Reform

Entering law in the early 1960s, author Terry Purcell quickly recognised the limitations of the existing legal services programs and wanted to help find better ways these services could be accessed and delivered.

 

From humble beginnings as a child in Sydney's inner west, winning a Churchill Fellowship gave Purcell the unique and timely opportunity to learn how social and legal reforms were being implemented overseas. Purcell met and spoke with many passionate lawyers and some of the great reformers of the day whilst travelling through an America rocked by the Watergate scandal, including visiting a legal aid program on the Navajo reservation, seeing firsthand the poverty of Southside Chicago and then meeting with committed lawyers in Canada and the UK’s highly developed welfare state.

 

Back in Australia as Director of the Law Foundation of NSW from 1973 to 1995, Purcell encouraged and funded many reform initiatives including the digitisation of legal data, social science research of the legal profession and encouraging community access to legal information by publishing ‘Australia’s Constitution - Time for Change’, the ‘Pocket Guide to the Law’ and ‘The Law Handbook’. The Law Foundation also supported The NSW College of Law, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, legal studies in schools, Continuing Legal Education, and Community Justice Centres, and helped modernise the NSW Court System.

 

As a witness and participant in Australia’s golden age of social and legal reform from 1965 to 1995, Purcell weathered the rise and fall of governments. From the slow demise of the Menzies era to the promise of Gough Whitlam, acknowledging key reforms of Askin and Wran ministers, through the Fraser years onto the ambitious Hawke-Keating period – Purcell remained steadfast in his belief in improving access to the law for all.