The College of Law held its official opening with over 150 members of the legal profession gathering to celebrate the College’s longstanding service to the legal industry. The new headquarters in Sydney signifies an emphatic and on-going commitment to serving the legal profession and community.
The relocation of the College’s headquarters to 570 George Street, after 48 years in St Leonards, marks a new era for the institution. An organisation that has overseen more than 100,000 lawyers achieve their admission to practice and one that has delivered more than one million hours of continuing education programs.
“The College was founded upon the primary goal of democratising legal education in Australia and supporting the legal profession through education and training,” Neville Carter explains. “We are the largest legal education provider in Australia today with around 70% of all law graduates completing their PLT with the College and we are the second largest provider of legal postgraduate programs.”
Located in the 23-storey, 4-star NABERS rated tower at 570 George Street, the College is home to 5,400sqm of education and workspace across four levels, including an outdoor entertaining terrace. Overlooking Town Hall and St. Andrew’s Cathedral, the new HQ houses more than 85 teaching spaces, meeting rooms and collaboration areas. Working with WMK Architects on the design, the vision was to create a modern community hub fulfilling the College’s role as an incubator and accelerator of learning.
“Rather than wait to 2025, we conceptualised what the future workplace needed to be. A place housing hybrid workplaces and highly flexible spaces that embraced the agility of contemporary working life,” Neville says. “A facility that bridges the gap between digital learning platforms and human connection. The College is not just an online service, nor a set of teaching rooms and whiteboards, we are an international headquarters where the physical and virtual meet, where our community comes together to learn.”
Brendan Kerin, a Marrawarra and Barkindji elder representing the Metro Local Aboriginal Land Council on Gadigal land, performed the Welcome to Country and the official commemorative plaque was unveiled by College of Law Chair Joseph Catanzariti AM, CEO Neville Carter and Executive Director Queensland, Ann-Maree David. The new College premises reflects the institution’s role as an international education service provider, Joseph Catanzariti AM explains.
“The College grew into a vacant education space and has evolved as an advisor to the legal profession across Australia, New Zealand, Asia and other common law countries including England and Wales. Looking to the future, legal practitioners are working cross borders, the College has a role to play in standardising and coordinating these cross-border interactions.
“We have been living with extreme levels of ambiguity and it is the College’s responsibility to lead within these times. To work out new pathways of engaging with the curriculum, skillsets and knowledge in a format that suits people’s lives today.”
A vital meeting place for students, academics and the entire legal profession, the new headquarters has been designed to bring students, teaching staff and practitioners together to collaborate by removing formalised barriers and encouraging interactions. In honour of this intention Aboriginal artist Debra Beale, a proud Gamilaraay/Wonnarua and Yorta Yorta/Palawa woman, was commissioned to provide large-scale mural artworks throughout the College emphasising themes of connection and knowledge sharing.
Longstanding CEO Neville Carter says, “the success of the College is in the minds that pass through these doors,” and those minds have gone on to work in pivotal roles across the legal, judicial, government and corporate sectors.
