The Faculty is located at City campus, Haymarket. The Faculty also has a presence at Kuring-gai campus, located in Lindfield.

The delivery of subjects and courses is managed in four academic program areas (Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Cross-disciplinary and Practical Legal Training), but functions on an integrated basis. Each academic program area is led by an academic program Director. In addition, the Faculty has appointed directors of Staff Research, International Programs, the UTS Community Law Centre, and the Australasian Legal Information Institute.

Student administration functions are centralised at City campus, Haymarket. Most academic and administrative staff are located in Building 5, City campus, Haymarket, although some staff are located at Kuring-gai campus. For online staff contact details, see:

The Faculty's governing body is the Faculty Board in Law. A variety of committees report to Faculty Board including the: Dean's Advisory Committee; Teaching and Learning Committee; Quality Committee; Undergraduate Program Committee; Graduate Studies Committee (relating to postgraduate coursework and higher degree course matters); Practical Legal Training Committee; Cross-disciplinary Program Committee; and the Research Management Committee.

The information provided here is an introduction to the variety of information that is available and is not intended to be complete. Students are advised to visit the Faculty of Law and UTS websites for more comprehensive information:

UTS website

Faculty of Law website

Location

Detailed directions can be found at:

Postal address

DX

Inquiries

The Law Information Office (LIO) provides information and assistance to students and the general public and is the first point of call for all inquiries. The LIO can assist with the following:

• Course progression, information and advice
• Distribution of free-of-charge supplementary materials
• Optional subject class availabilities
• Return of marked assignments
• Submission of assessment pieces
• Variation of program
• Interpretation of University rules and regulations

A variety of UTS forms are available outside the LIO, along with notice boards displaying class timetables, examination rules, and other important information.

Further details about the services of the LIO can be found at:

Location

Opening hours

Monday – Friday, 10.00 a.m. – 1.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m. – 6.00 p.m. during semester
(during semester break and the Vice-Chancellors' Week, the LIO closes at 5.00 p.m.)

Student facilities

UTS Law Library

Full details about the UTS Library can be found at:

Computer labs

The Faculty provides two computer labs for use by Faculty of Law students. Students have access to the full range of Microsoft Office applications, the Internet and printers and are supported by a Faculty-based IT team.

Locations

Opening hours

Monday – Friday, 8.00 a.m. – 10.00 p.m. and Saturday, 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m. during semester

In addition, the UTS Information Technology Division (ITD) provides computer laboratories for UTS students on all campuses. For further information, see:

Law Students' Society

The Law Students' Society provides students' views on matters relating to the Law courses and provides student input on various committees. The Society also acts as a communication channel between the Faculty and the student body. It provides advocacy services and other assistance with academic appeals.

The Law Students' Society is governed by a Council of student members, elected at the Society's Annual General Meeting held at the beginning of Autumn semester each year. The Council in turn elects an Executive consisting of the President, Vice-President, Treasurer, ALSA (Australasian Law Students' Association) Representative and Secretary. The Council meets on a fortnightly basis during each semester to review the Society's activities and discuss new initiatives. Interest and input are encouraged from students; many of the ideas acted upon come from members.

Social functions are an important part of university life and the Society regularly organises functions for students. Popular events include the annual Graduation Ball and a variety of 'drinks nights' throughout each semester. The Society can also assist in organising functions that students wish to hold.

Services to members include:

• Secondhand bookshop
• Mooting competitions
• Affiliation with Australasian Law Students' Association (ALSA)
• Publications.

The Society is responsible for the publication of the Full Bench magazine. This provides an outlet for the Council to communicate with its members. Also, members may submit articles of interest, either social, academic or education-based. These will be reviewed for inclusion by the Council.

Inquiries

A list of Council members is posted on the Law Students' Society notice board, located outside the Society's office.

Student information

Guide to Essay Writing

Essays and other written work should be prepared in accordance with the guidelines laid down in the Faculty of Law's Guide to Essay Writing. For details, see online at:

All work submitted for assessment should bear an assignment coversheet. These are available outside the Law Information Office.

If required by the lecturer concerned, the work must be typed.

The work must be properly written with due regard to spelling, punctuation, grammar and syntax.

Unless otherwise instructed by the lecturer concerned, all written work should include footnotes or endnotes and a bibliography in the manner set out in the Guide to Essay Writing.

Any piece of written work which does not comply with these requirements may be:

• required to be rewritten in proper form
• penalised in marks, or
• rejected without assessment.

Timetable

The current timetable is posted on the notice board on level 1 of the Faculty and adjacent to the Law Information Office (CM05B.3.03) on level 3 and is also online at:

Progression and acceleration

Students will be permitted to enrol in subjects totalling a maximum of 28 credit points per semester with the leave of the relevant academic program director, if:

• there is no timetable clash
• maximum class size is not exceeded
• the student's academic record indicates he or she is capable of performing satisfactorily when accelerating, and
• the student can demonstrate that his or her work and other non-study commitments permit him or her to accelerate without detriment to his or her studies.

The Faculty of Law cannot guarantee avoidance of timetable and/or examination clashes where students do not follow the standard course progression.

Assessment

Lodgment of assignments

Students are required to retain a copy of all assignments submitted. Students who are handing in written work must submit it, with an assignment coversheet attached, in the assignment box located adjacent to the Law Information Office on level 3 of the Law Faculty. The assignment box is cleared daily at 6.00 p.m. Assignments submitted by DX, facsimile or email will not be accepted by the Faculty, unless otherwise arranged with the lecturer.

Late work

Any work submitted after the date of submission may be penalised in marks or rejected without assessment (where circumstances dictate).

Subject coordinators have the right to establish individual assessment regimes. University Rules provide for an appeal against assessment if students are not told of changes to assessment by week three of semester (although in some circumstances revision can be made during semester).

Lecturers may deduct five marks per week (one mark per business day) for assessment work submitted late and refuse to accept work once the assessment piece has been returned to other students, subject to reasonable excuse and permission given beforehand.

Plagiarism

Where individual work is required for the purposes of assessment, the copying, unacknowledged use of, or reliance on the work of other individuals without acknowledgment is considered to be cheating/misconduct. The penalties imposed for cheating/misconduct or allowing work to be plagiarised are severe under the University rules and regulations.

Plagiarism is one of the most serious crimes in the academic community – it indicates an attempt by someone to pass off the words and/or ideas of another as their own. To take any but a few sequential words of another without acknowledgment is plagiarism and tantamount to cheating. It will be so treated at the Faculty of Law.

Experience shows that one of the most common ways for plagiarism to occur is when students work together. It is acknowledged by the academic staff that study groups are an efficient and beneficial method of learning – peer tuition is effective – but problems arise when it is extended into the assessment process. The Faculty expects, in fact demands, all assignments submitted to be the work of the person who is credited with the mark. It can be an extremely fine line between discussion of an essay topic with another and collaboration, but where comparisons of various students' work indicate collaboration, this will be taken to be plagiarism and the Faculty policy will be invoked (see the Guide to Essay Writing).

Any acts of plagiarism will be penalised. Such penalties may include, depending upon the seriousness and nature of the offence:

• a requirement that the assignment be rewritten de novo
• a penalty in the reduction of marks awarded to the work, which may include a reduction to zero, or a sharing of the mark awarded to the document among its apparent authors
• a Fail result in the subject concerned and a referral of the matter to the Associate Dean or other appropriate body.

Centres within the Faculty

The Australasian Legal Information Institute

The Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) provides free access to Australian legal material to anyone who has access to the Internet. AustLII operates one of the world's largest publicly accessible databases of legal materials on the World Wide Web. AustLII aims to make available all public legal information: primary legal materials (legislation and decisions of courts and tribunals); and secondary materials that are (or ought to be) in the public domain or able to be licensed free of charge.

AustLII's public policy agenda is to convince governments, courts, law reform bodies and other publicly funded organisations to make legal materials they control available free via the Internet. It has an innovative approach to computerising legal materials, based on 10 years' research and development.

Some of AustLII's research features are: automated rich hypertext; development and use of its own search engine (SINO); and integration of hypertext and text retrieval.

AustLII is jointly operated by the faculties of Law at UTS and the University of New South Wales (UNSW). It was established by funding from DEET and the two host universities, and also receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Law Foundation of NSW, the Australian Business Chamber, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Asian Development Bank and other bodies.

Inquiries

Postal address

DX

UTS Community Law Centre

The UTS Community Law Centre was opened in May 1996. The Centre is a part of the Faculty of Law. The Centre provides free legal services to UTS staff and students (UTS Union Legal Service), and to staff and students of TAFE Sydney Institute (TAFE outreach legal service). In providing legal services, the Centre relies on the assistance of law students who each volunteer for four hours per week.

The Centre provides advice, representation and referral in a broad range of matters such as credit and debt, criminal law, discrimination law, domestic violence, employment law, social security, tenancy and victims compensation.

The Centre aims to develop effective ways of informing the community of their legal rights and responsibilities by organising legal education seminars and workshops and publishing information in printed form or on the Centre's website. The Centre adopts a multidisciplinary approach to legal advice and research, recognising the complexity of providing legal solutions in modern society.

Centre staff are also involved in legal research, policy and law reform. These activities facilitate community access to researchers at the Centre and academic staff in the UTS Faculty of Law. The Centre provides community organisations with legal research expertise in order to respond to the impact of particular laws and policies on their communities. The Centre offers an optional law subject – Community Legal Research – giving law students the opportunity to undertake research addressing community legal issues.

The Centre also seeks to promote practice-based education by providing students with direct experience of assisting clients, the dynamics of law reform, community consultations and the impact of politics on the legal system.

Inquiries

Postal address

DX

Location