Joel Townsend is Director of Monash Law Clinics, a community legal centre associated with the Faculty of Law at Monash University. Monash Law Clinics delivers assistance to members of the community across a wide range of areas of law, while providing experiential education opportunities to law students. Joel supervises students on placement, as well as overseeing the work of the Monash Law Clinics.

Prior to coming to Monash, Joel worked for nearly 15 years at Victoria Legal Aid, largely in the Civil Justice Program. He worked as a legal practitioner and a manager at VLA. He supervised teams working in areas including social security, NDIS appeals, tenancy, infringements, mental health law, and migration. He worked, either as the lawyer with the daily conduct of the matter, or in an oversight role as manager, on a wide range of significant pieces of public interest litigation, such as:

• Migration judicial review proceedings including Shahi v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (2011) 246 CLR 163; Tahiri v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (2013) 249 CLR 332; Cotterill v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2016) 240 FCR 29; and Plaintiff M96A/2016 v Commonwealth (2017) 261 CLR 582.
• Proceedings in respect of the Working with Children Check regime, including numerous VCAT proceedings, and matters in the Supreme Court of Victoria and the Court of Appeal, including PQR v Secretary to the Department of Justice and Regulation [2017] 514; Secretary to the Department of Justice and Regulation v LLF [2018] VSCA 155; Secretary to the Department of Justice and Regulation v OUX [2018] VSCA 178; and GHJ v Secretary to the Department of Justice and Community Safety [2019] VSC 89.
• Residential tenancies proceedings in VCAT and in the Supreme Court, such as Jafarpourasr v Tancevski [2018] VSC 497.
• Social security matters, including Masterton and Amato, the two key test cases which challenged the lawfulness of robodebt.
• NDIS matters, at the NDIA, in the AAT, and in the Federal Court in McGarrigle v National Disability Insurance Agency (2017) 252 FCR 121.

Joel has had extensive involvement in public advocacy on a range of policy and law reform issues, including:

• Preparation of submissions to the Victorian Government's Fairer Safer Housing review, which resulted in significant changes to Victoria's tenancy laws, in 2018.
• Involvement in consultations in relation to changes to tenancy laws in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Extensive engagement with the Fines Reform Advisory Board, which recommended a number of significant changes to the Fines Reform Act 2014 (Vic), several of which have been implemented.
• A significant role in public discussion as to the lawfulness and fairness of the robodebt scheme, including appearances before the Senate Community Affairs References Committee.

As the above indicates, Joel's legal work has been focussed on public and administrative law. He is an Accredited Specialist in Administrative Law, and is co-Chair of the Law Institute of Victoria's Administrative Law Advisory Committee, as part of the Accredited Specialisation scheme. He is undertaking a PhD at Monash, focussing on merits review in Australian public law.

Joel has a long history of contributing to the work of community legal sector organisations. He volunteered with the Mental Health Legal Centre, and has been Board member and Chair at Flemington Kensington Community Legal Centre, and a Board member at Inner Melbourne Community Legal.