LSB December 2021 HR

FEATURE
ability to attract and retain staff. 19 These
trends are likely to only intensify over
coming years as a large proportion of the
senior legal practitioners in RRR areas
have indicated an intention to retire, 20
compounded by many junior lawyers who
have indicated an intention to make RRR
practice a short-term career option only. 21
Addressing issues around the attraction
and retention of lawyers in RRR areas is
important for two reasons: first, having
legal practitioners living and working
within RRR communities is essential to
sustainable, healthy communities. 22 ‘Once
a community loses its doctor, lawyer,
accountant, it becomes difficult to sustain
a vibrant, healthy community.’ 23 Secondly,
lawyers living in these communities play a
vital role to facilitate access to justice for
the local community. In addition, lawyers
are important to RRR areas as they carry
out a large amount of legal aid work,
more than their city counterparts. They
also undertake significant pro bono and
voluntary work within their communities. 24
The shortage of lawyers outside of
the city is adverse in terms of access to
justice for a significant proportion of
Australia’s population, 25 especially Aboriginal
communities. 26 There are concerns regarding
the considerable levels of unmet legal
need – civil, criminal and family – in RRR
communities. 27 Legal practitioners in these
areas undertake a considerable amount of
vital legal aid, pro bono work and voluntary
community work, and a decrease in the
availability of these services is likely to
restrict access to justice in these areas even
further. 28 These issues are compounded for
Aboriginal communities which are more
likely to experience multiple, intersecting
legal problems, including elevated legal
need in areas of, among others, crime, civil,
government, child protection, tenancy,
discrimination, social security, credit and
consumer issues, and family law and family
violence. 29 These ‘acute’ access to justice
issues for Aboriginal communities are
‘heightened in RRR areas where service
gaps are particularly severe’. 30 The access to
justice gaps in RRR communities are also
telling for victims of family violence. 31 ‘It
has been acknowledged that better access
to legal services and remedies can play an
important role in alleviating economic and
social disadvantage.’ 32
These concerns also arise in South
Australia. Morry Bailes, a leading local
lawyer, has observed:
There is a legal black hole in regional
and rural South Australia. It’s a problem
facing the entire country. About
30% of people live outside a major
Australian city… Yet only 10.5% of the
legal profession work in these regions.
Little wonder we have a crisis in our
justice system for rural and regional
residents. These statistics… paint a
truly disturbing picture of the difficulty
regional people have in accessing
lawyers or even recognising that they
have a legal problem. 33
The typical Law School course
does not actively prepare or promote
law students to work with RRR 34 or
Aboriginal communities. There is often
a perception amongst law students
that RRR legal work is ‘inferior’ to city
commercial practice. 35 Such perceptions
of the quality and breadth of RRR legal
work are unjustified, 36 but are widely held.
As one Brisbane law student in a study
remarked: ‘There’s kind of a top tier or
nothing approach which is incredibly
frustrating …’. 37 Another law student
referred to students’ ‘fixation on the big
glass building in the city …’ and their own
belief that ‘the city sets the pace of legal
life.’ 38 As a young lawyer has observed, city
practice is typically the ‘most commonly
marketed avenue presented to [students] at
university and any other options have an
unnecessary and unspoken stigma attached
... there is a common misconception that
anything other than a corporate role in
a top tier city firm is not considered real
legal work.’ 39 These comments are also
applicable in a South Australian context.
Indeed, law students are largely
unaware that working with RRR
communities or Aboriginal communities
is a viable, diverse and worthwhile
employment option as a 2012 Queensland
study found. 40 Whilst there are challenges
such as distance and travel, 41 there are
many benefits in rural and regional legal
practice, notably the diversity and breadth
of the work and quality of the lifestyle. 42
As Paul Boylan, a leading Port Pirie
lawyer, has said:
You get much more responsibility,
much earlier than you otherwise would.
I had one lawyer who by the second
anniversary of her admission to the Bar
and starting to practise law, she’d been
the instructing solicitor on two appeals
to the Full Court of the Family Court,
two to the Full Federal Court and she’d
been instructing in the High Court as
well. That’s unheard-of in the city. 43
There is a need to encourage law
students to think of life outside city
commercial practice and learn about the
quality and breadth of both regional life
and legal practice. 44
THE TRIP
The law student engagement trip was
funded by a one off Faculty of Professions
teaching grant.
On 15 July, 2021, the trip was
made very welcome by the ALRM and
Umeewarra Radio in Port Augusta and
heard from Charlie Jackson and other
local Elders and members of Aboriginal
communities and Rachel Lane and other
lawyers from the ALRM. The session
highlighted to the students the value and
importance of working with Aboriginal
communities and crucially ‘making a
difference’. Chloe Winter took part in
an interview on Umeewarra Radio about
working with Aboriginal communities.
Chloe said: ‘It was very valuable to get to
interact with members of a community
on a deeper, less superficial level, and have
genuine conversation about the need for
change with those who know it firsthand.’
Cayleigh described this as a powerful
and invaluable session in which everyone
took part and was not an experience that
could have been replicated over Zoom.
‘The informal round table discussion
was key to the upfront discussion with
the Elders who shared cultural practices
and moving first-hand experiences of
generational trauma.’
Charlotte elaborated on this session:
Speaking to Charlie Jackson and the
other Elders was an eye opening and
powerful experience. The stories he
shared with us really highlighted the
major disconnect between Aboriginal
Law and Western Law. Charlie described
December 2021 THE BULLETIN 19