4. What impact can CLE have in the fight for climate justice?

Alongside the multiple facets of student learning discussed later in this chapter, a climate clinic aims to meet the needs of the client. As noted above, social justice has been a central value of Australian CLE since its beginnings, aligned with its shared origins and links to CLCs.^[1] Unlike the (purportedly) value-neutral traditional approach to doctrinal black letter subjects, CLE in Australia aims to ‘inculcate [in students] social justice values that transcend mere legal service provision’.^[2] A climate clinic, therefore, can only exist to support the community to address the climate crisis.^[3] It could not be used to advance the interests of fossil fuel industries or used to frustrate progressive policies to limit climate-harming emissions or block efforts to achieve justice for communities in the energy transition.

A climate clinic is mission-driven. Clients are deliberately chosen to advance the clinic’s aims. The startup sustainability and environmental ‘new economy’^[4] enterprise clients of Melbourne Law School’s Sustainability Business Clinic, for example, are carefully chosen to raise issues and require assistance that will raise novel and multidisciplinary questions or matters that are challenged by existing laws. In this way, the Sustainability Business Clinic has been recognised as an important part of the ecosystem of supports in Australia for social enterprise.^[5]

Because CLE exists in a public realm and takes a progressive stance to law and policy, it also has the potential to contribute to closer connections between the profession and the academy, as well as to a university’s outreach and community engagement as a public institution.