ALLA (WA) News Blog

Over the past few weeks, ALLA (WA) has received some queries relating to access at the Law Library at the David Malcolm Justice Centre. It has come to the committees attention via these queries that some people had thought that ALLA (WA) is the authority which decides access to the Law Library – that assumption is incorrect. Access to the Law Library is determined by the Western Australian Parliament as per the Legal Profession (Law Library) Regulations 2016 , specifically regulation 8. The committee referenced in regulation 7 is not the ALLA (WA) committee, rather it is the Library Advisory Committee.  The Library Advisory Committee is a separate body comprised of 2 Judges, a Law Society representative, a Western Australian Bar representative, a Legal Practice Board representative, and two persons nominated by the Director General of the Department of Justice. The  Legal Profession (Law Library) Regulations 2016   are best read in conjunction with the Lega...

ALLA WA today received a written response from the Chief of Staff to the Attorney General regarding the access of self represented litigants to library resources since the closure of the Library at the Supreme Court of WA. ALLA WA had written to the Attorney General in May expressing concern on this matter. The reply acknowledges that self represented litigants have been left without a valuable resource since the library's closure. Further, the Department of Justice is investigating options for enabling self represented litigants to have access to library resources. ALLA WA will be informed of the outcome of this investigation. We thank the Chief of Staff to the Attorney General for their reply.

On 1 May 2017, the Australian law Librarians' Association (Western Australian Divison) wrote to the Attorney-General to highlight the issue of self-represented litigants' access to legal information following the closure of the Law Library at the Supreme Court of Western Australia. ALLA (WA) members and the media were provided with a copy of the memo. Recent contact with the Department of the Attorney General has confirmed that as of 16 May 2017 the matter has been assigned to a research team within the Department. There is no indication of a date for further actions.