Community Law Centres (CLCs) produce a broad range of publications about the law. These resources can be very short - a factsheet or a bookmark - or they can be much longer comprehensive legal guides. 

Our publications are all written in plain English. They aim to make the law easier for you to understand, not more complicated!

You can search our Community Law Library for all of our publications, and download them for free.

You can also buy hard copies of many of these resources from the Community Law Centres that publish them.

Legal Reference Manual

The Wellington Community Law Centre publishes the very popular Legal Reference Manual: A Practical Guide to New Zealand Law. You can browse the contents of the Legal Reference Manual here, or find your answer straight away by searching the Community Law Library. 

All Community Law Centres run frequent legal education workshops on many areas of the law. 

We run workshops for community organisations, community workers and members of the general public. We can tailor the training to suit your specific needs. We can also organise outside speakers to run training on specialist areas of the law.

Community Law Centres are experienced at running workshops with diverse groups of people who have different levels of education and experience. We run workshops with young people (inside and outside schools), Māori, Pasifika peoples, older people, people with disabilities, immigrants and refugees, beneficiaries and lawyers wanting specific training.

Some Community Law Centres deliver legal education for free. Some centres charge a small fee. Contact your local Community Law Centre for more information or if you would like to organise some legal education in your area.

You can also search our Community Law Library for teaching resources and download these for free. We encourage you to contact your local centre for help in delivering these legal education modules - Community Law Centre education workers are experienced in making the law "make sense". You can use these teaching resources in your own community group or classroom. 

Community Law Centres are a strong voice for justice. We want to develop a fairer legal system that better responds to your needs. Where the law needs to change to redress past injustice, or to better suit the needs or aspirations of our community, Community Law Centres are involved in trying to create that change.

We aim to be responsive (for example, responding to proposed legislation), and also to be proactive (for example, by identifying legal needs and problems and pushing for change).

We conduct our own law reform work, we engage in joint action with our communities and we support community groups and individuals to conduct their own law reform activities, such as:

• Running test cases
• Holding public meetings and doing surveys to find out what the community thinks and wants
• Lobbying public and private organisations to bring about change
• Raising public awareness about problems with the law
• Writing submissions to change particular laws
• Presenting submissions before a Select Committee in Parliament

You can search our Community Law Library to find out what law reform activity Community Law Centres are currently involved with.

If you feel passionate about a particular issue or some proposed legislation you can ask your local Community Law Centre if they can help you write your own submission, or you can ask to contribute to the work the centre itself is doing on that topic. If your local Community Law Centre is not doing work on that particular issue, it’s almost certain another Community Law Centre will be.

If your community organisation would like make a submission with a national focus, in partnership with Community Law Centres, you can contact Community Law Centres o Aotearoa.