Survive Law: August sees the new ALSA council take office. Matthew Floro, ALSA’s 2010-2011 president, and his successor Geoffrey Winters chat to Survive Law about ALSA’s achievements over the past 12 months and where it’s headed next.
The ALSA Committee has been busy. At the beginning of his term, Matthew Floro’s goal was for ALSA to become one of the leading policy development bodies in Australia, and the organisation has been very active across four key areas over the past year: depression and mental health; rural, regional and remote (RRR) issues; pro bono and community legal practice; and curriculum review.
In terms of curriculum review, the committee has made several submissions to government over the past 12 months: “our submissions have revolved around the funding of legal education,” says Floro. “We made a submission to the higher education base funding review in relation to the disproportionate amount law students pay for their degrees compared to other students such as humanities and other social sciences, and dentistry and medicine.”
The national vacation clerkship scheme also remains on ALSA’s radar. With a consensus about such a scheme recently gained through ALSA council, the organisation has developed a basic model for national clerkships.
Another of Floro’s goals for his term was to improve the direct communication between ALSA and law students, and he believes that the improvements to the quality of ALSA’s publications, and the successful 2011 ALSA Conference which saw almost 550 delegates converge on Sydney, have facilitated some change. “There’s still much more to achieve on that particular aspect but my view is that ALSA is really an organisation that should be as much for LSSs as it is for law students.”
Floro also used his term to focus on improving the organisation’s international relations. “I really do think that the future of ALSA is with stronger engagement with our counterparts in Asia, in Europe, in America, and more broadly, globally,” he says. “I think it’s really vital that law students in Australia have global legal literacy, in particular Asia-Pacific legal literacy. I think it’s vital that as law students we gain an understanding of how things are operating in our region because increasingly the work will be cross-jurisdictional,” he explains.
To that end ALSA recently signed a renewed memorandum with the Asian Law Students Association, which includes future engagement opportunities such internship schemes between the two organisations. ALSA is in similar talks with the European Law Students Association and the New Zealand Law Students Association.
ALSA’s new president, Geoffrey Winters, plans to continue Floro’s international focus: “we will be exploring ways in which we can link our members with members and law schools in the region and around the world.” Initially, this will involve “increasing the number of international competitions we participate in and exploring the option of establishing a formal set of study tours and other types of relationship building activities with law students’ representative bodies around the world.”
But there is still more for ALSA to do, says Floro. “In terms of being better recognised by more law students and more bodies as the peak representative body for Australian law students, there is still some more advocacy work that we need to do.” Floro believes that improving this recognition involves cultivating a stronger media presence: “I think that in terms of our media coverage we’ve been getting some really fantastic coverage in national papers… I think that the next step in ALSA’s media strategy should be TV and radio coverage.”
Winters agrees. “ALSA needs to continue to assert its position as the peak representative body of law students. We need to refine our image, media presence, and message to ensure that we are being most effective in advocating on behalf of our members: all law students, from big to small, regional to cosmopolitan law schools around the country.” He adds that in 2011-2012, ALSA needs to “continue to work closely with the major domestic institutions such as the Council of Australian Law Deans and the Law Council of Australia.”
So what does ALSA need to do to keep up with the changes to legal education and meet the challenges facing Australian law students and law students’ societies? Winters expects several “minor refinements” to ALSA during his time in office, but nothing drastic: “I believe ALSA is heading in the right direction so there are no major institutional or otherwise changes in the pipeline.” Over the coming year, “ALSA will be focusing on clarifying its position and significance in the minds of its members and the minds of the national legal fraternity.”
“The ALSA Council will be run slightly differently to ensure that policy is an accurate reflection of the views of law students around the country, and ALSA main and the ALSA Conference team are going to work a lot more closely to ensure that our members get as much as possible out of the experience of attending the ALSA Conference 2012 in Melbourne,” he promises.
