February 15, 2018

Michael Kirby launches School of Law at South Western Sydney Campus

Law double degree to open opportunities for local students

Students in South Western Sydney will now have access to a world-class legal education on their doorstep with the launch of the School of Law at the University of Wollongong’s Liverpool campus.

The launch heralds another step forward for the South Western Sydney Campus, which opened in 2017, with the aim of providing students in the region with new opportunities to continue their educational dreams without having to travel outside the region.

The Honourable Michael Kirby, AC CMG, former justice of the High Court of Australia, launched the School of Law on Wednesday (14 February).

The School of Law at South Western Sydney will initially offer the Bachelor of Laws, which students can undertake as a double degree alongside other degrees. From 2019, UOW Law at South Western Sydney will be offering the stand-alone Bachelor of Laws as well as the graduate entry Bachelor of Laws for students who already have another degree. All of these courses will also be available for study in part-time mode.

In 2018, the Federal Government’s Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) ranked UOW as the best university in NSW and the ACT for Law and Paralegal Studies. In addition, the highly influential Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2018 ranked UOW Law 85th worldwide, a position of third in New South Wales.

Professor Colin Picker, Dean of Law at UOW, said he was thrilled to be able to launch the School of Law to students in South Western Sydney.

“Studying law provides our students with a thorough grounding in the law, but it also changes the way they look at the world; it encourages them to think critically, to engage with ideas and to focus on the social and ethical contexts in which the law operates,” Professor Picker said.

“UOW’s School of Law is home to incredible teachers and researchers who are passionate about the law. This is an amazing opportunity to take that high quality teaching and engagement with the law to UOW’s South Western Sydney campus, to a new cohort of students and to a new community.

“Teaching at South Western Sydney will be different, as a result of the new environments and contexts that we will encounter, alongside teaching to new students, often with unique needs, goals, challenges, backgrounds and futures. These challenges and opportunities are tremendously exciting to my colleagues, demanding rethinking and change in both the way we teach and what we teach.”

Professor Alison Jones, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Health and Communities), said students in the region would be able to gain an exceptional legal education, from the best legal minds, in their own community, which would help these skills to stay within the region.

“The establishment of the School of Law at South Western Sydney demonstrates the University of Wollongong’s commitment to the students and community of the Liverpool region. It will enable students who may not have had the means nor the desire to study outside the region to obtain a world-class degree in law,” Professor Jones said.

“The School of Law will directly benefit the community as a whole by teaching those skills in the region and contributing to the ongoing growth of the South Western Sydney region by training its next generation of legal minds.”
Students are able to undertake, full or part time, a double degree in Law at the South Western Sydney Campus from the Autumn semester this year.