The Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program (ICCLAP) was designed as a response to the Review of higher education access and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people (Behrendt review; Department of Education and Training 2012), which recommends (Recommendation 32) that universities develop Indigenous cultural competency (ICC) in staff and students, as one measure to promote Indigenous student success. Universities Australia’s (2011a) Guiding principles for developing indigenous cultural competency in Australian universities recommends (Recommendations 1, 2 and 4) that Indigenous knowledges and perspectives be embedded in all university curricula and that ICC be included as a graduate attribute, with the need for staff training to achieve this goal. The project’s aim was to promote the inclusion of ICC in legal education with a view to improving Indigenous student outcomes, and to build ICC in all students. An important step towards this aim was to build the capacity of legal academics to engage with Indigenous knowledges and ICC in their work. The project was led by the University of New England, together with partner institutions The Australian National University, Queensland University of Technology, RMIT University and the University of Technology, Sydney. The project’s final report was completed in April 2018.

The Indigenous Cultural Competency for Legal Academics Program was initiated as a response to the Behrendt Review to support the embedding of Indigenous cultural competency (ICC) in legal education with a view to building ICC in all students, and to improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student outcomes in law. Key activities of the project included: a consultation workshop with key stakeholders to identify knowledge gaps, professional development needs and the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to develop ICC; the Indigenous Cultural Competency in Law: Deliberating Future Directions Workshop to develop guiding principles and strategies for incorporating ICC in legal education; a survey of law schools to ascertain the current level of ICC in legal education; and a student survey to gain insights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ experiences of legal education. This dataset includes transcripts from the ICCLAP Consultation Workshop, and data from the Future Directions Workshop, law school survey and student survey. The project was funded by the Australian Government of Education and Training (formerly Office for Learning and Teaching – Grant ID14-3906). The Final Report of the project was published in April 2019. Projects reports are available at www.icclap.edu.au