Dean's welcome

At the La Trobe Law School, we are charting our course with intention – not just to keep pace, but to set it.

We are a progressive and practical School with a commitment to three fundamental values: service, justice, and academic excellence. These values inform everything we do, whether we’re designing curriculum, collaborating with community, industry and government partners, or conducting impactful research.

We talk less of tradition, and more about innovation and change. We are preparing our students for an uncertain future where the capacity to adapt is as important as knowledge of the law.

We are a School that reaches out and welcomes in. We reach out to our local communities by providing student-led legal services to low-income clients through our partnerships with community legal centres. Our academics reach out to government and industry partners to collaboratively solve pressing societal issues.

We also welcome in. We invite students, alumni, members of the legal and criminal justice professions, industry and community groups into the School, building collaborative partnerships and providing opportunities for them to contribute to and benefit from the School’s commitment to education, research and the public good.

The founders of the La Trobe Law School understood its potential as a place of leadership and engagement; a place where urgent social questions would be examined, debated and resolved; a place where important, innovative and impactful research would be conducted; and a place where critical thinking would always be encouraged.

Today we continue to strive to fulfil this mandate in all that we do, locally, nationally and across the globe.

Professor Fiona Kelly
Dean, La Trobe Law School