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Subpoena

Serving the University with a Subpoena

When issuing a subpoena or similar order for production to the University, please follow the below procedures:

Address for service

Please send subpoena or similar orders to the following contact.  There is a risk of substantial delay if subpoena are addressed otherwise.

The Proper Officer
Legal Services Unit
Building 36, Level 4
University of Wollongong
Northfields Avenue
Wollongong NSW 2522

Compliance time or return date

The University does not hold documents centrally.  To best ensure your Subpoena is complied with, please allow a minimum of 14 days to allow the University to contact each relevant area of the University and seek documents that fall within the scope of the subpoena.

If the University is unable to produce the documents in time, Legal Services may contact you and seek an extension.

Description of documents

A clear description of the documents you are seeking can save considerable time in locating those documents within the University.

Details that help the University locate relevant documents include:

• if a person is an employee, what their employee number is;

• if a person is a student, what their student number is;

• the person’s date of birth;

• the time period relevant to the documents;

• any specific areas from which the document is sought.

The University regularly receives subpoena seeking information about students, such as “all transcripts, results, timetables, attendance sheets and records relating to John Doe”.

This subpoena is seeking information from a broad range of University departments, including the Academic Registrars Division, the relevant faculty, student services (counselling and disability services), the learning centre, accommodation services, and may involve seeking records from individual subject coordinators and tutors regarding timetables and attendance sheets, or if a post graduate student, the Higher Degree Research Office.

If you do not intend the subpoena to be that broad, please limit it to the records that you actually want, such as academic transcripts and documents held by the Academic Registrar’s Division and relevant faculty regarding the student’s academic progress.

Conduct money

The University expects to receive conduct money with any subpoena.  Conduct money is to offset the administrative costs involved in searching, locating, reviewing, copying and delivering documents in compliance with that subpoena.

The University expects that the minimum amount of conduct money provided with a subpoena will be $30.00, by way of cheque made out to The University of Wollongong.

This minimum amount presumes that the search will not take any longer than 2 hours, and the documents to be reviewed, copied and delivered will not be more than 100 pages.  If the time involved and records located go beyond these presumptions, the University may contact you to discuss payment of additional costs.

Records held

The University is subject to the State Records Act, and destroys documents based on the requirements of that Act.  As such, depending on the document sought, it is possible that the University may have destroyed records pursuant to its record keeping obligations.