A Look Inside ANUSA’s Free Legal Service

University students deal with many complex legal issues, including tenancy problems, the need for visa advice, and potential discrimination. For most students, advice from lawyers at a law firm is financially and logistically out of reach. This is where ANUSA’s legal service comes in, a free legal service for all undergraduate and post-graduate, and domestic and international ANU students. The service is funded by ANUSA, the student union here at ANU, and is a community legal centre with some of the lawyers even being ANU law school graduates. 

Students are able to have online or in-person meetings at absolutely no cost to themselves. The 2025 ANUSA Legal Service and In-House Legal report noted that 85.6% of respondents to one of the service’s surveys rated the legal service a 10/10. A free and confidential legal service for university students of such quality is rare in Australia. 

I spoke with the senior lawyer at the service, Kathryn Lee, to delve behind the scenes to see what makes the service so special. 

I spoke with an undergraduate student who had used the service to gain insight into the student side of the process. 

The student needed help with breaking a lease with one of the residential colleges here at ANU when they were coming back for their second year at university. The initial advice given to them from the hall’s reception turned out to be incorrect, and when communicating with the Residential Hall Department, they found themself unable to get a clear answer on whether they could break their lease or not. Their options at the time were either to be forced to move back onto campus, which they said they “could not afford to do”, or to unenroll from university, and they “would not have been able to continue [their] education at ANU”. Neither option was viable for them. 

The student sought legal advice from the service, and their issue with university accommodation was resolved.

As is supported by the service’s glowing reviews and metrics, this student said they found the legal advice useful and that they would recommend it to other students. 

The majority of students who use the service are satisfied with it and the legal advice they received. The service had its best year in 2025 with many accomplishments, such as reducing wait times for an appointment from 6 days in 2024 to a median of 1-2 days.

With many of the people using the service belonging to ‘one or more vulnerable groups’, including the LGBTQIA+ community or being financially disadvantaged, the service is a lifeline for some of ANU’s most vulnerable students. 

The 2025 report stated that due to resource constraints, they will have to drop one full-time lawyer this year and therefore be ‘unlikely to reach the same metrics’ from last year in 2026. However, it was noted that they have successfully recruited another lawyer recently to fill in for reduced capacity as a leave cover.

In a university climate where students are already wary about planned and potential cuts to their courses and support services, hearing about such a reduction initially seems worrying. However, in my interview with Kathryn Lee, she explained how this will have minimal effects on students and that the great work of the service will continue. 

I spoke with Kathryn over Zoom about her tenure at the service, the impacts of the service losing one lawyer, and the inner workings of the service. 

Working at the service since 2021, Kathryn described many developments of the service, which initially began in 1971 as a referral service created by the ANU law students and evolved into a community legal centre. Notable changes of the service include starting to take on post-graduate students in 2021 and transitioning to an online booking system. Kathryn describes how the change to an online booking system “really changed the game in accessibility for the legal service” and increased student demand for the service threefold. 

Kathryn also explained the context behind the 2025 report, detailing how the service will lose a lawyer in 2026. While at first glance, such a decrease seemed worrying, Kathryn clarified that in 2025, the service was granted external short-term funding, which allowed for another full-time lawyer to join the service for a short period of time. Kathryn described how the impact on students for the service having one less lawyer will be minimal, mostly affecting wait times for appointments. Kathryn also noted that ANUSA has recently recruited another lawyer to assist with resourcing, bringing the total to 4 lawyers, and the overall resourcing has changed from 3.6 FTE (Full-time equivalent) in 2025 to 2.8 FTE this year. 

Talking about the difference in wait times, Kathryn detailed that in 2025, with one more lawyer, there was generally next-day availability for appointments, while currently, availability for appointments is around one week. One week's availability for appointments is “still exceptional for a community legal service”, Kathryn noted. Kathryn affirmed that even with reduced resourcing this year, the service is “still able to see and support hundreds of students”, with the service overall having worked on 230 separate matters in Quarter 1 2026. Students continue rating the service highly, reporting very positive feedback. 

Kathryn emphasised that even with reduced resourcing, the service is “still open” and “still very much seeing students every day and giving them quality advice”.  The service is open throughout teaching breaks, only closing on public holidays and the university Christmas shutdown period. 

Students do not necessarily have to wait for appointments to access the service’s advice. The service has weekly drop-in sessions, which began last year, called Ask Me Anything, where every Monday at 2 pm at Marie Reay, students can drop in and, Kathryn stated, “ask us any questions, legal or not”. The ANUSA Student Assistance team is also available at the Ask Me Anything sessions to answer any questions, too.

Accessibility for all students is clearly important and highly prioritised by the service. Kathryn highlighted that a key accessible creation of the service is the Legal Handbook, which is available on their website. The Handbook gives digestible and easy-to-understand explanations of different legal areas. Kathryn showed me a new function of the service’s website where you can easily change the webpage into a different language. 

The service is versatile, with all of the lawyers being generalists, which Kathryn described as meaning that they ‘can all advise on different areas of law’, a key benefit for students. Giving insight into the most common issues students face today, Kathryn explained that the main areas of the service are tenancy, visa and migration law. The service also offers occupancy law, relating to university accommodation to students, employment law, intellectual property law, discrimination law, consumer law, and traffic and parking law. The service does not advise on tax law, family law or wills and estates. 

Kathryn also described that different lawyers have their own legal specialisations based on past experience; for example, she has experience in personal injury and disability discrimination law. Another lawyer at the service, Kai Reyes, used to work in criminal law, and therefore, they can assist with students who may need personal protection orders or advice in domestic violence matters. Michael Curtotti, the Principal lawyer, has prior experience in Intellectual Property Law.

I asked about Kathryn’s day-to-day duties in the service to probe even deeper into the realities of working in the service. Kathryn described that “every day is never the same”, and that when meeting with students, she works on “finding out what the issue is, note-taking, getting their instructions, and researching the different complex legal issues”. 

The service offers more than free legal advice to seeking students. It also runs two migration workshops every semester, and sometimes visits ANU’s residential halls to present on issues such as tenancy law, discrimination, and employment law, which Kathryn described. 

I asked about the most powerful aspect of the service. Kathryn emphasised that “the service is free, it’s confidential, nothing you share with us goes on your university record at all, it is protected by something called lawyer-client privilege, which is the highest form of privilege there. We’re very committed to working for students, even with the limited resources that we have. We’ll just be a bit more creative and do the best we can for students”. 

Kathryn, who co-founded the National Student Legal Service Network in Australia, informed me that only 35% of universities have a legal service. This puts ANU students in a rare and privileged position where they can access exceptional legal advice completely for free. 

Kathryn impressed upon me the dedication, creativity and expertise the service has for students. Recently, the service won an award for the best advocacy initiative in Australia for its work helping students with ANU parking matters. Kathryn described that she noticed a trend where students were coming to her with court notices for ANU parking matters, which became criminal offences if unpaid. The service assisted students to take on ANU in court and successfully achieved meaningful change. 

Finally, I asked about a main message she would have to the readers about the service, and Kathryn summed up the service as "it's unique. It’s exceptional in Australia…we’ve won awards. We’ve got lawyers who love what we do, and we want to help.”

From speaking with Kathryn, a student who had used the service, and researching the service, it is clear that the service is immensely helpful for students and a vital part of the ANU ecosystem that supports students. Having access to quality, free and confidential legal advice from excellent lawyers is an amazing advantage for all ANU students. 

Students can book in for free legal appointments at: https://anusa.com.au/legal/appointment/