About our organisation

Community Legal Centres Australia is the national representative voice for the community legal sector. We are an independent, non-profit organisation set up to support the community legal sector to provide high-quality free and accessible legal and related services to everyday people, especially people experiencing financial hardship, discrimination and/or some other form of disadvantage, or who are experiencing domestic or family violence.

We strive to be leaders in good practice, to advocate for justice and the promotion and protection of human rights, to be responsive to the needs of the community legal sector and to maintain and strengthen the collaborative networks that allow our sector to provide holistic support to communities.

Our members are the eight state and territory community legal sector peak bodies. Together, we represent 154 community legal centres and women’s legal services, eleven Family Violence Prevention Legal Services and two Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services operating in metropolitan, regional, rural, remote, and very remote communities across Australia.  For more information about the unique features of community legal centres and the community legal centres movement, read What makes a community legal centre?

Our movement’s vision is for a fair and equitable society in which: 

Our legal systems and institutions are accessible to all, decolonised, and no longer criminalise poverty, disadvantage, or disability 

All members of our community have access to the power, tools and means to live safe, secure, and meaningful lives, free from discrimination, violence, exploitation, and abuse 

We respect and protect the rights of First Nations people and communities to land, language, culture, and self-determination 

We respect and protect the natural environment for current and future generations. 

Our expertise is grounded in the stories of the 200 000 people who engage our sector’s services each year and who experience first-hand the barriers to justice that exist in our legal system. Our public advocacy ensures that their voices and experiences drive progressive system reform. 

Our members

Community Legal Centres Australia has eight organisations as its members. These eight members are the state and territory associations of community legal centres

Our staff

Reconciliation Action Plan

Community Legal Centres Australia is committed to strengthening understanding and healing relationships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous people. Since 2012, we have developed and implemented two Reconciliation Action Plans under the guidance of Reconciliation Australia. We implemented our second RAP from 2017 to 2019. During 2022 we reinvigorated our efforts to embed real and meaningful change in our organisation by starting work on a third Reconciliation Action Plan, which we will launch and implement in 2024.

Impact Strategy

In February 2024, the Community Legal Centres Australia Board approved a new impact strategy, which will guide management of the organisation over the next three years.

Impact strategy 2024-2027