About Us

Welfare Rights and Legal Centre is an independent not-for-profit, non-government community legal centre dedicated to providing free legal advice and representation to individuals and community groups on; tenancy, public housing, social security and disability discrimination law.

Welfare Rights and Legal Centre has been helping people in the ACT and region since 1983.  We regularly assist more than 4,500 people annually with information, advice, assistance, and representation on matters relating to tenancy, public housing, social security, and disability discrimination law. 

Our Night Time Legal Advice Service (NTLAS) provides one-off legal advice and referral on all areas of law.  For more information about NTLAS click here.

The Centre provides Clinical Legal Education for undergraduate Law students in partnership with the Australian National University.

Welfare Rights and Legal Centre engages proactively with all levels of government to address policy and law reform issues of concern to our client groups. We also work closely with not-for-profit and non-government organisations by participating in community forums, committees and networks to disseminate and collect information that assists the effective delivery of our services to our local communities.

We are dedicated to improving the community’s access to information and education about the law.  We develop and deliver resources to build our community’s capacity through increasing knowledge about the law and legal rights.  The centre has developed a series of fact sheets on Public Housing, the Residential Tenancies Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. 

We can also provide community legal education workshops to community organisations and interest groups, either by request or see our calendar or what's on page for upcoming public events and Community Legal Education training available.