ex Law School
Today I receieved a letter from the new Dean of my former Law School, giving us a "heads-up" on a "Course Experience Questionnaire" which we apparently will be receving shortly. Apparently, these surveys "are extremely important because they are used in the ranking of Australian Law Schools and can affect the career prospects of our graduate". I have no idea where my Alumni ranks (plus, these rankings tend to amuse me more than anything else; it's all a bunch of hogwash).
I was also amused to read that the Law School is "working to significantly expand the undergraduate unit offerings, with the goal to enhancing the Murdoch law degree's value within an increasingly competitive graduate employment market". Some of these new initiatives and courses include: Graduate Certificate in Australian Migration Law and Pratice ("an accredited course leading to registration as a Migration Agent") and Professional Training in Arbitration Law and Practice Program ("which makes participants eligible for admission as an Arbitrator, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators").
After reading the letter from the Dean, I decided to have a read of his profile on the Law School website, which, although being very distinguished, wasn't overly exciting. Then I decided to have a browse of the other biographies and found that of Linda Jurevic, a lecturer I had in first year:
Ms Linda Jurevic
Lecturer
B.Commerce, LL.M. , JD. (Juris Doctor)
A long, long time ago Linda graduated with a degree in Commerce and worked in retail. She wore designer clothes and dated a stockbroker. After a few minutes of the Regan Administration, she became incensed and completed her JD (Juris Doctor) from Northwestern School of Law ( Lewis & Clark College) in Portland, Oregon. Upon graduation she worked for a private law firm where she practiced in family law and construction lien law before following her heart and entering the community legal sector. She worked for several years in a rural community legal centre where she practiced in the areas of domestic violence, landlord/tenant law, and public benefits law. She is admitted to the Oregon State Bar, as well as the Federal District and Court of Appeals Courts.
After arriving in Perth in early 1992, she was lured into the academia by Professor Ralph Simmonds who convinced her it would be a perfect panacea for the burnout she was experiencing. He was right. The academic life gave her time to reflect on how the justice system fails to address the many needs of those disenfranchised through poverty, and illness, and abuse. In 2000, Linda worked for six months at Murdoch’s community legal centre (SCALES) where she discovered that the Australian poor face substantially similar disadvantages as their American counterparts.
In 2006 she will be teaching Australian Legal System, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Negotiation, and Social and Welfare Law. She hopes that she will have time to resurrect her interest in writing and research by publishing her thesis on addressing spiritual issues within the context of transformative mediation, and beginning research on whether emotional abuse can be addressed through the restraining order process. She is also looking forward into developing an intensive unit on negotiation-one which will enable old and young alike to embrace conflict productively and with grace. Linda believes it is time that the legal profession reclaims it professional status and stops using corporate values to guide it.
Hah! Should have taken more of her classes!
And, the award for the most over-achieving academic must surely go to Dr Fernand De Varennes:
Associate Professor Dr Fernand De Varennes
Associate Professor
LL.B., LL.M., Dr.Jur.
Dr de Varennes is a graduate of the Ecole de droit, Universite de Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada (LL.B., 1988) the London School of Economics and Political Science (LL.M., 1992), and the Universiteit Maastricht (Dr.Jur., 1995).
Dr de Varennes was formerly Associate Professor of Law in the Ecole de droit, Universite de Moncton and he has taught in the areas of personal property securities law, practice of law, criminal law, tort law and legal writing. He has published books, articles or other publications in English and French in language rights, indigenous peoples and minority rights, international law and ethnic conflicts.
Dr de Varennes is also a former Director at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Human Rights and the Prevention of Ethnic Conflict and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law. He is recognised as one of the world's leading legal experts on language rights and has written two seminal works on this topic: Language, Minorities and Human Rights (1996) and A Guide to the Rights of Minorities and Language (2001).
He has extensive international recognition for his research work on international law, human rights, minorities and ethnic conflicts and has worked with numerous international organisations such as the United Nations’ Working Group on the Rights of Minorities, UNESCO and the OSCE’s High Commissioner on National Minorities on these issues.
He is Senior (Non-Resident) Research Associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany, on the advisory board of numerous research centres and journals around the world and has taught in numerous institutions around the world, including at Seikei University in Tokyo; the South Asian Human Rights and Peace Studies Orientation Course in Kathmandu, Nepal; Sam Ratulangi University in Manado, Indonesia; the European Academy in Bolzano, Italy, the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain, the University of Pécs in Hungary, the Cornell University - Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne Summer School in Paris, France, the European Politics Programme at the University of Pécs, Hungary, Turku Law School and Åbo Akademi Institute for Human Rights in Finland. He has held the prestigious Tip O’Neill Peace Fellowship at INCORE (Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity) in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Dr de Varennes is also a 2004 Nominee for the Linguapax Award (Barcelona, Spain). The prizes are awarded to linguists, researchers, professors and members of the civil society in acknowledgement of their outstanding work in the field of linguistic diversity and/or multilingual education. He has published five books and over fifty scientific articles and reports.
His most recent publications include a two-volume series on human rights documents on Asia and a UNESCO report on the rights of migrants. He is currently working a three-volume book series on ethnic and internal conflicts worldwide and a strategy paper for UNESCO on the rights of migrants. His research has appeared in seventeen languages (Albanian, English, Farsi, French, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Japanese, Latvian, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish).
I was also amused to read that the Law School is "working to significantly expand the undergraduate unit offerings, with the goal to enhancing the Murdoch law degree's value within an increasingly competitive graduate employment market". Some of these new initiatives and courses include: Graduate Certificate in Australian Migration Law and Pratice ("an accredited course leading to registration as a Migration Agent") and Professional Training in Arbitration Law and Practice Program ("which makes participants eligible for admission as an Arbitrator, Chartered Institute of Arbitrators").
After reading the letter from the Dean, I decided to have a read of his profile on the Law School website, which, although being very distinguished, wasn't overly exciting. Then I decided to have a browse of the other biographies and found that of Linda Jurevic, a lecturer I had in first year:
Ms Linda Jurevic
Lecturer
B.Commerce, LL.M. , JD. (Juris Doctor)
A long, long time ago Linda graduated with a degree in Commerce and worked in retail. She wore designer clothes and dated a stockbroker. After a few minutes of the Regan Administration, she became incensed and completed her JD (Juris Doctor) from Northwestern School of Law ( Lewis & Clark College) in Portland, Oregon. Upon graduation she worked for a private law firm where she practiced in family law and construction lien law before following her heart and entering the community legal sector. She worked for several years in a rural community legal centre where she practiced in the areas of domestic violence, landlord/tenant law, and public benefits law. She is admitted to the Oregon State Bar, as well as the Federal District and Court of Appeals Courts.
After arriving in Perth in early 1992, she was lured into the academia by Professor Ralph Simmonds who convinced her it would be a perfect panacea for the burnout she was experiencing. He was right. The academic life gave her time to reflect on how the justice system fails to address the many needs of those disenfranchised through poverty, and illness, and abuse. In 2000, Linda worked for six months at Murdoch’s community legal centre (SCALES) where she discovered that the Australian poor face substantially similar disadvantages as their American counterparts.
In 2006 she will be teaching Australian Legal System, Alternative Dispute Resolution, Negotiation, and Social and Welfare Law. She hopes that she will have time to resurrect her interest in writing and research by publishing her thesis on addressing spiritual issues within the context of transformative mediation, and beginning research on whether emotional abuse can be addressed through the restraining order process. She is also looking forward into developing an intensive unit on negotiation-one which will enable old and young alike to embrace conflict productively and with grace. Linda believes it is time that the legal profession reclaims it professional status and stops using corporate values to guide it.
Hah! Should have taken more of her classes!
And, the award for the most over-achieving academic must surely go to Dr Fernand De Varennes:
Associate Professor Dr Fernand De Varennes
Associate Professor
LL.B., LL.M., Dr.Jur.
Dr de Varennes is a graduate of the Ecole de droit, Universite de Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada (LL.B., 1988) the London School of Economics and Political Science (LL.M., 1992), and the Universiteit Maastricht (Dr.Jur., 1995).
Dr de Varennes was formerly Associate Professor of Law in the Ecole de droit, Universite de Moncton and he has taught in the areas of personal property securities law, practice of law, criminal law, tort law and legal writing. He has published books, articles or other publications in English and French in language rights, indigenous peoples and minority rights, international law and ethnic conflicts.
Dr de Varennes is also a former Director at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Human Rights and the Prevention of Ethnic Conflict and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law. He is recognised as one of the world's leading legal experts on language rights and has written two seminal works on this topic: Language, Minorities and Human Rights (1996) and A Guide to the Rights of Minorities and Language (2001).
He has extensive international recognition for his research work on international law, human rights, minorities and ethnic conflicts and has worked with numerous international organisations such as the United Nations’ Working Group on the Rights of Minorities, UNESCO and the OSCE’s High Commissioner on National Minorities on these issues.
He is Senior (Non-Resident) Research Associate at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg, Germany, on the advisory board of numerous research centres and journals around the world and has taught in numerous institutions around the world, including at Seikei University in Tokyo; the South Asian Human Rights and Peace Studies Orientation Course in Kathmandu, Nepal; Sam Ratulangi University in Manado, Indonesia; the European Academy in Bolzano, Italy, the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain, the University of Pécs in Hungary, the Cornell University - Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne Summer School in Paris, France, the European Politics Programme at the University of Pécs, Hungary, Turku Law School and Åbo Akademi Institute for Human Rights in Finland. He has held the prestigious Tip O’Neill Peace Fellowship at INCORE (Initiative on Conflict Resolution and Ethnicity) in Derry, Northern Ireland.
Dr de Varennes is also a 2004 Nominee for the Linguapax Award (Barcelona, Spain). The prizes are awarded to linguists, researchers, professors and members of the civil society in acknowledgement of their outstanding work in the field of linguistic diversity and/or multilingual education. He has published five books and over fifty scientific articles and reports.
His most recent publications include a two-volume series on human rights documents on Asia and a UNESCO report on the rights of migrants. He is currently working a three-volume book series on ethnic and internal conflicts worldwide and a strategy paper for UNESCO on the rights of migrants. His research has appeared in seventeen languages (Albanian, English, Farsi, French, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Japanese, Latvian, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish).