Intro VLA Webinar

so before i introduce myself i'd just like to acknowledge that we're all meeting on different lands today across the state i'm out on banner on land of the cooler nation

and i'd like to pay my respects to elders past present and emerging and acknowledge that this land was never seated and it always was and always will be aboriginal land

um and a special note today that it is actually national sorry day which marks the anniversary of the tabling in federal parliament of the bringing them home report of the national inquiry into the

separation of aboriginal and torres strait islander children from their families which was on 26th of may 1997.

so if you have time over the next week i highly encourage you all to get online and google you know what is reconciliation week and there's lots of online activities that we can take part in that

just really do bridge a gate gap in our reconciling from the history that is part of australia so my role as sarah jane said it is a it is quite an interesting role

um officially it's called a cle coordinator what that stands for is community legal education and what that means is um we have to

well part of our role is providing information and education um to the state and that could be with members of community could be workers

like yourselves it could be teachers students predominantly we do focus on alternative learning settings so where people are highly disengaged

we kind of split out a time between that kind of audience and workers like yourselves because by providing information and education and training opportunities to workers

it just really improves this the legal sector that we all are part of so thank you so much for having me part of your induction and welcome um

so we you will have opportunity to ask questions throughout and um sarah jane will be managing that thankfully uh because it is quite hard to present and and

manage the tech side of things um so we'll be going through um what our service delivery looks like and when i say when i say our service delivery i

actually do mean what you do and what we do and how we can work together because it is a really um important relationship that we have in how to best assist clients when

they're coming to court or seeking legal advice or information we'll also talk a little bit about the nature of our clients where they come from and how they differ and what our triage process

is and when i mean triage is what what questions we have to ask and why in order for a client to qualify um on victoria legal aid we'll also mention conflict of interest

which is one of those really interesting topics that is very complex and we do our best to simplify it um but it's it won't be a surprise if somebody

has a question around it and also some tips on how to give legal information um as opposed to legal advice

what's great about that particular point is that i am not a lawyer i am not a qualified lawyer i don't have a law degree i'm an educator by way of background um

so i know exactly how to distinguish when i'm giving a client information and when i'm giving them advice and when i'm giving them advice is never basically because we're not allowed to by law

to give someone advice unless we're a qualified practicing lawyer does that sound all good to you sir james yes you're already nodding thank you so how can victoria legal aid and court

network uh work together i'm hoping that everyone has taken the time to read the article that sarah jane set out and we will look at it more but i'm sure even just reading that

you would have gathered straight off the bat that there is a lot of um there's a big sort of emotional roller coaster that goes towards attending court

and um it's in that way that you're able to really work with victoria legal aid in setting the client's nerves at ease communicating uh to them where to get help and how to

get help and who to speak to and whether that's in court as sarah jane said we aren't getting back in the court um in person or whether it is on the phone

it's still a very helpful service that you provide so both legal aid staff and court network volunteers play very important roles in the court

system and we can really help clients together get through what could possibly be one of their most difficult and stressful times in their life which is being at court

and sometimes that that horrible day might not be what we think is a serious or life-changing matter so it might not be a serious criminal charge

but that actually doesn't mean that it's not affecting them in a really negative way um and we also need to understand each other's role and how it's important when working together because if we

understand each other's role it will make it flow a lot easier for the client and give them a much better result at the end so what i'm going to do is i'm going to

read some feedback and then i'd like to get some um input from your cells in kind of what you think about that interaction that took place now

this is real feedback and it's feedback that a legal uh a legal aid lawyer received and we call them duty lawyers duty lawyers are basically lawyers that are at court

and it's their duty that day to be at court so we have lawyers in the office we have lawyers that are appearing for trials and we have duty lawyers and we would find a duty lawyer at

various courts across the state and i'll go through all of them later on so here's the feedback recently we had a client who arrived at court in state

that is best described as somnolent so it's a very complex word but basically they were barely able to lift their head or mumble a word

the amazing court network staff took her upstairs to their room gave her a juice and a muesli bar and let her sleep there for a few hours including over lunch now just pause there this does not mean

this is what you need to do and sarah jane will be telling you what you're able to do and how best to support clients this is just an example of quite an in-depth interaction

they managed to get the name of her support worker and tracker tracked down her phone number and called her and were able to arrange for the support worker to come to court court network staff let me come in and out of their room

throughout the day to attempt to take instructions from our client they were supportive proactive helpful and generally amazing if they hadn't been there i can only

assume that pso officers would have dragged our client out of the court early in the day as she was basically passed out in the busy area

so it's really important um that we just point out a few things here you should never engage with a client that you think is dangerous when you feel threatened or uncomfortable

and um again sarah jane will go through more of that if she hasn't already but the point of this particular feedback is that there was a client that was not able to help themselves court network will be were able to

provide support that enabled legal aid to best support the client now if you have um an opinion of something different that could happen

there or in what ways you can help a client that for one reason or another might not be able to help themselves this is what i'd like you to give feedback on now

so i'll just give you a moment i have just put a message to everyone that they have talk enabled so um

and i might even call on sarah who i've um are you there sarah i can see you there yeah yes i'm here

sorry bridget i'm in the office um bridget my connection's not as good as it could be can you repeat the question uh just some feedback on the article

that we just read then thought sir look you know i'm a program manager at court network um and my thoughts are

um that that sounds very typical of what we would do as networkers um and you know it's the strength in our practice of being able to work with

um whether it be duty lawyers or court staff to to keep tabs on what's going on and be able to be a conduit in that space i think a really important thing following from what you've said there

sarah is that this is possible because we're in court so what there are as you said brigitte is there's the the the safety staff there you know there's

the um the the legal staff are there so it's this kind of partnered way of working where people really understand their practice boundaries so that everyone's doing their bit for

that person for their day in court does that make sense it would look a bit different if um obviously in a remote service but this is such a

beautiful example of when there is clarity of role boundaries and i think that's possibly why you've chosen this um it's the dance and we talk about this dance of the networker and it's in and

out and it's with services and it's with the court user it is something to behold isn't it when it works well it is just something amazing to behold because

that example you've given there you're absolutely right there's no way that without that support on that day that that duty lawyer would have been

able to do their job i feel like often um the role of a court network can also often be compared to that of a meerkat

just constantly looking around what's happening what's over there that was a loud noise you know and your reaction can often be oh gosh what option do i have

and i just want it to be pointed out that if you think a client looks distressed or upset or is getting louder and you don't want to go over to them that's perfectly understandable you can come up

to legal aid and say look there's someone over there getting upset and starting to make a bit of noise i don't know if they're on the duty lawyer list but would you mind going over there because we're trained we're trained to handle that we're

trained to handle difficult conversations aggressive clients all the rest of it um and honestly majority of the time they are our clients because our

clients are often have mental health issues they might even have a serious disability and it's been misinterpreted by somebody that doesn't know

they could be intoxicated they could be on drugs they could have a psychiatric issue and all of these things we are made aware of we're off often

quite informed about it but um as we go to talk about the judy lawyer story later on we're not always right there to respond to it in that moment because we're busy running off doing

other tasks so there's so much that we can do together um and i do appreciate the hard work of the court network staff when they do run around

and observe these behaviors so look i think it's a good example of the support role that court network volunteers can provide and don't ever underestimate a small

action such as asking if somebody's okay or even more important asking somebody are you here for court today yes okay have you signed up to see

victoria legally duty lawyer or victoria legal aid or the duty lawyer whatever words you remember or want to use because sometimes clients just sit there waiting for their matters to be called in not

realising they can see a legal aid lawyer before they go into court and you'll you'll notice when you do attend court

um the court staff they are seeing hundreds of people legal aid might be seeing 30 odd people so the court staff are

abrupt and firm and quick and that's because that's their role is to get through that list next please when yep what's your name no worries court three

right next please yes what's your name caught one and they do ask do you want to see the duty lawyer but tone can really change the response

of a client they might need a softer tone later on once they've found their seat and know that they're in the right location and they might change their mind and

that's okay that we added to our list now if you see my computer move it's because my spoodle is trying to get onto my lap right now uh

yeah okay so the next part that we're going to go into is the judy lawyer service um and this is really um the grunt work of what victoria league glade does

so we have uh magistrates crosstalk magistrates courts across the state and duty lawyers attend county court and um family uh

court as well but majority of the time we are talking about criminal matters in the magistrates court so people are seeking help from our duty lawyers um

they're quite anxious about what will happen there's so much anxiety about the unknown so you all been informed about what the court process is and

what might happen next so not necessarily having the specific answer but what procedures are can relieve a lot of that anxiety and and talking about what might happen

throughout the day so one of the first things i tell clients or what i used to tell clients when i worked in court nine times out of ten their question is

what time will i be done and the best answer you can give a client is look i'm not sure you could be here the whole day because we don't want to give them a

time and then them get really frustrated or angry at that time we gave them because even if a client arrives at 9am they're the ones that are on time and

they've got their paperwork sometimes the court system can send them to the bottom of the list because there's more high priorities matters and we're not always aware of what those

higher priorities are or maybe a magistrate has called in sick for the day they don't have spare magistrates sitting at court that just means there's one less magistrate to deal with this really long

list so the biggest anxiety you can relieve and possibly the biggest frustration we both cause and i say we both as in legal aid aim court network is when

we disappoint them with the news of you might be here all day look you're here at 9am hopefully you're out before lunch what have you done have you signed up to see the legal aid duty lawyer okay

you've already signed up great that means you'll be at the top of their list but they might be quite busy they're always quite busy to be honest so it's just

giving them a little bit of guidance court is a long day we really don't know how long they'll be there but they will get assistance so

everybody qualifies for legal aid it's what they qualify for and this is a myth in community i don't qualify for legal

aid because i earn too much money so what they're saying is i might not qualify for legal representation because i earn too much that doesn't

mean they don't get legal aid legal aid provide different level of services depending on the needs of the client okay so we start

in legal information that's what i do i can give information about what court procedures will take place

who to talk to you could talk to the police prosecutor you could talk to the um the uh court staff you can talk to the magistrate i'll make

sure when you go into court you take your hat off and turn your mobile phone on silent we need to make sure that in court is a respectful place that is all legal information there's no

advice i'm just letting them know what the court procedures are and who the people are and where they're located you're here for a court matter oh did they tell you you don't qualify for

legal aid what did they tell you to do next because when somebody doesn't qualify for representation we will tell them what their options are the legal aid staff will sit down and say right

so if you want to go have a conversation with the police prosecutors that's where you need to go have a conversation and then you need to decide whether you're pleading guilty or not guilty and just

depending on what you decide there's different procedures to follow that is still legal information okay so everybody is entitled to legal information

from victoria legal aid and as court staff networks the more you learn about the court system you are also a part of that system of providing

information when we get the difference okay this is going from legal information to legal advice oh i see your paperwork there you've got great evidence you should plead not

guilty like definitely that's legal advice and it's really obvious legal advice um and it's it's breaking the law i could get in a lot of trouble for saying

something like this okay a little bit less obvious um oh okay you want to go speak to the police prosecutor no worries well if you go down there and

go speak to the police prosecutor and see that paperwork if you show them that paperwork that should be enough to prove that you haven't done it that's that's really starting to get

into the legal advice and could get you in some hot water the way you could rephrase that for legal information oh you've got a lot of paperwork there and you're on your way to the police

prosecutor well look show the police prosecutor all of your paperwork if you want to that's up to you have you spoken to legal aid so that's just me saying you've got

paperwork i mean you can show them but you should speak to legal aid first or you've already spoken to them and they've told you to go down there yep okay well they're just down there on the left so we need to be really

careful that we're not telling people what's going to happen and what the outcome will be and whether or not they

should be pleading guilty or not guilty or even saying things like and this is a real this is something that happens a lot once you've been around so i've been at legal aid for 15 years

and i used to work at rabbin court and there was a magistrate there that nine times out of 10 for a first driving while suspended charge that's a criminal charge

would give the client either a 500 or an 800 fine that was just his go-to and even though i know that and i know they're not going to jail

i know that that's not going to happen i can't say that to a client i i can't i can sit down with them and talk to them about all the possible outcomes and one of them is actually

jail because that that charge is punishable by jail but i can't tell them but don't worry about it you'll probably just get a fine that's a lawyer's job so it doesn't even

matter how much i know and how confident i am i can't even say oh you'll probably get a phone or you probably won't go to jail or even

accidentally saying oh don't worry you won't go to jail for that because that's actually legal advice even though you really want to relieve them that's what legal aid lawyers do that's what the lawyers can do

okay the problem with that's what the lawyers do is the lawyers could be inundated with clients okay and i'll give you an example of this and then i'll just pause in case there's

any questions at dandenong and that's the court that i work out at we have two duty lawyers and they could be seen

up to 40 clients and if you think about it we've got a standard workday of about seven and a half hours we have a lunch break and we have what happens in court and you've read that article

so there's a lot of running back and forth the lawyer has to run to the prosecutors run to the court stuff up i've got called into court run into court oh i need to go photocopy

this oh i need to go talk to my clerk there's actually not a lot of minutes in that day where they can sit down and have a long conversation with the client so that client might have to come back

several times that client might get legal advice that lasts five minutes they might get legal advice that lasts 20 minutes they might need an appointment in the office where they can

really sit down and and go through things it is a very busy day now dandenong is one of the biggest courts in the state in fact it's the busiest regional court

um but that's the one i'm familiar with but i have visited other courts and they can be quite busy too and they might not even have two duty lawyers they might just have the one at frankston for instance i know they've

just got one duty lawyer so they might only have 15 clients but that's that's for one lawyer and that's a lot of people to see in the day

um now i'm just going to pause uh before i go into the details of where the courts are and what the courts are are there any questions at this point

okay so yes go sarah jane sorry oh you're muted i am muted and then put myself back on

um i have been watching there's no questions in the q a um so i think it's you're hitting the nail on the head there bridgette thank you so much so jade

so as i said we have the lawyers based at the magistrates courts across victoria children's courts as well um we also have some lawyers based in vcat which is

the victorian civil and administrative tribunal and also mental health wards as well as county courts and um the family federal circuit court and the

family court okay so we are based at lots of different locations across the state and in order to qualify to seeing those lawyers it changes

depending on the circumstances and so for each circumstances we have what we call guidelines and we do have an income guideline and i could outline it but there's actually no

point because it depends on the charges and it depends on how many children they've that person has and their dependents all you need to know is even if a client

thinks oh there's no point in seeing them i don't qualify based on income i'd actually still encourage them to to see legal aid because they don't just go straight to the

lawyer they will go to someone like me so my my previous role was as a clerk okay and that means i ask questions of clients i get them to fill in some paperwork

it's two pages of paperwork it's name date of birth address income centrelink number and whether they have any disabilities that's

predominantly what it is okay and based on that information i'm able to refer them to a victoria legally duty lawyer or i might refer them to a private lawyer or i might give them a sheet of

paper that has information about the charge on it and i can sit down with them and go through that information and you can sit down and go through that information and you can read that

information at court you can see our pamphlets at court you might have access to them through sarah jane as well can i just add something here because the questions come through and it kind of fits in with

what you're talking about bridget is there's a question here is what is the likely reason for such a low number of duty lawyers in the court space funding we are limited by what the government

gives funding for victoria legal aid that's that's the simple answer of it and a really good example of that is so my job as you know is to provide information

and education across the state there are three of us that do this job for victoria legal aid we are responsible for the entire state and we all work part-time and that is

based on funding yeah so yeah um if we had more funding we'd have more lawyers they are they're very busy and it's a

very stressful job um and thankfully we have awesome people that really love doing it um yeah yep and just extending from that one of the

things that you mentioned is there's a bit of a formula isn't there and you know this formula is applied around um how much support it's not everyone gets support but it's about how much support

when you apply other and i think i recall this from other sessions are there circumstances that people automatically um that formula is interpreted differently

so i think i'm thinking um are there any circumstances so children yeah yeah um so yeah that's the you bang on we're

literally that's the next part of it so children and when we say children under 18.

sometimes in the legal sector especially like youth justice when they say youth they actually mean under 24 but in the

in the courts in the legal specific area it's under 18. so under 18 automatically qualify for victoria legal aid service

and then you've got people over the age of 18 that are on centrelink car car central have receive centrelink income and when they receive a centrelink income and they've been

charged with something that's not a minor offense an example of a minor offense there's lots of them but are really the driving offenses like run a red light

or speeding we don't provide legal advice for that just legal information but a person that's on centrelink income and has a charge like driving more suspended

or theft or assault they will automatically qualify for legal advice okay and then the next step is legal advice and in court appearance so that middle ground there where they

they're definitely on a center link income and they definitely qualify for legal advice the the way the lawyer assesses whether they'll get in court we call it in-court advocacy um you

might hear it as representation or you might just hear it as in court appearance they all work they all mean the same thing that will depend on the capability that

the lawyer assesses in that legal advice 10 minutes there are some clients that um come up to us and they're like i've been here before and again we read that in

the article where we see the clients that look so much more comfortable and they know what they're there for because they are repeat offenders and they've been there a few times and they know what to say in front of the magistrate and

they're not quite intimidated at all and then there's people that really can't speak themselves so it might be a lesser offense but their anxiety is really paralyzing to them and the lawyer makes a judgment call of

i'm actually going to go in and appear for that one so what qualifies a client for an appearance that's a bit more of a gray area and it doesn't always sort of it's never clear-cut

unless as sarah jane pointed out it's a child under the age of 18 then it's no-brainer always always going to appear now what if that child is 17 and and mum and dad lives with mum and dad

and they earn a million dollars a year still doesn't matter that child qualifies okay parents or guardian may choose

to pay for a private lawyer but that child doesn't need to tell their parents that they're even in trouble and that's something that's really important that we acknowledge with clients everything they tell legal aid is

confidential we don't need to call a parent and say oh so-and-so is here and this is what they've been charged with we may want to we may encourage them to

say that they have support but by law the privacy act bounds us binds us from being allowed to okay so everything they say is confidential

um also mental health wards they they have some automatic um advice as well so that's another sort of straight through the gates type thing because when we are the other person

that qualifies also is people that are in custody so people that are in jail they might have money they might not have access to it so we would be giving them legal advice and then referring them on to another person and they're a private

practitioner and they can have a discussion about funding their matter so the court user the client that that appears will have to give us some personal

information and sometimes that can be difficult again this is another really helpful role of court network preparing the clients sitting down with them and having a chat

even on that phone referral service just giving them that pre-warning when you speak to legal aid they will ask you some questions you need to be honest when answering those questions so that they can help

you as best as possible so even just telling them that is actually super helpful to legal aid staff because it just gets rid of a large part of the conversation we want

to spend as much time as possible giving them helpful and useful and practical legal advice and information

um court people people that come to court they can't jump the queue because um unfortunately they've got to pick up the kids from school or something like that

i know it sounds horrible and a bit harsh but that's every second client unfortunately so if we let them all jump the queue it wouldn't be possible we have a priority system

so people with psychiatric disabilities or conditions and people that are there for a family violence matter they will get priority because we don't want victims sitting in court with

somebody that has committed an offence against them longer than they need to and we don't want people with psychiatric mental health issues or conditions

making that sort of situation worse for them than it needs to be then everybody else is really just in order of which they came

also our guidelines can be quite complex and they do change and even it's hard for me to keep up with the changes now that i'm not working in court i think when i started with sarah jane i was

still working in court but i haven't been there now for two years so there's guidelines that change all the time so it's really important even if we think we know a guideline that we refer a client to legal aid duty

lawyer so they can reapply the triage system because just like laws these guidelines can change is there any questions before i move on just to talking about the article

yep there's a there's a question here which is around how many duty lawyers are employed in victoria i suppose i'd like to flip that question around because that's it's a bit like

that's um yeah i've got an idea yeah but are all courts are there access to duty lawyers in all locations in all courts yes but

they vary from court to court so um there's some real rural locations like moammar echuca and what legal aid does and actually funnily enough even at moorabbin and some other locations even though

moorabbin's not rural we have what's called a private duty lawyer system what that is is that we don't have enough staff

employed to provide us a duty lawyer service at that court so legal aid provides funding to private firms private lawyers

to provide that same service free of charge for the community and there's there's um like rosters for example because i've been there at bendigo they rotate one week it's

legal aid staff the network the next week it's a private law firm the following week it's legal aid then private law firm they all follow the same guidelines they all provide the same level of

service and and engaging and triage but they're just a different kind of funding it's just a different way of um doing it again it just comes down to

that funding if we had more funding we'd employ more staff an example of how it looks so at dandenong we have i think last count was about

49 staff members so whilst we have two people at court for duty lawyer we also have two people at court for custody duty lawyer and we have one

person for children's court duty lawyer and we have two people or one person at federal circuit court so that one office provides service at moorabbin frankston federal circuit court family

court magistrates court children's court so of of the 42 49 staff there might be

about 20 odd staff that are lawyers and of that 20 odd staff that are lawyers there might be about 10 that are in court on any given day and you know there might be a thought of oh why don't

you just send more down because the lawyers that aren't at court are at their desk having appointments and working on case law and working on files that are coming up for impending trials

um most lawyers if they work full time they do five duties of fortnight at court so that means they've got five days of fortnight to work out appointments

advice over the phone and casework so it is a very busy job thank you in terms of the article um does anyone want to give some feedback

on what they think or whether they have any questions i know i've referred to it a little bit but are there any thoughts on that um

that two-page article nothing is coming through i think um one of the biggest changes to the way that we train bridget

is that for a lot of our trainees now they haven't yet had any engagement with service privileges yeah so um it is it's it this is really about trying to break

down some of those um concepts really and and i think one of the things that i'm most keen for us to leave today with there's an understanding

that we've all watched a lot of american tv we have a sense of what um you know access to a lawyer is informed by

some you know media rather than what it is and and i think that we need to be able to leave this session today understanding that

the victoria legal aid provides information and has amazing resources that we need to know how to access those how to use those

and to be really clear on um that we do that in a way that's providing legal information um because the legal advice is what um

will will trip us up really yes um yeah and and to leave with that clarity and look for the most part what we've talked about is what we might see and hear

and observe at court what's really important to note is if we're doing a phone referral service or we've got a client talking to us that doesn't have a matter on or even just in passing that someone wants to access

league ladies there's lots as sarah jane points out there's so much that a person can do and access beforehand so one of the first things is is if they don't have any issues with reading english

that they can definitely access our website and our website also can be translated uh well there's certain uh publications that can be translated into different languages um and they'll be the language

sign on our website if you have a look online and they click the sign that translates it into their language and they are able to to

read some information that might be easier but let's just say for english getting onto our website they can access a lot of information about what might happen at court

and how to access our services one of the big ones is calling our helpline which i'm sure you've already got our phone number it's a 1 300 phone number i'm happy to say those that our access

time has now changed we're back to the 8am to 6pm so i know um you had it written down as 5pm and that had happened for a very long

time but it's now changed to 6pm again and calling that phone number is another access point that's where you would get triaged by someone similar to me asking those questions and when i say

you i mean the client asking questions and giving them directions on what to do next on our website we also have a chat box which means that clients can write questions there anyone can write

questions there they can be anonymous or they can be general and it might be that a client has family court and they just type in the words family court and they'll provide a link to parts of our website that give

information on that clients can obviously also go into our offices and that's still the case though it might change in the next fortnight but at the moment it's still the case

and similar to what i've explained over the phone or in person our reception staff would always give them direction as well and similar to yourselves they would be giving legal

information okay when it gets more complex is when a client qualifies for what we call a grant and then we move on to case work and and ongoing appointments and ongoing

engagement with the lawyer but for the most part what we've observed and what we're talking about is that duty lawyer service perfect i'm just going to interrupt you there because the questions come through

and you've just fed into that so anna's put in a question here about is my understanding correct that the duty lawyer court represents client just on the day for however long it

takes yes that's correct it does not take the client's case over days or weeks if that's needed but you've just mentioned there um the the grant

you know so that if your file is there would be some court users where a file would be opened but it would be um obviously not everyone um

but so exactly would that be the duty lawyer yes that's correct that would be the judy lawyer and they would take a file back to their office and then they'd be that contact person for that file

okay okay thank you now the nitty-gritty the little point that i mentioned at the beginning conflict of interest so what does that mean what that what that refers to is that sometimes we have to refer

individuals to a private lawyer or a community legal center because we can't represent them due to a conflict of interest a conflict of interest is brought about because we may

have represented or currently be representing another party in the matter that could be a co-offender or a witness or someone else involved in the matter or possibly even

a partner of the person and maybe they're now ex-partners or maybe there's conflicting stories it's not true that you can't get any free assistance if the other person is helped by legal aid

we have lots of parties that are represented or assisted by victoria legal aid it just might mean that one person is funded to see a private lawyer and one person sees a duty lawyer

or a lawyer from the daily normal office or ringwood or melbourne wherever it might be there is no difference in level of service the difference in service is just based on the fact that we're all human beings

and we're slightly different in the way that we do our roles but in terms of the level of service and the access it's actually the same regardless of where they're from if a court user thinks that legal aid cannot

help them because their partners had help for them we really need court network to encourage that court user to please speak to victoria legal aid regardless

because it is a part of our role even if there is a conflict to make sure they get handed over to somebody that can help them okay can i just add in there that we had a really good example last year bridget

where um because we had a regional intake and you came to that session um where a court

user's um husband had gone to all of the local law firms as part of one of their tactics around making this person's life really difficult

which can happen yeah so this is really important information isn't it that it is um they're able to legal aid is able to facilitate some of those connections you know so

it's not about that person but no elsewhere and our conflict um of interest kind of um has been improved in that it depends on what if a person

just called up and had a conversation it doesn't really mean we can't see their ex partner because that's not really a conflict what would be a conflict is really having quite a lot of information maybe a criminal history

big family detail so we'd have to take on a client to have all that information so even those clients that really do that call around and do try to be harmful to the other person in the psychological way for

instance yes that you know they're wasting their time because we we have ways around it for sure okay that's really great that's good clarification thank you um and i

think really the last kind of most important thing about this is that we do give priority to certain people okay so we give priority to those that have

low incomes those that have complex and intersecting legal and non-legal needs our non-legal need might be their health whether that be physical

mental health well-being psychiatric psychological that can cross over as well or their ability it might be a reading or a learning challenge as well and who are facing more serious or

immediate consequences so a person that's going to get quite an in-depth service might be low income centrelink income they might have a psychiatric issue and they might be facing jail

that's kind of the three of the biggest things they're going to have a file opened they might have some medical reports done they might have further assessments done and they'll have that one lawyer

versus somebody that maybe have a low income a theft charge and no criminal history so they're facing maybe just a fine um the lawyer will still assist them

and still advocate for them but it won't be as in-depth a service as that other person and that's basically as we've mentioned because of funding and that we have limited resources so we can't always help as many people

as we'd want to and we can't always give as much time as what we'd like to but we really have to run this priority and there's other priority clients as well so children and young people being that number one

aboriginal and torres strait islander people people who are experiencing family violence people that are in custody as i've mentioned those with mental illness intellectual disability or an

acquired brain injury i have already mentioned the difficulty reading writing or speaking english and people experiencing homelessness with those about speaking or understanding english i should also

point out that courts can provide interpreters free of charge so it might mean that a client attends can't speak english gets the interpreter organized but it

might mean they have to come back at a later date and legal aid can also organize interpreters for um our appointments so it's really important that we understand that

that's not something that a client needs to do that's something that the court is responsible for it only becomes legal aids responsibility when it's an appointment for us

great so much information bridget so much i know but um hopefully i've answered some sort of myths and we've sort of clarified it as sarah jane points out

some of this will become more valuable to you when you're actually in court so really handle hang on to those articles because if you do become a bit overwhelmed read through that article again and go oh that's right this is what it's about

that's why they're running around and one thing i always point out is every location will be different in the way it sort of functions we follow the same procedures and we give the same advocacy and assistance

and guidelines but at some courts the best person to talk to will be the clerk some courts it'll be the court staff some courts they won't have a clerk it'll only be a duty lawyer

so just when you are there just get to know what that is and they'll probably be another court network staff member that you can talk to about hey who do i stop and refer someone to if i need to refer them to legal aid

because it will be slightly different at each court i think one of the things that um is really unique about this group rigid is that these are for our virtual services so what we set

up last year was a phone service so what we have is pre-court support now so we have people um so this is really really interesting around how our different services are

able to come together that you know they might be able to ring a network or in a team and say look i've got someone who's coming to danger on court do you you know do you know this person or that person

and they can do that collaboration something that you've mentioned that i hadn't really thought about before of how powerful it is is the chat function for our people who are doing the virtual services because they can sit there and chat and

be talking to someone on a phone with a headset and be looking up some of these things yes because court users are so st like the information's there but they're so stressed aren't they they're

just so over yes totally you can use that chat box function yeah because it might just be that they're calling about a criminal matter and you just go criminal court it'll give you a referral straight off

the bat this is where you can get information so i think that's a really valid point sarah jane really important yeah absolutely i hadn't um i hadn't made that connection until you said it and

then i was kind of visualizing um where all of these new people will end up in their service provision i thought oh that would be at their fingertips won't it and i'm finding young people really like the chat box they don't want to talk to

someone they just want to read the information for themselves privately and that's great yeah no that's brilliant so that's um that was a very timely and great

reminder because i will be sharing all of that today well that brings us to the end um unless there's any questions so um

i've got a 2pm meeting that's why it's saying oh that's great that's great monthly meeting so they're like make sure you're on time i'm like all right i might be late sorry but no it has been quite timely so thank you perfect um

bridget i want to thank you so much for your time today and sharing so much really valuable information i will take this recording and pull out some

some messages that uh i i think i can strengthen because our services have changed um as well as some of your information has been updated so i will i'll be doing that but thanks so much

thanks for coming to us from the comfort of your um beautifully decorated you know new workspace it's my son's toy room there's just toys all next to me

i will just say quickly before i go i just want um all the attendees to understand that victoria league lead really does value the service that court network provide please don't feel ever that because

there's lawyers running around that they're all so important because we don't think of ourselves like that we actually really value the help and support and guidance that you provide

community in a court location it is very stressful and the more of us that sort of get together and and collaborate really we are doing better for the whole community so

please know that we do really respect the work that you do and appreciate it wonderful what a great way to finish thank you bridget you take thanks sarah

jane see you sarah and everybody else thank you bye bye