- Title
- Legal education and the ageing population: building student knowledge and skills through experiential learning in collaboration with community organisations
- Creator
- Ries, Nola M.; Johnston, Briony; McCarthy, Shaun
- Relation
- Adelaide Law Review Vol. 37, Issue 2, p. 495-522
- Relation
- https://www.adelaide.edu.au/press/journals/law-review
- Publisher
- University of Adelaide
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- The Australian population is ageing and dementia is now the leading cause of disability in persons over the age of 65 years. Lawyers must be prepared to meet the legal needs of older clients, including helping them plan in advance for health, financial and property matters. Lawyers must be able to recognise when cognitive impairment may limit a client’s decision-making capacity and take appropriate steps to handle such situations. Legal regulatory bodies in Australia report an increasing incidence of complaints against legal practitioners, including junior lawyers, for failures to identify and manage capacity issues. This article discusses an experiential learning pilot project designed to build students’ knowledge and skills to better meet their professional responsibilities when providing assistance to older clients. The University of Newcastle Law School in New South Wales, Australia, collaborated with local community organisations to deliver: (1) a legal education initiative that included law students in the delivery of legal information seminars for older adults and people with chronic health conditions; and (2) a training module to educate students about client capacity issues. The article describes the process of embedding research into this project to evaluate students’ experiences and to investigate the impact of community legal education on attendees’ knowledge and behaviour.
- Subject
- legal education; ageing population; student knowledge; community organisations
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1349075
- Identifier
- uon:30327
- Identifier
- ISSN:0065-1915
- Language
- eng
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