LLB463 Legal Placement

Unit Outline: Semester 2 2025, Gardens Point, Internal

Overview

This unit will enable you to experience the real world application and development of your legal knowledge and skills through participation in a legal placement. You will work alone or with a small group of students to respond to real world legal issues at a community legal centre, not-for-profit organisation, law firm or company. You will undertake legal research, draft reports, prepare presentations, and/or undertake other legal tasks under supervision. This unit affords you an authentic learning context to undertake legal work in the real world. Through this experience you should develop skills to be better placed for career planning and transition to the workplace.

You will need to enrol in this unit in order to apply for a project. However, your enrolment does not guarantee that you will be allocated to a QUT-organised project, or that you will be able to undertake this unit.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

1. Appraise the legal system and/or the role of lawyers (CLOs 1.1, 1.5, 2.3)
2. Appraise social, professional and/or ethical issues, analysing the professional and/or ethical responsibilities of a legal practitioner in a public, private or community legal context (CLOs 2.3, 5.1)
3. Evaluate and reflect on your application of discipline-specific and professional knowledge and skills and implement personal learning strategies (CLOs 1.1, 2.3, 5.2)
4. Practice and reflect upon ethical and professional identity, using collaborative strategies that draw on feedback, experience and career development (CLO 1.5, 4.3, 5.2)

Content

Learning Approaches

This unit employs a self-directed and active approach to learning in an authentic work context.
Your participation in this unit includes:

• Four podcasts in weeks 1, 2, 3 and 4
• Online or face-to-face academic learning support in preparation for the placement experience and the assessment of student learning
• Individual consultation between you and the unit coordinator
• Experiential learning and reflective practice
• Project supervisor's feedback
• Active learning in an ethos of the student assuming responsibility for his/her own learning
• Online learning and teaching resources provide feedback on your learning and are available via the Canvas site for this unit.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

You will receive feedback on the assessment items and learning activities in the unit through written comments on criteria sheets and individual contact with the unit coordinator by phone, email or during classes. In addition, industry supervisors will provide you with ongoing feedback throughout your placement.

You should reflect upon the feedback on your assessment in this unit (both your individual and generic feedback as provided on Canvas) for the purpose of identifying:

• gaps in your knowledge and understanding of relevant legal principles 
• inadequacies in your problem solving methodology
• strategies to improve your problem solving, oral and written communication skills in further assessment
• areas for improvement for future studies within the LLB, including legal research strategies
• the connection between writing reflectively and your continued professional development as a lawyer.

Assessment

Overview

The summative assessment consists of a reflective journal and a virtual presentation

Students may be required to attend campus or an assessment centre for the purposes of assessment, regardless of the attendance mode for the unit

Unit Grading Scheme

7- point scale

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Reflective Journal

The reflective journal requires you to critically reflect on your learning in your placement experience. This demonstrates your understanding of the personal and professional challenges you have faced during the unit and in the project experience.

This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.

Assessment: Virtual presentation

Acting as a lawyer, you will submit a virtual presentation to your peers, critically analysing a contemporary legal issue that you have focussed on during your placement. 

This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is a commitment to undertaking academic work and assessment in a manner that is ethical, fair, honest, respectful and accountable.

The Academic Integrity Policy sets out the range of conduct that can be a failure to maintain the standards of academic integrity. This includes, cheating in exams, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion and contract cheating. It also includes providing fraudulent or altered documentation in support of an academic concession application, for example an assignment extension or a deferred exam.

You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.

Breaching QUT’s Academic Integrity Policy or engaging in conduct that may defeat or compromise the purpose of assessment can lead to a finding of student misconduct (Code of Conduct – Student) and result in the imposition of penalties under the Management of Student Misconduct Policy, ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.

Resources

Risk Assessment Statement

Whilst undertaking activities related to your project you will be covered by QUT workers' compensation, public liability and professional indemnity insurance. You must familiarise yourself with the workplace health and safety rules of the particular workplace you attend.

It is also important to view the QUT WIL Health and Safety PowerPoint, Managing your rights, responsibilities and safety on placement, which will be shown to you in Workshop 1. You may also be required to undertake an induction in the relevant workplace.

You may have to sign a confidentiality agreement whereby you agree not to disclose any information learned in the course of the placement to any person outside the field placement office. You will need to understand matters of intellectual property, conflict of interest and insurance, which are also detailed in the Health and Safety resources.