources are used to support those who need it most.
Community Legal Centres also provide other services, such as legal information and education programs and online self-help tools, which may be available free of charge.
We receive funding and support from a range of sources, including government, philanthropy, public donations, volunteers, pro bono and in-kind support, to do this.
What legal matters can Community Legal Centres help with?
The law is part of our everyday lives – such as when we buy something, use a service, have a job, or rent a house. The law can help to protect and support families when there is violence in the home, or when there are decisions to be made about parenting arrangements for children. Sometimes we might find ourselves in contact with police and the legal system, either charged with committing a crime, or as a victim of crime. Laws affect our human rights, the rights of animals and the protection of the environment. And sometimes we need to understand the law to navigate specific government systems, like Centrelink or getting a residency visa.
For more than 50 years, Community Legal Centres have been providing community-based services to help Victorians with all these matters and more.
Because we are a network of 47 organisations across the state, we can make sure that you are linked with the Community Legal Centre best placed to help you with your legal issues.
What can I expect from a Community Legal Centre?
At a Community Legal Centre, you will receive support from a team who are experts in their fields, and who provide a trauma-informed and culturally safe service. Community Legal Centres recognise that other social, emotional, health and financial issues may be affecting you, potentially exacerbating or compounding your legal issue. So, the team that supports you may include not just lawyers and paralegals, but also social workers, financial counsellors and other community services professionals from different disciplines.
Importantly, Victoria’s Community Legal Centres do not operate in isolation. While individual Community Legal Centres have their own geographic and target communities, where possible, the community legal sector operates collaboratively to maximise its impact and promote best outcomes for the people we assist.
How do Community Legal Centres influence changes to the laws?
Over the years, Community Legal Centres have advocated for and helped win many legal rights for Victorians, including mandatory third-party motor vehicle insurance, and increasing awareness of and support for victim survivors of family violence and prisoners’ rights.
In recent times, Community Legal Centres have advocated for waiving the fines issued to young people during the COVID-19 pandemic, successfully advocated for better wage rights for people living with disabilities, established the ‘Do Not Knock’ campaign to deter pestering salespeople, prompted Bunnings to ban the sale of native timbers, and forced governments to end logging in Victoria’s old-growth forests.
Are Community Legal Centres the same as legal aid?
Community Legal Centres are different from Victoria Legal Aid – but we work closely together.
Victoria Legal Aid is a Victorian Government statutory authority established by legislation. Victoria Legal Aid plays a crucial role in providing free advice and representation for people dealing with certain legal matters when they meet the Legal Aid eligibility criteria.
Separately, Community Legal Centres have
grown out of needs identified in communities
and have evolved through grassroots support. Each Community Legal Centre is an independent, not-for-profit organisation that is separate from government. We provide services that respond to the needs of our specific communities. Community Legal Centres can be place-based, providing services across a range of legal issues to a geographic community; or specialist, focusing on specific areas of law (such as tenancy, consumer action or employment) or cohorts of people (such as women, young people, people with disability
or asylum seekers). In Victoria, this includes two specialist Aboriginal Legal Services.
Community Legal Centres and Victoria Legal Aid have a close relationship and make referrals to each other to ensure that you receive legal services from the organisation best placed to help you.
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