A new home for Law

22 September 2006

The Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, the Hon. Murray Gleeson AC, last night opened the University’s new Law building.

The purpose-built facility has been a dream of the Faculty’s for three decades. Located at the western end of the Kensington campus, it provides state-of-the-art teaching facilities and is specifically designed to promote interaction between staff and students.

In opening the building, Chief Justice Gleeson praised the Law School’s outstanding reputation and described the new facilities as setting “a completely new standard for legal accommodation for law teachers and students in NSW”.

The University’s Chancellor, David Gonski, was among the first wave of UNSW law students, graduating in 1977. “It was my good fortune to be taught at the Law School,” he said. “The new building is tangible evidence of the maturity and standing which the Law Faculty has achieved since its humble origins in 1971. It now has the home it so richly deserves.”

The new building brings the Faculty together for the first time. The School of Law, the Australian School of Taxation (Atax), the Faculty’s research and social justice centres, the Freehills Law Library, the Centre for Continuing Legal Education and the Kingsford Legal Centre are now all under the one roof.

Professor David Dixon, Law’s Senior Associate Dean said: “The building provides so much more then just a new physical space. It’s an opportunity for us to initiate new projects and to respond to the demands of a new generation of students, drawing the professions, business, public institutions and the community into our research and teaching programs.”

For more information on the new law building go to http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/newBuilding/index.asp