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Australia's legal profession is currently undergoing a long-awaited reckoning as professional representative bodies, law firms and courts craft solutions to the embedded culture of sexual harassment. But what of the other exclusionary and inequitable practices in legal workplaces? This article considers a project to minimise the myriad risks for legal interns in South Australia. By educating both law students and placement hosts about interns' rights, and how lawyers from a range of backgrounds can be supported to succeed, we hope to facilitate equitable and successful participation in legal work experience for a new generation of diverse and inclusive practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacture, storage and disposal of plastics can have significant negative impacts on communities living near plastics facilities, which we have termed 'plastics communities'. This article discusses how the general environmental duty, under Victoria's reformed Environment Protection Act 2017, can be utilised by plastics communities. This duty has the potential to reduce the harm caused by plastics industries and contribute towards broader environmental justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapidly evolving legal landscape is changing the nature of law and increasing the need for lawyers to acquire new skills and capabilities suited to the future of legal work. Australia's first dedicated design thinking unit in undergraduate law – Queensland University of Technology's (QUTs) Law and Design Thinking – teaches students to respond to legal challenges in innovative and creative ways. Three years on, this unit provides a valuable case study that establishes design thinking as an essential addition to traditional legal curricula and one that will ensure graduates are equipped for the future of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a qualitative study aimed at understanding how LGBTQI+ law students and recent graduates perceive and experience the legal profession. While we found that several participants self-censor in interactions with the profession, others considered their LGBTQI+ identity as advantageous, enabling them to benefit from 'diversity hiring'. Despite this, many participants regarded the legal profession as 'conservative' and influenced by the 'old guard', which remains unaccepting of LGBTQI+ identities. Participants also considered the profession to be more accepting of some LGBTQI+ identities than others. We conclude by suggesting strategies to improve perceptions and experiences of the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests a cohesive articulation of the shared basis upon which the interdisciplinary research field of law and linguistics is developing, organising the research around the familiar three branches of the state: legislature, executive and judiciary, thus providing a map oriented towards non-linguists and legal practitioners. It also invites interdisciplinary scholars to critically reflect on future directions for this research area. This effort to redress the lack of recognition within the law of relevant linguistic research is part of our pursuit of an alternative and more collaborative approach to legal scholarship and law reform addressing issues of communicative barriers and linguistic injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]