Moreland Community Legal Centre Inc

Clients' Rights

Your rights as a client of the Centre:

• If you require an interpreter this can always be arranged.
• You have the right to confidentiality and we will always respect this.
• Often volunteers who are not lawyers will ask to be present at your discussions with the lawyer. You are free to refuse to have them there.
• Before you become a client, we do a "conflict check" to make sure that the other party in your dispute is not also a client of ours. If this is the case, we will arrange for you to be seen by another Community Legal Centre.
• If we take on your case you have the right to be kept informed of the progress of your case in a timely manner.
• If you are unhappy with the advice you receive you are free to alternative opinions or advice from elsewhere (for example, from a private solicitor)
• If you are unhappy with the service you receive, please discuss it with us and perhaps we can resolve the problem. If not, you can complain in writing to the Chairperson of the Committee of Management, 17 Sydney Road, Coburg 3058. Your complaint will be investigated and you will be contacted to discuss it.
• You can also make complaints to the Legal Ombudsman, the Law Institute of Victoria or the Victorian Lawyers RPA Ltd.

Your file:

When you come to see us, even if it is only for one-off advice, we will open a file.Some information on your file we need for practical reasons (your telephone number, the language you speak). Other information (such as your country of birth) is purely for our statistics.

Before we close your file, we ensure that any original documents we have are returned to you. We keep files for 7 years before destroying them.