Practical Legal Training

Hello, my name is Maxine Evers and I'm the director of the practical legal training program at UTS. This information session sets out the reasons why you would consider studying your PLT with us here in the law faculty. It lists the why what and how of PLT at UTS. And what is the PLT at UTS difference? What do I need to do to become a lawyer the how to be admitted as a legal practitioner to the Supreme Court of New South Wales. So to become a lawyer in New South Wales, you need to have your academic requirements, which is your bachelor of laws or your juris doctor that you may be currently undertaking as well as your practical requirements, which is the practical legal training program here that we offer at UTS. Having both the academic and the practical requirements enable you to seek admission to the supreme court in New South Wales as a legal practitioner. Doing both your academic and your practical UTS immerses you in the UTS way of legal education that is to be very practice based, professional and cutting edge feedback that we get from employers about our UTS graduates. Graduates are that they are ready to hit the ground running when they go into legal practice. This slide sets up the steps to admission as a legal practitioner. So as I've said, You're currently undertaking your academic law degree or have completed your academic law degree. You are then required to undertake your practical legal training, you can then apply it to the legal profession and Admission Board the LPAB and be admitted as a legal practitioner and placed on the role of the Supreme Court of New South Wales UTS offering both the academic and practical is the one stop shop for completion of the requirements to be a lawyer. This next slide shows some recent testimonials from our practical lead legal training graduates. I'll let you read those for yourselves. But as you can see, the PLT program at UTS really does prepare you for legal practice. And I mean legal practice in a broad sense, our graduates work in a whole host of different areas of legal practice.

Why UTS law and the PLT program. There are several distinctive factors about our program here at UTS. The professional and the practical skills that you will be taught by your teachers in the coursework subjects in the PLT program are based on years of experience as legal practitioners at UTS. We bring together those lawyers that have been in practice or who are currently in practice, together with legal educators who bring their curriculum knowledge and their ability to design and deliver cutting edge courses. So you have practitioners that both work as consultants in our program, as well as the classroom teachers that ensure that our practical legal training program not only complies with the requirements of the New South Wales legal professional Admission Board, but also sets you up for a career beyond study. Our program here at UTS consists of four subjects, three of those subjects are coursework subjects, and they total 18 credit points. I'll talk a little bit later on in this presentation about the different ways you can undertake PLT. But if you if you remember now that there are three subjects in addition to those three subjects, there is also a subject that is called practical experience. And you can see some infant that information about practical experience or PE, as it's referred to on the slide. That's a compulsory requirement by the legal professional admission board. It has no credit points attached to the subject, and there are no fees attached to the subject. So you need to do a placement together with your coursework subjects to complete the practical legal training program. And I'll talk a little bit more about practical Experience towards the end of this presentation. Many of you will already be studying with us here in the law faculty, or have studied with us and completed your academic career. So you will know based on your experience with us, that you are learning in a supportive and flexible environment, you know, how we work, you know how our legal education is, is designed that it is very much has a focus on the professions and on practice, that you have very supportive teachers, and services and resources. And I'll come to those a little bit later on, that will continue to support you as you go through your PLT program. And as I'm sure you've already experienced, we have a great deal of flexibility in relation to whether you're a full time student or a part time student, whether you need to have extensions or special consideration, we will be there to assist and support you in your study. Particularly for UTS students. There is real value in staying with us not only because you're immersed in the in the UTS way, but also in terms of timing and costs. Those of you that will undertake your PLT as a graduate certificate in professional legal practice, which is a postgraduate qualification, you will undertake those three subjects that I've mentioned, totaling 18 credit points. A graduate certificate is 24 credit points. That's the requirements for a grad cert. But because you have studied with us and you have an academic qualification, you will receive six credit points have advanced adding or credit recognition, so you only need to complete and pay for 18 credit points. In addition to that discount on your credit points and fees, you receive a further savings being an alumni of UTS. And there's the 10% Alumni savings that makes our fee very competitive with other providers of PLT. so let's look now at the cost options you have in undertaking your PLT program at UTS. So, you can see that there are various ways that you can complete your PLT and one of these will apply it to you. If you are undertaking the standalone Bachelor of Laws, you can complete your PLT as part of your bachelor of laws, that is the quickest way to achieve your academic and practical requirements and to be admitted as a legal practitioner. So in the Bachelor of Laws you would be doing the PLT component of your study in your final year, either in autumn and spring or in your spring semester. Together with doing your practical experience. If you are undertaking an undergraduate combined degrees or Bachelor of Laws with another bachelor's degree, you can move into your practical legal training as that post grad qualification that I just mentioned the Graduate Certificate in professional legal practice. For example, if you complete your bachelor of laws in the spring of your fifth year, if you're a full time student, you can undertake the Graduate Certificate over the summer. For our postgraduate Juris Doctor students, you'll have two options, you can undertake the combined Juris Doctor Graduate Certificate of professional legal practice, which is the two courses merged into one for a postgraduate student, that is the fastest way also to be qualified. And how we have designed the combined JD PLT is by enabling you to study in summer. So the courses have three years, three years duration, that also includes summers at the end of your first, second and third year. So if you are a full time JD student, you would complete your combined course at the end of your third summer. Or a JD student can do both courses as separate qualifications. You can do the standalone Juris Doctor either as a full time or part time student, and then you can add on your graduate certificate in professional legal practice. And again, I talked about flexibility in the last slide. These options are available to you as either full time student or as a part time student. And as you probably know about UTS without flexibility, you don't have to enroll As a full time and then change your enrollment to part time, you can do as many credit points as you can in every semester. So we have the flexibility around the design and the delivery of our PLT program. It can be 18 credit points be undertaken in one session, or it can be undertaken across two sessions. Some students might do one PLT subject whilst they're finishing their degree, and then move into their second and third PLT coursework subjects to complete their study. Fortunately, we have three intakes just as we do here at UTS and Autumn spring and summer intake. And as I've said, summer is popular with students that have completed their academic course in the spring of the previous year. They then move into undertaking at PLT over the summer period, we offer two modes of delivery one is an on campus mode. So you will come onto campus for workshops. And the other is the off campus mode, which means your study is done online, you may have some zoom, you will have some zoom classes. And you'll also come on to campus to use the facilities for assessment in one of your subjects, or two of your subjects in practical legal training in terms of your advocacy, your and your negotiation, and your interviews that will take place on campus. And that equates to two days on campus with the rest of your study be online.

So what will I be learning when I undertake PLT at UTS. So as I said, there are three coursework subjects and one practical experience subject, you can see a little bit of detail about these subjects here on the slide. And they also include the type of activities and legal tasks will be undertaken in each of those subjects. So they're distinctive within their own subject, and then they all fit together to to really create the whole picture that you need in the PLT program. So legal and professional skills is what we would say our first subject. So if you're studying as a part time student, you might do legal and professional skills before you move into the other subjects. But many of our students complete the three subjects in one semester. So they're obviously running concurrently. So legal professional skills as a foundational subject around drafting around communications, interviews and negotiation, and some ethical duties of lawyers and some work around the trust account. Transactional practice is very much around commercial work and contract work, where you're involved in the buying and selling of the business and the buying and selling of a residential property. litigation and estate practice enables you to do some advocacy work to run a matter in the civil jurisdiction, and to also learn about estate practice, including the drafting of wills. And then practical experiences at full subjects that I've mentioned, no credit points, no fees, and that's where you are in a supervised workplace environment. And undertaking, your placement is important, as you can see on the slide here to know that you can commence your practical experience before you enroll in the practical legal training subjects. So you don't enroll in practical experience until you enroll in legal and professional skills, but she can start to claim part of your placement towards the requirements of practical experience. And we'll talk a little bit more about practical experience later. So, here we are looking at practical experience. So currently UTS students undertake 13 weeks or 65 days of work in a legal environment. Legal Environment is very broadly defined and the tasks that you undertake in that environment are also very broadly defined. So it gives you a taste of different types of practice. Of the 65 days required for practical experience you can complete up to 45 days before you commence your practical legal training program. So for example, if you're a in your third year of a combined degree, or your second year of the Juris Doctor, and you're working in a legal environment, you can start to count those days towards 65 Day requirements. There's a lot of information about practical experience. And I encourage you to have a look on our various web pages. So this slide provides further information from what I've spoken about is 65 days is your requirement to fulfill practical experience. 45 of those days can be completed before you actually enroll in the subject, practical experience, and subject legal and professional skills. And then once you commence your PLT, you'll have one year in which to complete your practical experience. So if you take a break from your placement, you can come back to it and undertake it within 12 months of completing your coursework subjects in the PLT program. We are very fortunate here at UTS to have various places on campus where students can undertake their practical experience, I would recommend students first and foremost have a look at the UTS Careers website where practical experience opportunities will be advertised and they are those that are outside UTS. Of course, we have a very strong and long standing reputation in the profession, about the skills that our students have. And employers will be advertising their practical experience positions or other positions. So doesn't have to be a practical legal training position. That's named as such, if it's any work in a law firm barristers chambers in a government legal office, Community Legal Center, you can claim that for your practical experience, and that can be paid work or volunteer work. But coming back to opportunities that we have on campus at UTS. You can see there, and many of you will be aware of anti slavery Australia and the work that they do in relation to modern slavery. We have the UTS students legal service, which is a free legal advice available to our students. And that's held within our building too. And then we have the Office of General Counsel, which is the in house legal team for the university. So it looks after the university's legal business. Outside of the university, we have an arrangement with the City of Sydney Law Society, which is our closest law society takes in the areas in which is where UTS is situated, they will also help students that are looking for practical experience. We also has opportunities with firms that have a very large international client base. And they are also very happy to provide placements, particularly to international students. So I encourage any international students that are listening to this presentation to contact me if you would like some assistance with a placement with some of these firms. But as I've said, Go to UTS Careers first of all, not only for assistance around your career, but also in relation to positions that are advertised, whether they be labeled practical experience or PLT positions or whether they be labeled normal legal positions such as a paralegal, a research assistant, a clark, etc. If you're in those types of employment, you have someone to supervise you then that can count for your practical experience. Can you commence your practical experience before you have completed your academic course? Yes, you can. And this is referred to as the Early Start rule. And it is a rule that has been allowed by the legal profession admission board, they manage this rule. So this is not a UTS rule. But we will help students obtain the approval of the legal profession Mission Board to commence their PLT before they have completed their academic requirements. So as you can see on the slide here, you can commence your PLT coursework subjects with consent of the legal profession admission board, if you have completed all your core law subjects, so you'll know your core law subjects than the mandatory ones that is sometimes referred to as a priestly 11. And if you have no more than two electives left so if you're doing In your last group of electives, and you have one or two remaining, you can commence your PLT. And that makes sense if you've got, say, for example, one elective, or as I said even two electives and you want to be have a full time load, you can then take on one PLT subject, and do it in one semester, and then complete the other PLT subjects in the following semester. Again, there's a lot of information on our website, as well as the LPAB's website about the Early Start rule. There's also part of the LPAB requirements known as the stale mooning clause. And this applies to both an academic course, and appeal to a course. If your qualifications are more than five years old, and you haven't yet been admitted as a legal practitioner to the Supreme Court, then you need to have those qualifications re assessed.

It's nothing really for you to worry about at this stage. But the purpose for letting you know about the stale learning clause is to encourage you to think about doing PLT, even if you're not 100% sure that you want to practice law, and you want to be admitted as a legal practitioner. Yes, it's an additional six months. Yes, that's additional fees. But it's a small amount of the component of your entire degree, I would encourage you to complete the PLT as I said, even if you're not sure about being admitted, even if you're going into an area of work where you do not need a practising certificate. It's worthwhile undertaking your PLT to enable you to be admitted to the Supreme Court of New South Wales, and your name placed on the role of legal practitioners. what support is available as a UTS student if you are doing your academic course with us, you will be very familiar with the support that we have up here on the slide. If you are tuning into this information session, and you did not undertake your academic requirements, academic requirements for admission to practice with us, this will give you a snapshot of the support you get as a UTS student. So our law faculty has a director of students, that role is really the face of the faculty for student queries. So if a student has any concerns about their progression, about the choice of subjects about applying for leave of absence, about what they should do around careers, etc. The director of students is the person to see they are an academic, and they don't always have the answers, but they can triage your questions and send you off for further assistance if need be. For students that need some support in terms of those written tasks or oral tasks that you need to do. As a student, you just don't know where to start, you'd like to build up your skills, your capacity, your confidence, we have HELPS available to all students so helps is our higher education, language and presentation support. And they will assist you with getting started in relation to your assignments. The Career Service may be a big part of your thinking at this time, careers about where you're going to go for your first role, what's available with what's available for graduates with legal qualifications, as well as advertisements for practical legal training or other legal work that you can count towards your practical legal training. The courier service is more than advertising jobs. So it will also support you in finding that first professional role. So there'll be skills and consultations around CV writing, cover writing interview techniques, etc. So I would encourage you to spend some time on the Careers website to reach out to them. We have specialist careers consultants that work in the law faculty to really get some further advice and guidance around your careers. And then for students with accessibility needs, you can register with accessibility services. Some of you will have reused the services in your academic career and they will work with your teachers in the PLT program to ensure that the reasonable adjustments are put in place for you for you to complete the program. So it says just a little bit more information about services on offer from careers. So I've said practical experience placements or other law legal work that you can count towards practical experience, employment opportunities for that first professional role, career preparation around cover letters, CVS, and interview practice. So thank you for engaging with this information session. My details are there, please do not hesitate to reach out to me, email me, I can set up a one on one session with you either in person on campus we're building 2 or on Zoom, or by telephone. Similarly, you can send me an email and I will respond to your email with any queries in relation to practical legal training. We're also running information sessions on level 14 in the moot court. So look out for those and you'll see further information around about the PLT program around level 14 in the students spaces. So thank you once again, and I wish you all the very best bye.