User:Rogato1234/Fitzroy Legal Service draft

Fitzroy Legal Service (FLS) is a community legal centre based in Fitzroy, a suburb of Melbourne. Operating since 1972, it was the first non-Aboriginal community legal centre in Australia.

History
FLS opened on 18 December 1972, operating from underneath the Fitzroy Town Hall. Fitzroy was chosen as its location as at the time the suburb had a low socio-economic population which could not readily access legal assistance. In its early years funding from the Service came from the Fitzroy and Collingwood City Councils, and some donations from the public; it also began to receive Federal Government funding in 1974.

FLS was initially staffed entirely by volunteers, many of whom were from working-class backgrounds and had radical politics which considered the legal profession to be complicit in oppression of the poor. In 1973 volunteers for the Service successfully lobbied the Victorian Bar Council to allow barristers to take instructions directly from clients, without an instructing solicitor, when providing free legal assistance. FLS's first paid lawyer, Danny Spijer, was hired in February 1974. He was replaced in April 1975 by Julian Gardner, who was the Service's first full-time employee. FLS hired its first casework lawyer in 1976, a move that was controversial at the time with other community legal centres.

Law Handbook
The first edition of the book, at the time the Legal Resource Book was published in April 1977 as a collaboration with LaTrobe Univeristy's Legal Studies Department. It became a bestseller, with the original print run selling out prior to its launch. It was rebranded as the Law Handbook in 1987.