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Lawyers from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga traveled to Australia for a two-week intensive workshop to determine how best to present their cases in their countries.
They are part of a program running for the first time this year, run by a group of volunteer senior lawyers from the Victorian Bar.
Some have been involved in advocacy training in the Pacific for over thirty years, regularly running workshops across the region as part of an international advocacy training programme.
Victorian lawyer Maya Rosner says this new program, called Train the Trainer, is testing a different method of building the capacity of Pacific lawyers to train other lawyers, so they can become mentors and trainers for Pacific law students.
“Until now, advocacy training has come from outside the Queensland Bar, the Victorian Bar. Other Bars come in and teach advocacy to law students and practitioners. What they don’t do, it’s that they don’t arm the practitioners.”
Participant Stacey Levakia-Waley is deputy director of the Pacific Center for Judicial Excellence.
She says this new program offers a more sustainable and ongoing solution.
“We have had a very long relationship with the Victorian Bar. Twenty years is a very long time for them to give up their time and come every year. So what we are aiming to get out of this particular program is It’s about having us equipped with the skills that they have so that we can work together because it’s really not sustainable to have them coming every year. And if we can supplement that and kind of ease the burden. , so to speak, it offers a. great burden on their shoulders, but we also get to teach our own compatriots. In addition, we also create a pool of resources in the Pacific.
Angelyn Paranda is Acting Director of the PNG Institute of Legal Education.
She says the program is an important step forward for legal education in the region.
“In Papua New Guinea we know our laws, we know what our judges think, what is expected of us. We know the practice in our own jurisdiction and that together I think will be very beneficial to everyone in the administration of justice in our own jurisdiction.”
We hope this pool of local legal experts continues to grow.
“I think the challenge is for us to go back and make this work, and hopefully it can turn into advanced training and something that can continue into the future.”
Participants like Anthony Roden Paru say the close mentoring they receive fills an important training gap in the Pacific.
“Many of us who come out of graduate school complete a law program and then do our practical legal training. Once that’s done, it’s almost the end and we don’t have any other opportunities to improve ourselves. So it’s a really huge challenge.
