We provide free legal help so you don’t have to pay for legal advice, but handling your case might still come with costs, especially if it goes to court. You might qualify for financial assistance, called legal aid, to cover these costs. If not, you’ll need to cover expenses like court fees and hiring a barrister to represent you in court.
Monash Law Clinics can give advice about these areas of law:
- Criminal and traffic charges in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria
- Centrelink matters
- Tax matters
- Infringements
- Motor vehicle accidents (where the client is uninsured)
- Intervention orders – Family Violence and Personal Safety
- Rental disputes (on behalf of tenants only and limited service)
- Debts (owed to and owing). Please note this does not include matters in the Magistrates' Court of Victoria
- Divorce
- Property (including superannuation splits), spousal maintenance and adult child maintenance matters. Please note: we will only book legal advice appointments for property matters where children’s issues are also involved
- Parenting dispute matters (assistance is likely to be limited to legal advice only, where the matter is contested at the FCFCOA). Assistance with making consent orders may be available.
- Contravention applications
- Location orders
- Enforcement orders
- Change of name
- Child's passport and/or travel applications
- Applications for parental responsibility where a child's primary carer has died
- Applications by a non-biological parent for parental responsibility
Monash Law Clinics is unable to assist with:
- Bankruptcy
- Building contracts and disputes
- Commercial matters
- Conveyancing and mortgages
- Medical negligence
- Personal injury, including workers compensation
- Planning
- Wills and estates
- Immigration
- Employment disputes
- Defacto or marital property disputes (not associated with children’s matters)
- Matters involving Monash University or a related entity as a party
- Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal (VOCAT)
- Owners corporation disputes
- Consumer law
When you call Monash Law Clinics, you will speak with a member of our administrative team. Our admin team are experts at helping you find the right legal help. They are not lawyers and so they will not give you legal advice.
If you would like legal advice you will need to make an appointment to speak with a Monash Law student and supervising lawyer. We offer phone and onsite appointments. To request an appointment, please call 1800 860 333 between 9:00am - 4:00pm Monday-Friday or email law-clinics@monash.edu.
Our service is in high demand, to address our clients’ needs promptly, we only allow appointments to be booked up to a maximum of two weeks in advance. We do not keep a waitlist.
If there are no available appointments when you call, we will give you a referral to another service. If your legal problem is not urgent, feel free to call back in a week to check for updated availability.
No, individuals cannot seek legal advice anonymously due to rules that require lawyers to know who they are giving advice to.
When we ask for your personal details, we collect this information to better understand how we can help you with the resources that we have available. We also use this information to complete a confidential check called a conflict of interest check. For more information see the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner Fact Sheet here.
A legal centre cannot assist someone if they are currently helping (or have previously helped) a different person involved in the same or related legal issue. This is a “conflict of interest”. There can be other reasons for a conflict of interest. For more information see the Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner Fact Sheet here.
We have a dedicated team of Monash Law students who work under the close supervision of qualified and highly experienced legal practitioners. Any advice that you receive will first be checked by the supervising lawyer.
We are usually not able to represent you in court.
You could contact:
Yes. You can call us directly on 1800 860 333 and we will organise an interpreter in your preferred language for free. You could also call the Translating and Interpreting Service on 131 450 and ask them to call Monash Law Clinics on 1800 860 333.
If you are d/Deaf, hard of hearing, or have speech communication difficulty, you can use the National Relay Service to contact us over the phone. If we book a legal appointment for you, please let us know how you would like to be contacted e.g. if you would like an in-person or video appointment and/or prefer an Auslan interpreter.
Monash Law Clinics has limited resources and cannot help everyone. We do prioritise members of the community who face multiple systemic barriers to accessing justice. We may be able to help you with your legal problem if:
- Your legal matter falls within our areas of expertise
- You don’t already have a lawyer or legal representation
- You are experiencing/ or are a survivor of family violence
- You have difficulty with spoken or written language
- You have a culturally and linguistically diverse background
- You have a physical or intellectual disability, including the experience of mental illness
- You are experiencing homelessness, or are you at risk of homelessness
- Depending on your financial situation
If your local community legal centre cannot assist you, we may be able to offer help. Our offices are located in Melbourne CBD and Clayton, but since we offer phone appointments, we may be able to assist clients across Victoria.
Our Clayton office is located at 60 Beddoe Avenue, Clayton.
Our Melbourne office is located at Level 11, 555 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne.