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CLC-ing it, from their perspective
What topics does this episode consider? | This episode explores perspectives from Haley McEwen from Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre, and Vincent Shin and Nadia Baldassi-Winderlich from West Justice Community Legal Centre in Melbourne, who are also in-school lawyers on:
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Why is this topic relevant? | CLCs are independent not-for-profit organisations that provide accessible legal services to the community across a range of issues such as consumer rights, crime, employment, family law, housing and social services, credit and debt, disability discrimination, immigration, mental health, tenancy issues, and legal issues affecting people seeking asylum and refugees. CLCs provide critical access to justice in Australia, helping people who are experiencing hardship and various disadvantages to access the justice system. Each year CLCs advise over 52,000 people across 30 different locations in New South Wales. A new area of legal practice, that has arisen as a result of a growing community need, is working in high schools to advise students on a variety of legal areas. The role of these in-school lawyers is to inform students of their rights and responsibilities in different areas of the law that are relevant to young people such as sexting, cyberbullying, employment, consumer law, immigration, criminal law issues and more. School lawyers not only have much to tell us about the substantive legal issues that affect young people, but they also can inform lawyers of all kinds how advising clients who are young people may differ from advising adult clients, and how to adapt one’s style to better advise clients who may be distrustful of the legal system, or face difficulty maintaining regular communication with their lawyer, whether because of homelessness, geographic remoteness, or a lack of internet access. |
What are the main points? |
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What are the practical takeaways? |
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Show notes | Law Council of Australia’s 2018 Final Report on the Justice Project Australian Pro-Bono Centre’s 2017 ‘Client Management & Self-Care’ guide |
David Turner:
1:00 | Hello and welcome to Hearsay, a podcast about Australian laws and lawyers for the Australian legal profession, my name is David Turner. As always, this podcast is proudly supported by Assured Legal Solutions, a boutique commercial law firm making complex simple. Community legal centres, also known as CLCs, are independent not-for-profit organisations providing accessible legal services to the community. There are generalist CLCs and specialist CLCS. Generalist CLCs provide legal advice to people living in their catchment areas on a range of issues including compensation, consumer rights, crime, employment, family law, housing and social services. Whereas specialist CLCs focus on a particular area of the law; maybe credit and debt, the environment, disability discrimination, welfare rights, immigration, mental health, tenancy issues, or legal issues affecting people seeking asylum and refugees. CLCs provide critical access to justice in Australia, helping people who are experiencing hardship and disadvantage to access the justice system. Each year CLCs advise over 52,000 people across 30 different locations in New South Wales. Joining me today on Hearsay to share her insights as a CLC lawyer is Haley McEwen, a senior solicitor at Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre based in Port Macquarie and a lecturer at the Centre for Law and Justice at Charles Sturt University. Haley thanks so much for joining me today on Hearsay. |
Haley McEwen: | Thanks David. |
DT:
| Now before we launch into the CLC world, tell me a bit about yourself. I’d love to know more about your background as a lawyer and how you came to work at Mid North Coast CLC. |
HM: 2:00 | Well I spent the first 12 years of my career in private practise actually working with a large mid-tier firm in Sydney where I started in commercial litigation, so that gave me a really good background for working in that area of the law. But more and more in that firm I was taking on pro-bono work through different programmes that existed at the time and fortunately for me the firm was growing and at the point where they wanted to formalise that programme, so I was appointed to lead that direction. So, in that role I worked closely with the legal assistance sector and for not-for-profit partners and I was heavily involved in pro-bono advice clinics. So it wasn’t a huge step when a few years later I moved into a position with Kingsford Legal Centre. |
DT: | Now tell us a bit about how CLCs are structured or how they operate internally ’cause I imagine it’s very different to that commercial law firm that you started in. |
HM: 3:00
4:00
| It is different, one of the first fundamental differences that I think of obviously is that CLCs are not-for-profit. The second difference is that there is more demand for our services than there is funding for. So while community engagement is essential to an effective service delivery in the CLC sector, instead of focusing on bringing in the work or billable targets like you might in a commercial role, there’s a need more to continually seek extra funding opportunities in order to deliver more programmes or to adapt the programmes that are already there in order to meet the unmet legal needs. TIP: Funding, from government or otherwise, is essential to the continued operation of CLCs – obviously they’re not being paid by their clients. Now most Commonwealth and state government funding for CLCs is delivered through the National Partnership Agreement on Legal Assistance Services (NPA). In 2019 it was reported that CLCs in NSW receive around $12 million per year from the Commonwealth and $14 million per year from the NSW government. In June 2020 the NPA and the Commonwealth government negotiated a new partnership set to distribute $2 billion amongst the states and territories for Commonwealth-funded legal assistance, with a specific focus on providing support to those affected by domestic violence. Of that $2 billion, CLCs are set to receive $284 million. Now that might sound like a lot of money, there’s over 30 CLCs in NSW, assisting more than 50,000 people each year and CLCs sometimes do have to resort to turning clients away due to a lack of resources. The Productivity Commission, the Australian government’s principal review and advisory body on microeconomic policy, has previously emphasised the importance of CLCs to receive appropriate funding as they are effective in saving downstream costs by reducing the escalation of legal issues; they lead to lower costs to taxpayer funded services in areas such as health, housing and social security. |
DT: | Now something about the CLC mission that I really love is the kind of systemic advocacy policy work that CLCs do as well in addition to the case work. Tell me a bit more about the systemic advocacy work that you do at Mid North Coast? |
HM: 5:00 | I think that’s a really important part of the work that CLCs do because they’re constantly evolving to adapt the needs that we see on the ground. So during the recent bushfires in New South Wales for example, we’d seen the devastation that was unfolding in our local area and our legal services coordinator simply jumped in a car that was branded with a CLC magnet label on the side and drove out into the affected communities to start asking who needs help and deliver some brochures. And I think that responsiveness is characteristic not only of how CLCs came about in the original mission, but also of the very large impacts that different CLCs have had like the environmental defender’s office work on fracking, or public interest advocacy advocacy work as well. |
DT:
6:00
7:00 | Now as I said at the top of this episode there are generalist CLCs and specialists, at Mid North Coast what’s kind of the most common legal issue that you deal with? Is there a most common one? TIP: Prior to the commencement of self-isolation necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, experts warned that it would lead to a spike in domestic violence. CLC NSW reported that general demand for services increased by 30% during the first three months of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019, with the main issues including domestic violence, sexual assault, child protection and family law issues. Specifically, domestic violence services increased 26.9% from 9 January – 9 April compared to the same period in 2019, with domestic violence protection orders made by the courts increasing by 10.1% in the same period. However, some centres, mostly regional, have reported a drop-off in demand for domestic violence services. Now at first that sounds like a good thing, right? But it might be deeply concerning – people experiencing domestic violence who are stuck at home with their abusers are unlikely to reach out for help. Consequently, the full extent of the link between COVID-19 and domestic violence can’t really be known, but community legal centres play an important role in providing legal support to those who are able to come forward. |
HM:
| I mean we obviously track statistics of what sort of matters we see and sometimes there’s a variation there. Because we’re a generalist civil law service we typically have clients with credit and debt matters. That would be at the top of the list. Consumer law issues, fines, planning ahead needs, employment law, matters arising from domestic and family violence – that’s another one that we frequently deal with day-to-day. In my role I handle a lot of victims’ support matters for vulnerable clients and we’ve seen the numbers increasing there in the last couple of years at quite a steady pace. Our centre works very closely with local family and domestic violence prevention services to assist those clients and to conduct community legal education and raise awareness of the issues too. |
DT: 8:00 | And those last two kinds of categories of work that you described domestic and family violence on the one hand and victims’ support on the other, really bring me on to what I think is the theme for this episode. In commercial practise I’m sure you had many clients who presented with a purely legal issue. They had a question about the law and they wanted it answered, perhaps formally in a letter of advice, perhaps they wanted a document prepared and that was kind of the extent to which they needed to interact with you and that was kind of the extent of the assistance they needed. But advising clients in a CLC environment, I imagine clients often present with a range of issues both legal and non-legal especially in family violence and victims’ support context. Can you tell me a bit about some of those non-legal issues that you might notice in clients? |
HM:
9:00
10:00
| Yeah sure, I mean I think it is very common that clients will come to us knowing that there is something going on but they really find it difficult to articulate what those issues are, to identify the legal issues and separate those from the non-legal ones. And also to know which ones we can help with and which ones we can’t. So for us it’s very important to provide as much holistic service delivery as we can and to say ‘look there’s no wrong door policy. You can call us, if we’re unable to assist we can put you in touch with a service who can, and for the matters that we can assist with, then we’ll work through those as methodically as we can as well.’ So it’s not uncommon too that a client might book an advice clinic and say something like ‘I have a fine which I can’t afford to pay, can you help me with this?’ And over the course of the client interview it turns out the client has not only a greater number of legal issues, but also a number of non-legal ones that sit below the surface which are often an impediment to them resolving those legal issues in the first place. So an example is where I attended an advice clinic in a more remote area with a client who had presented with a fine. It was a fine relating to her dogs who’d been declared dangerous and weren’t registered by council. It was a hefty fine issued which she had no way of repaying. So that was a fairly obvious issue from the outset. But as I spoke with her it became obvious that the fines arose more out of a neighbourhood dispute which was still unresolved. They were served at her place of residence, but it happened to be at a time when she was in hospital with poor mental health. She was a young adult, she could have been eligible for a work and development order to reduce the debts which she had, and which was also presenting a licencing issue for her because her licence could have been suspended. But it turned out that she mentioned to me that she had seen the local psychologist in town but there is now an AVO in place preventing her from attending those rooms. So obviously for this young person there was a lot more going on than simply ‘I can’t pay my fine.’ And while it’s one thing to be able to untangle those legal issues, it’s another to be able to resolve them when there’s a shortage of professional services in an area where the client might not have access to adequate transport, and where they really need to address those underlying complex problems in order to deal with the more immediate legal need as well. |
DT: 11:00
| That’s really such an intersection of challenges and one that seems to be exacerbated by the remote location in which that client was living. You know, being barred from getting the help you need because of an AVO might not be such a huge difficulty if there’s another service provider down the street, but in a remote location that might be the only option you have. And I’m sure many of our listeners who work in crime or dealing with fines would know that losing a licence can have a tremendous economic impact on someone’s ability to work, someone’s ability to handle childcare responsibilities, all those things. But again, even more so in a remote area where there’s no public transport, where distances are very long. Do you find that because you worked at Kingsford Legal Centre as well before Mid North Coast, do you find that the issues faced by clients in remote areas are very different to those faced by clients in urban areas? Or are they the same issues with different impacts? |
HM:
12:00
13:00
14:00
| I’d say it’s more the latter, that there is a lot of similarity between the issues that arise. So across CLCs in Australia I think the most common matters that the centres advise on are parenting arrangements, credit and debt, housing and family and domestic violence issues. So we know there’s some groups in every city or town that struggle with accessing legal assistance to resolve these types of issues. So groups that are more vulnerable like people with disabilities or in economic disadvantage, gender diverse populations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, and RRR Australians as well. TIP: If you’re wondering, RRR Australians refers to rural, regional and remote Australians. So I think it’s the case that the difficulties that are experienced by these other groups are exacerbated by what’s often called the ‘tyranny of distance’ in a more remote area. So geography, the lack of services, a lack of public transport and housing, they really show in the day-to-day lives of people who experience a legal issue. So another thing that’s interesting though is that in regional areas, while they might have some characteristics that distinguish them from urban counterparts they’re still individually unique. So our centre actually has two different offices, one in Port Macquarie which services areas including Taree and Kempsey, both of which have a comparatively high Aboriginal demographic. And then we have an office in Coffs Harbour which services areas including Bellingen, Nambucca and Macksville. So because Coffs Harbour is a designated resettlement hub, there’s much larger culturally and linguistically diverse populations and different migrant groups who we are reaching out to there. So our services are tailored differently to the client group depending on the issues and the area in which they are located. TIP: It’s well-known that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples disproportionately suffer from adverse legal, social and economic conditions as a result of intergenerational trauma resulting from ongoing and cumulative effects of colonisation, loss of land, language and culture, and the erosion of cultural and spiritual identity. As well as the forced removal of children, and racism and discrimination. In response, CLCs across Australia have implemented various programs to specifically provide legal assistance to First Nations peoples and build connections within their local communities. In a 2016 report published by the Commonwealth government titled ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experience of law enforcement and justice services’, the Productivity Commission identified the following factors as “significant barriers that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people face in accessing justice”:
Now this is why it is so important to keep supporting CLCs as a means by which First Nations peoples can deal with pressing legal matters that affect their social wellbeing. |
DT: 15:00 | We’ve spoken to some other guests on Hearsay about working with young people and the need to use communication tools that suit that person and I suppose that’s the same as with an adult client. That if the client prefers to meet in person or prefers to use email then you adapt your methods of communication to them. It sounds like a really great project, but it sounds like dealing with these intersectional non-legal issues in a really reactive way on an individual retainer can be quite difficult and it sounds like what they really require is that kind of proactive response that a project like that affords you that kind of preventative response almost. |
HM: | Absolutely and it was often the case for those young people that were involved over a more lengthy period of time with the programme, as one legal issue was resolved another would arise. So it needed that continuity of care in a sense to be able to keep the person engaged but also to deal with each legal issue as it would arise and prevent further ones, hopefully, from arising. |
DT: 16:00 | Now I think a real challenge, and this is one that I certainly experienced when I worked for the homeless persons legal service and for other community organisations, is that when it comes to non-legal issues sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. That we’re experts in diagnosing legal issues, but we might not be experts in diagnosing health issues, financial issues perhaps, issues of social welfare around housing. Do you have tips as someone who might have become an ad hoc expert in diagnosing some of these issues from your experience, do you have any tips in terms of diagnosing those issues? |
HM:
17:00
18:00
| I think it’s really important first of all to give the client some time and space to provide context to how their matter came about, and that will often lead to a conversation about the more peripheral issues or more sensitive issues perhaps that will become clearer with effective client communication and interviewing techniques. So, an elderly client for example might come and say they would like some advice on planning ahead instruments, such as a power of attorney or enduring guardianship, but a larger conversation around their layers of support and their family might identify the need for financial advice, or maybe there’s a need to put them in touch with support groups for carers, or there might be specialist advice required relating to a move into aged care. And if there is an issue of elder abuse then there might actually be a need for further referrals for perhaps medical assistance, or again financial support, or even police to be involved. TIP: To learn more about elder abuse and how to support a client who is presenting possible issues of elder abuse, why not listen to my episode with Adeline Schiralli from Keypoint Law? Or, if you’re interested in learning more about estate planning, check out my episode with Simon Bennett from Southern Waters Legal! So, I think identifying those kinds of non-legal issues certainly comes with experience, but a key to hearing those issues is developing a rapport with the client where they feel comfortable to disclose what’s happening. Sometimes it’s the case that I might see a client relating to a victim support application and they will come and speak about a more present issue. And after that appointment they’ll phone back and they’ll say, ‘I need to talk to you about something else’ and it might, for example, be historical child sexual abuse which they’ve been thinking about, kept that in the back of their mind, but not ready to really discuss that yet. |
DT: | It sounds like a real challenge working out the best strategy for advising your client in the context in which you work, is deciding whether to have that brief relationship or that long relationship. That some clients need advice on the spot, some clients need something now, advice now and not an ongoing engagement, and some need that psychological air and time to reveal to you what their real concerns are. How do you discern between those two? |
HM: 19:00
| I think enabling the client to lead a little at their own pace is important. So they need to be psychologically ready to act on something. Just because a client calls for some advice doesn’t mean that they’re ready to provide full instructions and to go to appointments to seek further evidence and progress the matter. So it’s also not uncommon that a client will come and we will open a file and then it can be a little bit of a hard long slog in keeping contact and engaging with that client to get them into the right support so that they can get counselling, or they can get records that might not have been there before, that might support a claim in the future. |
DT:
20:00 | I remember speaking to another guest on Hearsay about an interview that he did with a client. He was going there to fill out some forms and it just became clear to him that the person he was speaking with just wasn’t in the right mindset or state to be doing that sort of work. And he just put that task to one side and spoke to him about the health issues at that time that were facing him and left the forms for another day. TIP: The story I’m referencing here is from our episode on advising vulnerable clients, with Ali Mojtahedi, Joshua Strutt and Leona Bennett. Why not give that a listen after this episode? Have you ever had that experience where you look at a client and think ‘you know what the legal issues can wait’? |
HM:
21:00
| Yes. Sometimes it’s really helpful to have a support worker there with the client if you’re aware there’s some sensitive material that’s going to be discussed and so you can sort of look at each other and take a signal to say ‘OK let’s take some time out’ or it might just be ‘we’re going to keep this advice pretty brief today and then we’ll make another appointment to come back and talk about things in a little bit more depth.’ Another tact we take is to try to keep a face in the community with the relevant services that provide those non legal supports. TIP: This strategy is known as ‘collaborative service planning’ and is used to describe ‘the way that legal assistance providers coordinate their efforts to maximise services to clients and communities.’ However a 2018 review found that this policy has had limited success due to two main issues: 1) defining catchment areas for legal assistance providers, and 2) data sharing across legal assistance providers. For now, let’s hear more about how Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre collaborates with the other legal service providers in its area. So, where our centre for example works with our local family domestic violence prevention service, we’ll go and speak to the education groups that are running where people who have left family and domestic violence might be attending an eight-week programme. And we’ll go and say, ‘hey this is who we are, this is what we do’ in one of those sessions, talk about some of the common legal issues that might arise for them, not provide any advice but just some information. And then they’ve got a face, they can put a name to a face, and they can come when the time suits them and when they’re ready to deal with that. Because we have to recognise that often it’s those non legal issues that are really more immediate for these clients and they need to deal with them first before they can look more at the legal ones. |
DT: 22:00 | I’m glad you mentioned how you maintain those relationships with some of the other service providers in the community because I was going to ask you about how you sort of know to bring this support worker to this interview. For some of our listeners who might face similar issues with some of their clients but perhaps don’t have the same established networks that you do at your CLC, how can they seek out these sorts of service providers if they feel that their client needs them? |
HM: | Attending interagency meetings is really helpful so that you know ‘who is who’ in the local community and what they do. Often workers change in certain roles as well, so it’s good to go to those as frequently as you can to keep a grasp on who you might be dealing with. And other ways of community engagement. If there is, say, an event during law week, we might work with a number of other legal services to provide something in our local community. Or if it’s elder abuse awareness week, we’ll run something on elder abuse and we’ll work with other agencies like police, and financial counsellors perhaps, and health and aged care centres, in order to provide some community legal education. |
DT: 23:00 | I’m actually glad you’ve mentioned financial advice a couple of times because I think there’s often a misconception that financial advice is something that only the wealthy really need to seek out to, you know, manage all that money that they have. But good financial advice is often necessary if you’re economically strained, isn’t it? |
HM:
24:00
| Absolutely. So it’s interesting that a lot of the research that’s been done by the Law and Justice Foundation has suggested that often those who face more severe economic disadvantage say that one of the reasons they don’t seek out legal support is that it would be too costly to do so. They don’t have the ability to do that, and that goes for dealing with credit and debt matters. So being able to refer someone to a financial counsellor who is specialised with working with vulnerable groups, can be really helpful for them to sit down, look at what their situation is, no judgement whatsoever and to have a real honest conversation with them around areas that they need to address and the different options that there are available to them. TIP: In August 2018 the Law Council of Australia published its final report on the Justice Project which included a section detailing the struggle that people experiencing economic disadvantage have in accessing legal advice. The report recognised that, “they may have personal and psychological barriers which affect their capacity to resolve legal problems, or…they may also lack the time to deal with legal problems, particularly if they are primary caregivers.” In addition, the report commented that “legal assistance services are critically underfunded across the board” and that “this funding gap is often felt acutely by women without financial means, who often need assistance with family law, family violence, and related civil law matters.” We’ll leave a link to the full report in the episode’s show notes, but again my episode with Leona Bennett about financial abuse might be one to listen to after this. |
DT: 25:00
| It sounds like, I mean a lot of the different skills that we’ve discussed today whether that’s identifying a non-legal issue that a client needs assistance with, making that referral, whether it’s maintaining a network of non-legal service providers who can give that sort of advice, whether it’s recognising in the situation that the client isn’t in the right headspace to deal with their legal issue today and that you have to do something else, all of those skills if I can use the medical profession as a metaphor it sounds like you need really great ‘bedside manner’ as a CLC lawyer. And I think those soft skills the communication skills, problem solving skills, maintaining a network, influence over authority and power, I feel like those skills are ones that are probably useful for a lot of lawyers but certainly aren’t taught as part of our formal education or maybe not even on the job if you’re in private practise. How do you develop those skills and what are some of the most important ones for you? |
HM: 26:00
27:00
| I think they are highly valued attributes of graduate lawyers all round, but like you said they’re less spoken of in a more commercial corporate setting than they are valued perhaps in the legal assistance sector. So I think many of these skills are learned just by experience. And I recall the first days I was stepping out into a homeless persons’ legal clinic and feeling quite anxious and nervous about interacting with clients in an agency where the whole setting was a little bit uncomfortable for me to begin with. And really being quite fearful of any legal issue being thrown at me and feeling unprepared. I think with experience though you build confidence to interact and to adapt your communication style to the context or to the client. I think being able to adapt your message to the audience is really critical in our work. So I do think most of these skills are learnt on the job, but certainly some of those most important ones I see are effective listening, showing empathy, and they’re important to obtaining adequate instructions and building client rapport, but also to maintaining contact with the client. So I think another one is being able to apply a strengths-based approach so clients feel empowered to contribute to the resolution of their own issues is important, ’cause we might be the experts on the law, but we’re not the experts on how the law impacts on them and I think that’s a very big difference to recognise. |
DT: | Yeah that’s actually a great observation that they’re the experts in terms of the impact. I think that’s really important. And I’m glad you mentioned empathy is a skill, I think a lot of people think of that as a kind of immutable characteristic that you’re either empathetic or you’re not, but it is a skill that can be learned. |
HM:
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| It is a skill, it can be learned, that’s right. And often that’s through modelling too in types of communication techniques, client interviewing for example. TIP: The Australian Pro-Bono Centre published a really informative guide in 2017 titled ‘Client Management & Self-Care’ to provide guidance to legal professionals in delivering services to vulnerable clients. The guide covers areas such as treating your clients with respect, understanding your client’s physical and cognitive capabilities, assessing your client’s legal capacity, managing client expectations, cultural awareness and sensitivities and more. It also includes a whole section on taking care of yourself and learning how to deal with the negative impact that working on distressing cases can have to your wellbeing, known as “compassion fatigue.” Now this is particularly important as taking care of your own mental health before helping others will ensure you’re in the best position possible to pay full attention to your client’s needs. The guide also includes practical role-play scenarios covering a range of different clients you might encounter and applies the advice in the guide to suggest the optimal way to act in those situations. If you work in the legal assistance sector or with vulnerable clients, we really recommend that you give this guide a go – we’ll leave a link in the show notes. And just to come back to that point on being aware of how the law impacts on clients, I think with experience I’ve come to realise that, it sounds almost trite to say it but my experience with the law really is so different to that of my clients. And sometimes that means giving clients the benefit of the doubt because sometimes a client might come to us with a story which almost sounds unbelievable. But as you delve into that and sometimes as that matter progresses and perhaps evidence comes to light, you come to see that actually this is really the case for this client. An example took place where a client had come to us over an extended period of time but with another matter, and it had been clear that the client had a history of mental health issues and also disability, which presents other complications. And she came to us with a new matter involving a neighbour who she said was harassing her and she reported having called the police numerous times but there was never any action taken. The thing she was complaining of sounded quite extreme like he was coming into her house uninvited, he was verbally abusing her and filming her, and it’s not to say that this doesn’t occur and of course it needs to be taken seriously but the fact that police had been involved numerous times and there was no records that supported her story made us just tread a little bit lightly when we were helping support her to gather that sort of evidence. And then it just came to play that things escalated one day and she called 000 and the operator actually heard the neighbour banging on the door and being quite abusive in the background. And so this time when police called, they interviewed the neighbour and he actually produced the recordings that he’d filmed of her without her consent and an AVO was put in place for her protection and then she was also assisted to move into alternate housing as well. So it was absolutely the case that everything that she was saying had been happening, but it did take some time to be able to build the case for her and to deal with that range of issues. |
DT:
31:00 | As you say our experience of the law is an experience informed by a really privileged position and I think we often have a great innate trust in institutions and I think sometimes our clients haven’t had the same experience that engenders that kind of trust in institutions, legal, governmental, what have you. And that’s a really important observation, I think, that you do have to understand that that distrust of institutions might come from experience, that it might be informed by something. |
HM:
| Absolutely and that makes it so critical to be able to follow through and do what you say you’ll do. So to not overcommit at the outset if there might be issues there and to really be cautious around the way you might make promises to the client and to follow up as much as possible. |
DT:
32:00 | The life of a CLC lawyer sounds like it’s full of challenges but it also sounds very rewarding as well. If one of our listeners has heard this episode and either wants to transition from the commercial lawyer path to the CLC path, or maybe they’re a student looking to get into CLCs out of university, do you have any tips for those listeners about how to one day be sitting where you’re sitting now? |
HM:
33:00 | I would encourage students to broaden their view and consider taking perhaps a short-term opportunity that might be even outside their area of practise or maybe in a different geographical location if they are able to do that. Check obvious advertisements for vacancies and make contact with your local community legal centre if that’s something you’re interested in. It’s helpful to submit your CV and ask about opportunities that might be on the horizon if there’s no vacancies at present, because a centre might be waiting to hear about a pilot project or a new grant application and then they might keep you in mind for a position that opens up. For others, I mean volunteering is always a great way to see if something is right for you. So during COVID-19 I think many of those opportunities have been lost but hopefully they’ll be able to resurface again soon. For those in private practise or governmental roles, I’d suggest reaching out for any pro-bono opportunities that might be available in your workplace, and if there aren’t then they could speak to the Pro Bono Centre who could encourage the workplace or maybe put them in touch with another organisation that could be involved in a programme. And overall, I’d say don’t be afraid to ask questions because CLC staff are quite notorious for enjoying a good chat, being able to talk about what we do and why we do it. |
DT: | That sounds great. Well hopefully you don’t get too many calls after this episode airs. |
HM: | Thanks David. |
DT: | Haley, thanks so much for joining me on Hearsay. |
Part 2: Vincent Shin and Nadia Baldassi-Winderlich
DT:
34:00 | Listeners, I want you all to take a second and think about the various settings in which lawyers practice. Private practice, in community legal centres, in-house in government, in-house in corporate counsel just to name a few. Now add one more setting to that list, one I’m sure that you didn’t have on the list before: that’s high school. Now for many of us we didn’t think that we’d be going back to high school after law school but our guests today on Hearsay did just that. Vincent Shin and Nadia Baldassi-Winderlich from West Justice Community Legal Centre in Melbourne are in-school lawyers. Helping the wider school community with their legal needs. Our conversation with them today will run through the ins and outs of the role of a school lawyer. Everything from what a typical day looks like to whether there’s scope for more roles like this in schools around the country. Vincent and Nadia, thanks so much for joining me today on Hearsay. |
Vincent Shin: | Thanks David, thanks for having us. |
DT: | Now I know for a lot of our listeners, myself included I should add, the concept of an in-school or school lawyer’s a pretty new one! Vincent I might start with you: can you explain what the in-school lawyer program is and how it started? |
VS:
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36:00 | Sure. So, about five and a half years ago we started doing some work with a school in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne. And we realised that there was a need for lawyers to assist high school aged students. And it’s essentially a program where we, based within a high school environment within a wellbeing team, to advise and represent school aged students from a range of different areas of law. We all see it through CLE or Legal Education, Community Legal Education, where we go into classrooms and kind of act like a teacher and tell them about their rights and responsibilities in specific areas of law that are, I guess relevant to the young people. So that’s been running for about 5 and a half years. We’re now in four different schools in the western suburbs. The program’s rolled out to many different schools that we’re not technically part of, other community legal centres and Victorian Legal Aid have developed their own and there’s about twelve or thirteen schools in Victoria. It’s gone across to other states and territories as well. TIP: Now it’s great that Victorian Legal Aid are rolling out this in-school lawyer program in their state, but I’m pleased to report that it’s being trialled in NSW as well. In 2019 the Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre – that’s right, that’s where our last guest, Haley McEwen works – trialled their ‘Embedded School Lawyer’ program at Macleay Valley Workplace Learning Centre in Kempsey, which was funded through Legal Aid’s Cooperative Legal Services Delivery program. Civil lawyer, Matt Taylor, was the first to act in this role in NSW, and he emphasised that the project was focused on ‘early intervention and prevention’ in providing legal education to students who have fallen out of mainstream education. He said that having an approachable legal professional ready to provide advice on topical issues to young people such as sexting, driver’s licence issues and family and criminal law matters helps break down the barriers between young people and the law; ultimately empowering young people with greater knowledge of their legal rights and responsibilities. |
DT: 37:00 | It’s a great program and one that I really think is a natural continuation of that wonderful mission of the Community Legal Centre which is demystification of the law and making information about the law and its processes accessible to the community. Nadia from your perspective is that really the heart of the in-school lawyer program? That demystification of the law? That providing education and access to information for high school aged students? |
Nadia Baldassi-Winderlich:
| Oh definitely. I mean there are so many legal issues that young people can have in their lives which I suppose they’re not yet equipped to deal with or to not yet have the experience dealing with the system to address. And a lot of what the school lawyer program does isn’t necessarily to fix those problems for them, but to make sure they’re aware that they can get help when those problems arise in the future. |
DT: | Now I’m really excited to talk about some of the legal work that you do for the school community but before I do want to understand a bit more about your careers before your roles as school lawyers. Nadia, maybe I’ll start with you. What was your legal career like before the program and what attracted you to the role of the school lawyer? |
NB: 38:00
| So my career before the school lawyer program was actually working at a family violence women’s legal service in a remote NT, predominantly in a town with about less than four thousand people living there so it’s about as far from Metropolitan Melbourne as you can imagine. But it was a really holistic service and practice in remote settings by necessity involves lots of non-legal work. You know driving clients to appointments, picking them up for court. Working in the NT meant that I was sort of exposed to some of the more serious ends of where the breakdown of the legal system can be, as like, between how it should work for people and how it does work in practice. The school lawyer program kind of appealed to me just because it does have so much emphasis on getting involved at an early stage and also for empowering people to work within that system to make it work as best as it can for them as individuals. |
DT: | And Vincent what about you? |
VS 39:00 | Yes I immediately before I came across the West Justice I worked in private practice in family law and family violence so I did that for a little while. But what was more, I guess, relevant was the work that I did as a law student and it was working with children that have been removed by child protection systems and placed in what we call the residential care homes, which is a last resort option in the out-of-home care system and I was a carer there looking after probably the most vulnerable children in the state I would say. And that’s, you know, the obvious reason why I chose to come across to the school lawyer program. |
DT: 40:00 | What really strikes me about both of your respective kinds of attractions to the school lawyer program is that it’s driven as much by non-legal need or complementary services to law or to legal services as it is to providing legal advice. Because I think, for anyone who’s worked for vulnerable clients, who’s, even in private practice, who’s done some pro bono work. They would’ve been keenly aware of the limits of the efficacy of legal advice and when people need other services. Whether that’s health, housing, social work, to navigate their problems. But before we go there I want to understand a bit more about what a typical day in the school lawyer program looks like. I imagine like all other lawyers you have clients, I mean who are your clients? |
NB:
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42:00 | So our clients in the school lawyer program are, there isn’t really a typical kind of client that we have I suppose. Obviously the students of the schools that we’re based in are our main group. And within that, Vinny you tell me if you disagree, but I’d say predominantly it’s older students. Probably years 9 and up. But depending on the circumstances, we do also sometimes provide information only advice to teachers and staff of the school. And occasionally families of the students. What probably is a standard of our clients is that most of our students approach us quite carefully at first. So for a lot of these young people they’re pretty careful about who they trust and they’re often mistrustful of authority and sort of, legal systems, like these are really savvy young people. They’re often aware that there are limits to how the law can help them and how authority can help them and particularly in family violence matters they may have previously been disenfranchised rather than like empowered by the legal system. TIP: It’s estimated that as many as 1 in 4 children are exposed to domestic violence, and 50% of women who experience domestic violence also have children in their care. So it’s no wonder then that family violence matters often arise for in-school lawyers. This represents a wider societal issue. Women experiencing family violence are not adequately protected by the law and the legal system is failing to recognise the importance of providing support to young people who might have experienced or witnessed family violence in their home. In just this past year alone, Hayley Foster, chief executive of Women’s Safety NSW said that ‘2020 will be remembered as the worst year for domestic violence that…[we] have ever experienced.’ Sector experts have also voiced concerns that this area is ‘chronically underfunded’ considering that according to a July 2020 survey by the Australian Institute of Criminology, as many as 10% of Australian women in a relationship have experienced domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. So most of our clients, while they might not know the letter of the law, are very aware of that. So when they do first approach us it can often be quite a careful first contact. |
DT: 43:00 | And I suppose, does that first contact necessarily come in the form of, you know, a formal meeting? “I want to sit down and discuss this issue with you”. Or do you kind of have to coax that relationship out a little bit and build a relationship of trust with your client first before they’re willing to really open up to you about the issue that they’re facing? |
NB:
44:00 | Yeah, I mean it really depends, I guess, probably similar to CLCs we do get referrals for students on occasion from well-being staff like social workers based at the school. Or teachers who like, let us know that perhaps a student wants to reach out. But those are the students who are already talking to somebody, who are already engaged to some extent. So David you’re a hundred per cent right in that, it isn’t, it isn’t always going to be like a sit down meeting, a formal appointment in the sense you’d think about when you think about going to get legal advice. It looks really different depending on the student, so you know, depending on their age, the experiences they’ve had, the type of problem they’ve got, that’s all going to impact how they approach us. So here’s no hard and fast rule but for a legal problem like infringements or a consumer issue students might feel comfortable approaching us directly, coming to the office and sitting down, we can send notes to get them out of class so that we can have a proper chat or they might come during recess and lunch. |
DT:
| I suppose, again it’s quite similar to a community legal centre or a clinic that I suppose you have those matters where you have an ongoing engagement with a client and you’re working with them over a series of meetings over a long period of time. But I suppose you also have clients who really need one off advice that they need in the moment and that’s kind of the beginning and the end of that engagement. |
NB:
45:00
46:00 | For a lot of young people, when they come to get advice, it’s not necessarily because they have any real intention to take steps within that legal system. Even if there are options available. I find that a lot of the young people that come to see us want to know what their rights are and also want reassurance that something that’s happening to them perhaps isn’t okay or that there will be options for them later. And the big one would be family violence, so they might have a really good case to get an intervention order for their protection. But they’re worried about child protection implications for their younger siblings or the impact on the parent. We talk a lot in our service and in our practice about legal outcomes vs life outcomes. And often what’s really clearly a strong legal case with a good legal outcome is not actually going to be, to that young person, a good life outcome. And so, in those cases often it’s an advice only. So they’ll get the information, they’ll feel more secure in their rights, but they may make the choice not to take it further. TIP: Now this point Nadia has just made is really important. While traditionally a lawyer’s job is to secure successful legal outcomes for their clients, for Nadia and Vincent it’s vital to recognise that there are other factors that determine how legal advice will affect their client’s life outcomes. And you know what? That shouldn’t be unique to the job of an in-school lawyer. In private legal practice, lawyers often talk about “commerciality” as the rare ability to be practical and pragmatic but Nadia and Vincent’s approach to identifying and prioritising life outcomes over legal outcomes is one that we can and should all adopt – and our clients will thank us for it. |
DT:
47:00 | That’s probably good advice for any client in any setting and a good way to put it as well I think, the difference between a legal outcome and a life outcome. But again it sounds like it’s really coming back to that idea of demystifying the law and understanding the law, even if not taking an active step within it and understanding that the law can be empowering. I think many lawyers, not all certainly but many lawyers have come from a background where perhaps because of an early privileged start in life, the law has been kind of a naturally empowering or naturally trusted, trustable structure in their lives. And there’s kind of a natural sense of reliability in the law. But for many of your clients, as you say, they wouldn’t have that experience of the law and even if they’re not taking an active step in the matter that they come to you with, you’re kind of helping them to understand that the law can be a tool to help them access redress for what’s happening to them. |
NB:
| For sure, I mean that’s definitely the aim. I think it’s important that any work we do with clients is really clear that like, this might be the intention of the legal system, it’s possible that the practical outcomes will fall short of what you want. And like it is important to keep a realistic view of how well these systems work but at the same time there’ll never be any change, there’ll never be any progress if people don’t feel comfortable trying to utilise what does exist doesn’t mean it’s perfect but it’s such an important thing to be aware that this is, the law is meant to be for the public, for our clients so they should have as much access to it as possible. |
DT: 48:00 | Now Vincent and Nadia you’ve both mentioned a couple of areas of law and quite diverse areas of law already today that you deal with. Anything from criminal law, family violence, consumer issues, motor vehicle issues, motor boat issues. Vincent maybe I’ll start with you, can you give me an example of a kind of unusual matter that comes up in a school setting? Maybe one that you wouldn’t expect to see anywhere else? |
VS:
| Yeah look another area which I think you might’ve missed was employment law and that’s actually quite a really common thing and if you think about it, kids are working, there are business models that are based around employing children and young people. And so, yeah employment is actually another big area of law but in terms of something that stands out to me, unfortunately we have some telephone companies, and very large telecos that have done the wrong thing I guess and signed our clients up to really expensive phone plans. And sometimes a motor vehicle accidents as well, you know, the kid is driving a vehicle, they have an accident and yep then you’ve got these insurance companies chasing up these kids for these debts. |
DT: 49:00 | Yeah absolutely. I mean, you know, these are issues that plenty of adults face and that would be incredibly stressful for adults but it strikes me that what’s unique about those is not so much the kind of in the abstract what they are, employment issues, motor vehicle accidents consumer issues, credit and debt issues, but they’re made unique by the vulnerability of the client. A student who’s 16 or 17 is not as well versed or as confident in advocating for their rights as an employee, you know, in their first job. |
VS: | Exactly. |
DT:
| And I imagine that means that you have to approach taking instructions and acting on instructions very differently to the way you would with an adult client. I mean, maybe the first step in that is even a capacity issue, how do you deal with capacity to give instructions and to what extent do you guide the instructions that your clients are giving? |
VS:
50:00
51:00 | So obviously capacity looks very different depending on the area of law and what you’re hoping to do with a case or the client’s hoping to do with a case. So, you know, we have a process, all school lawyers, in fact anyone that works with young people and potentially young even adults with an intellectual disability. I mean, you still as lawyers we have to check that capacity and it’s something that we do. To spell it out it’s asking them potentially if it’s something that you’re concerned about asking them to draw a picture, asking them to say in their own words what they understand. And that’s probably one of the best ways to check capacity. They’re able to reiterate what we’ve said using their own words and pictures and diagrams and anything like that. All programs that are doing a school lawyer program or lawyers in school program and something that’s quite consistent is that kids don’t want to enforce their legal rights. We advise them, we tell them that this is your option, but a lot of the time they’re quite afraid to enforce it. Especially in employment and family violence settings. And that’s not just us, it’s not just our school lawyers at West Justice, it’s across the board state-wide and nationwide. So yes you’re right David in the approach that we take we have to be quite sensitive and really make them know that they are the boss. So I actually use those words, I say “you’re actually the boss, you tell me what you want to do, I give you your options.” And they kind of raise an eyebrow and have a bit of a chuckle but you know I really sort of, you know, make sure that they understand that they are the boss. Even though they might be 16 or 17. |
NB:
52:00 | I was just going to say that within that is also like it’s such an important thing to be aware of, capacity, but everything Vinny is saying is so true that, we have to approach our clients or once they approach us, we have to respond from a place of respect first. Because often, you know, they are young but they’ve often had a lot of experience in some pretty terrible stuff and an understanding or knowledge of the practical workings of the legal system as they impact their lives which is far beyond what we would have. And it’s such an important part of our role and an important part of building that trusting relationship to make sure that we’re mindful of capacity whilst really respecting that student’s autonomy and that student’s lived experience and you know ability to make judgement calls on any advice that we do give. |
DT:
| I remember when I was 16 years old, I don’t imagine I was the boss of much of anything and it’s probably a pretty unusual dynamic to be given that responsibility for making those decisions even if they have the benefit of your advice in doing it. What have you learned from the school lawyer program about giving advice to and taking instructions from young people? How do you take instructions and give advice differently with young people as opposed to adults? Nadia, maybe I’ll start with you. |
NB: 53:00
| I think, and I think I’ve said this about six times already, but there’s just no hard and fast rule, it just depends so much on the individual, on their experience, their age, the way they’re presenting. But like always, starting from that place of respect, coming in with the presumption almost that this is somebody who has come to you to have this conversation and they have the ability to have that. And in terms of providing advice, I think often we’re guided a lot by the client. As basic things we do I suppose, I’m big on lists. So really itemising things. And the other thing that I find really useful, although this isn’t just for kids, is diagrams. Particularly for IVO’s or family violence orders, it’s just such a clear way like, drawing down what you’re saying. |
VS:
54:00 | I’ll agree with you with writing down things for them. And in terms of drawings and diagrams, I, especially with intervention orders, in fact I’ve got diagrams that I’ve printed out and laminated it because I use it so frequently. And it sort of sets a bit of a timeline and the process and the different options along the way so that they can you know visualise the advice that we give. |
DT:
55:00
56:00
| And I think your tip about diagrams, I think that applies to any client. I think that’s great advice for any of our listeners. I know I use diagrams a lot in my corporate and commercial practice. I think it’s just such an assumption on the part of lawyers that everyone learns the same way we do, which is you know, often if you’re a lawyer you learn well by reading, you learn well verbally, but that’s not the case for a lot of people. And a lot of people are visual learners. TIP: Now you can probably tell from this part of the episode that I’m an ardent supporter of using visuals and graphics to convey legal advice, and our whole industry is increasingly recognising that communicating legal advice through design-based, visual, unconventional methods like flowcharts and diagrams aids in translating complex legal information into a digestible format. For example, OpenLawLab is a blog page founded by Stanford University in California, USA which questions how we can integrate design and law to ‘raise new ways of giving legal advice, carrying out litigation, and resolving disputes.’ The goal of the website is to encourage lawyers to explore alternate methods of providing legal information to their clients in an innovative way, and we encourage you to visit that website after you’ve finished the episode. In a 2017 peer-reviewed paper by Tania Leiman from Flinders University titled ‘Where are the Graphics? Communicating Legal Ideas Effectively Using Images and Symbols’, Leiman suggests that legal services should reflect the digital age we are living in by adapting the format in which we deliver legal advice. She theorises that while legal professionals in the 21st century ‘require the ability to read, understand and write technical and complex legal text,’ they will increasingly ‘also need to develop the skill to convert this text effectively into visual means of communication.’ We’ll leave a link to Leiman’s paper in this episode’s show notes. Now, I know what you’re thinking. The old adage might be that a picture is worth a thousand words, but we can’t really convey the contents of a 10-page, complex advice in one flowchart, can we? Well, no, probably not. But that flowchart might make a great replacement for an executive summary; it might demonstrate some of the concepts that are harder to visualise without an aid; or it might be a practical tool which helps your client implement your advice in their business. There’s a lot of ways that we can introduce new techniques, without getting rid of the old. |
DT: | We’ve spoken a bit about the really challenging aspects of your roles. The limits of the legal system in helping your clients, the limits in being able to take instructions or act on instructions. I want to ask you about maybe some of the triumphs as well. Nadia and Vinny do you have any matter that you’re especially proud of? You know, real successes that you’ve experienced in the school lawyer program? |
VS: 57:00
58:00
59:00 | I think there’s quite a lot of different triumphs and I’ll take this one Nadia while you think about your answer but like I said earlier, for me what I’m driven by is the life outcomes. And that fits well with our ethos at West Justice and specifically the youth law program because, that’s, you know it’s not just legal outcomes that will help change a young person’s life. So for me, like, yeah, my triumphs aren’t necessarily “I got this great outcome in court”, it’s more when I see a real shift in how a young person presents, how they feel about life in general and, yeah, that to me is more satisfying. TIP: Now while the subjective satisfaction of a young person receiving legal assistance is probably difficult to measure, the school lawyer program has no doubt had an overwhelmingly positive impact on its community. The statistics presented in West Justice’s 2019-2020 Impact Statement recorded that through their programs and efforts:
So I think of a couple of young people and one being a young person who actually came to me for so many legal issues. This young person had immigration issues, criminal law issues, consumer issues, fines issues, what else did we help? There were so many things that we helped this young person with. You know just getting the feedback from him saying “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you, I didn’t even know that lawyers were available, especially free lawyers, you know, I just, you know my life would be so different without you” Yeah, so that to me is my triumph, making and hearing about, you know, how we’ve changed a young person’s life. |
DT: | And Nadia? |
NB:
| Yeah, look I guess I kind of agree with Vinny in the sense that, we get to do some really interesting work with the school lawyer program but it’s not your traditional legal work like, where a good day isn’t going to be necessarily, I mean it’s still great when it happens, but a really excellent court outcome or whatever. We’re not taking any trials up to the highest court in the land or anything, but for me, I don’t know if proud’s the right word but, like, or perhaps proud of the young person. |
DT:
1:00:00
1:01:00
1:02:00 | We’ve talked about such a diversity of issues that you both have to deal with in the school lawyer program, far more than I would’ve expected. But something we haven’t spoken about and there’s certainly a lot of concern about this in the community, it’s certainly a frequent topic of media reporting, is issues around the use of technology in schools. Particularly the sharing of intimate images or sexting, cyberbullying, cyber bullying, trolling, catfishing, all of these kinds of harassing or stalking behaviours that are made possible through technology. TIP: Living in the digital age we do today, means that we have constant access to the internet and to people we know around the clock. Unfortunately, in the school bullying context, this means that victims can’t escape their perpetrators once the school day is over and has a serious negative impact on the rise of cyber bullying incidents across the country. In NSW, the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Amendment Bill 2018 was passed on the 21st November in that year to amend sections 7, 8 and 13 of the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007 to include online intimidation and stalking for the purposes of that Act. In the Bill’s second reading speech, NSW Attorney General Mark Speakman referred to the law as Dolly’s law following the tragic 2018 suicide of 14 year old Amy ‘Dolly’ Everett who was a victim of cyberbullying. Image-based abuse, defined by the eSafety Commissioner as the sharing of intimate or sexual photos online without consent, is another prominent legal issue particularly for young people that has been created due to the accessibility of social media. In their 2017 summary report they identified that 1 in 10 adult Australians, and 1 in 5 women aged 18-45 years, have experienced their personal images being shared without their consent. Women were found twice as likely to have their images shared and considerably more likely to report a negative personal impact as a result of image-based abuse. Young adults, women, Indigenous Australians and members of the LGBTI community are particularly vulnerable in these circumstances, which is why it’s so important that educational programs in this area are being delivered in schools. A key problem with image-based abuse, as with other gendered crimes, is the victim-blaming culture and stigma that’s associated with it. The main barriers to not taking action against the perpetrator included for 29% of respondents feeling that it wouldn’t change anything, for 22% of respondents not knowing what to do and for 18% of respondents feeling embarrassed. Survey statistics demonstrate that community attitudes towards victims of image-based abuse are ill-informed with 67% of online adults agreeing with the statement: ‘people should know better than to take nude selfies in the first place;’ suggesting that in some cases, many people wrongly blame the victims for the abuse they experience. We’ll leave a link in the show notes to appropriate resources regarding image-based abuse. Do you find that’s a big part of your role in the school lawyer program? |
VS: 1:03:00
1:04:00 | So I guess I’ll answer this one. With issues like sexting and cyberbullying and those kinds of technology-based issues, generally that affects young people. We have an education component, so like I said before ‘CLE’ or Community Legal Education, we do see this from time to time and the way we address it in the school environment is going around to the whole year level and talking about what sexting is, what’s the rights, and I guess sometimes more importantly what’s your responsibilities when dealing with sexting. And it’s really important to I guess spell out the law for them and the implications and the consequences that might result from this kind of behaviour. In Victoria it is an offence to send an intimate image of another person and you can, you know, face up to two years in jail for this. You know, so letting the kids know that it’s a criminal offence is one part of this legal education but also what’s great about the stuff that we do is we also talk about the social implications and what happens to the victim, victim-survivor in these kinds of situations and we ask the kids to be involved and we make our sessions interactive so that they can, you know, have some input on what they think might be the social implications. So yeah that’s I guess the way we deal with sexting, cyberbullying through the legal education. |
DT:
1:05:00 | Something you said earlier about these education sessions and I think it’s emblematic of the approach you take in the school lawyer program as a whole, is this idea that you place the legal issues students are facing and the law in the totality of their life and the experience that they have. And I think that that’s amazing and something that all of our listeners in whatever area they practice can probably start to reflect on and think about how that concept could be applied to their area of practice. That legal issues never occur in a vacuum and they’re always one puzzle piece in the larger puzzle of the client’s life and I think that’s something all of our listeners can learn from. I want to close now on a question about the future of the school lawyer program. It sounds like you’ve had some incredible feedback from students. What’s the feedback that you’ve received from teachers, parents, the rest of the school community and do you see the school program expanding? |
NB:
1:06:00 | We do occasionally get messages from students or comments where they’re like “thank you so much for your help” or that kind of thing. But I think the best feedback that we get from the students that we assist is firstly that they come back. We have a really high rate of young people who’ve come to see us for advice and then returned for advice again. The other really good piece of feedback I think we get from students, and jump in Vinny if you’ve got something else as well, is when we get a student we’ve spoken to bringing a friend to see us. So they’ll come to the office with a friend and be like “this person’s having trouble, can you help them out?” And I can’t think of much more than that to say that they trust us because it means they’re trusting us enough to let their friend know that they can come to see us. |
DT: | Yeah absolutely I can’t think of a more flattering bit of feedback, to say “not only am I happy with what you’ve done for me but I’m so happy with it that I’d trust you with my friend.” |
VS:
1:07:00
1:08:00 | Yeah, just to I guess to add on to some of the feedback, so one thing that the teachers love about our service is the legal education component because they might have some serious behavioural incidents at school. Say for example maybe there’s a fight, maybe there’s bullying or sexting, the teacher has been able to address that quite quickly, come across to us and ask us to deliver a legal education session on the particular topic. And in terms of the school community and the community more generally I think the feedback’s been quite positive. The other thing with schools is that some people don’t know, outsiders might think, you know, “why are there all these services, why is there a lawyer, why do they need a lawyer?” Well what the reality is that this is the place that young people go five days a week generally. And, you know, there’s actually all these other services that are already there, so there’s a new doctors in schools program where a GP comes out to the school. They have school nurses as well to assist with all things health. They have psychologists that come out, qualified psychologists that come out to the schools, even speech therapists. So this is just another service that comes out and is based within the school and it makes complete sense because this is where the students’ community is, this is where they’re based five days a week and where you know, depending on their age, legally have to be so that just makes complete sense. In terms of expansion, we’ve obviously been operating this program for a bit over five years. What I’d like to see happen is a state wide roll out. You know at the moment there’s only twelve or thirteen schools that have it. I can foresee that, you know, there’s quite a lot of schools that have communities that are quite disadvantaged and vulnerable that would clearly benefit from a school lawyer program and a free school lawyer program. |
DT: | Well anyone working in government in Victoria, in communities and justice, if you’re listening give Vincent a call. And hopefully there’s t some lawyers in the community sector listening in New South Wales, where I’m based, who are inspired to start this program up here because it sounds like what West Justice is doing, what both you, Vinny and Nadia are doing is an amazing job, a really valuable service and a really thoughtful and considered way of introducing young people to the law. Vinny and Nadia thank you so much for joining me today on Hearsay. |
VS: | No worries, thanks for having us David. |
NB: | Thank you. |
DT: 1:09:00
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| You’ve been listening to Hearsay The Legal Podcast. I’d like to thank my guests today Haley McEwen from the Mid North Coast Community Legal Centre, and Nadia Baldassi-Winderlich and Vincent Shin from WEstJustice for coming on the show. Now if you liked this episode, you might want to try our episode on advising vulnerable clients for some more insights from the CLC world. Or, for something a bit different, try my episode with the Hon Michael Kirby about how judges judge. If you’re an Australian legal practitioner, you can claim 1 continuing professional development point for listening to this episode. Now whether an activity entitles you to claim a CPD unit is self-assessed, but we suggest this episode constitutes an activity in the professional skills field. If you’ve claimed 5 CPD points for audio content already this CPD year, then you might need to access our multimedia content to claim further points from listening to Hearsay. Visit htlp.com.au for more information on claiming and tracking your points on our platform. The Hearsay team is Tim Edmeades, Kirti Kumar, Araceli Robledo, Zahra Wilson and me, David Turner. Nicola Cosgrove is our executive producer and podcast Tzar. Hearsay The Legal Podcast is proudly supported by Assured Legal Solutions – making complex simple. You can find all of our episodes as well as summary papers, transcripts, quizzes and more at htlp.com.au. That’s HTLP for Hearsay The Legal Podcast.com.au. Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next time. |
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