Legal Advice and Agreements

Legal Advice

All requests for legal advice must be submitted to the Legal Office using the Legal Assistance Form unless the advice is required urgently (i.e. within 2 days). Legal advice may only be requested by or with the prior approval of a senior officer of the University (that is, Head of Work Unit, Executive, Vice-Chancellor). If you are aware of a University issue requiring urgent advice, please telephone the Legal Office on (02) 6620 3465 or email legal@scu.edu.au.

Agreements

Written contracts/agreements are a valuable tool to document arrangements between the University and third parties. Amongst other things, they are used to:

• Allocate clear and enforceable responsibilities between the parties;
• Establish Key Performance Indicators or service levels, that can be used to manage poor performance by a contractual party; and
• Manage risk to the University.

The Contract Procedures contain certain mandatory steps for staff arranging University contracts and should be read in conjunction with the University's Contract Management Framework. The Contract Procedures apply in addition to any other procedural or approval processes that may be relevant to a particular arrangement (e.g. Outside Work Policy and/or Commercial Activities Procedures).

The Legal Office categorises the agreements/contracts that the University enters into two main types:

• Standard Agreements. The Legal Office provides a suite of pre-approved Standard Agreements to support authorised staff in preparing consistent, low-risk contracts for common activities.  The contract terms in these templates are locked and must not be altered. Legal review is not required if the agreement is completed without amendment.; and
• Non-Standard Agreements. These are any agreements other than Standard Agreements. All Non-Standard Agreements require legal review prior to execution by the University. Please see the Review of Non Standard Agreements page for more information.

The Legal Office maintains a central register of all fully executed University agreements. This is considered best practice for universities and supports effective record-keeping, compliance and risk management.

In addition to this central register the Legal Office also maintains specific registers required under legislation such as the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009).

For more information about submitting agreements to the Legal Office and the ongoing support provided with contract management, please refer to the Executed Agreements page.