Opportunities and Tools for Law Reform

Tools for Law Reform

Inquiries Table - April 2012 (Click to download)

The inquiries table is produced by CLCNSW and can be used to identify:

• current parliamentary, government and other inquiries at the federal and NSW levels.
• upcoming human rights events

Strategies

A range of measures can be used to work towards law reform, such as:

• collaboration with other CLCs, other NSW organizations / other states / academics - click here for a list of academic research centres at NSW Universities
• consultation – with CLCs, CLC clients, key stakeholders
• community legal education
• advocacy through meetings, letters, fact sheets, flyers, articles, newsletters, website information etc
• lobbying – e.g. parliamentarians
• public campaigns, incl. media (traditional and new)
• representation
• submissions to government, law reform bodies and other organizationsadvice on bills
• policy review
• policy development
• information collection, collation and provision / research / statistical collection / analysis
• public conferences and forums.

A series of 3 workshops on Law Reform and Policy skills were held at the National Conference of CLCs in October 2010. You may find the notes from these workshops useful:
Workshop 1: Introduction to Policy and Law Reform
Workshop 2: Case Studies and Planning
Workshop 3: Media Work (see also our webpage on Media skills)

The report Reclaiming Community Legal Centres - Maximising our potential so we can help our clients realise theirs, by Nicole Rich, adresses why CLC's should engage in law reform and advocacy work, and discusses strategies used in the USA. The report can be found here.

Links to other organisations

• Australian Parliament
• NSW Parliament
• Australian Government Directory
• Australian Law Reform Commission
• NSW Law Reform Commission
• Australian Human Rights Commission
• Law and Justice Foundation
• UNSW’s Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law
• Human Rights Law Resource Centre
• The Australian Human Rights Group website
• Uniting Justice Australia
• Amnesty International Australia
• United Nations Commission on Human Rights
• NSW Charter Group
• Getup! campaigns
• Social Needs Directory