Each year we provide pro bono legal assistance to over 600 individuals, community organisations and charities. Most of our pro bono clients are individuals referred to us by community legal organisations or who attend one of the drop-in legal advice clinics we conduct around Australia.
The pro bono legal assistance we provide is broad and diverse.
Some highlights include:
30-Year Murder Conviction Quashed by High Court
Andrew Mallard was convicted of murder in 1995 and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. Due to irregularities in the case (relating to the non-disclosure of significant forensic evidence at trial) Clayton Utz was approached to act on behalf of Mr Mallard in an appeal. In 2002 we took on the matter under our pro bono program. At this time, Mr Mallard had been in gaol for approximately eight years.
The Attorney-General referred Mr Mallard's case to the Court of Criminal Appeal of Western Australia and the Reference was heard in 2003. The hearing went for 23 days. Unfortunately the appeal was unsuccessful; the Court of Criminal Appeal upheld Mr Mallard's conviction at trial 3-0. Special leave to appeal was obtained in 2004 and Clayton Utz represented Mr Mallard in a two-day appeal before the High Court of Australia in September 2005. On 15 November 2005, the High Court handed down its decision in Mallard v The Queen, unanimously finding in favour of Mr Mallard's appeal. Mr Mallard was released from gaol in February 2006.
A cold case review later confirmed the true identity of the murderer, and as a result of the WA Corruption and Crime Commission inquiry into Mr Mallard's wrongful conviction, two assistant police commissioners stepped down from their roles.
This is the single largest pro bono case ever undertaken by Clayton Utz and reflects our dedication to making access to justice for all a reality.
Helping Indigenous clients in regional and remote Australia
Our interest in regional and remote Australia was sparked back in 2004 by the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee Report into Legal Aid and Access to Justice. That report highlighted the extreme difficulties for regional and remote communities in obtaining access to legal services.
That regional and remote focus has seen Clayton Utz act in particular for many Indigenous clients across Australia. Recently we have worked with:
The Victorian Bushfires, Queensland floods and Western Australian Floods
Our Melbourne office was a substantial part of the Victorian legal profession's coordinated pro bono response to the 2009 fires, which was set up under the banner of Bushfire Legal Help. This is a joint initiative of Victoria Legal Aid, the Federation of Community Legal Centres, the Law Institute of Victoria, the Victorian Bar and the member firms of the Public Interest Law Clearing House (Vic).
In 2011, our Brisbane office became part of Flood Legal Help. This is a profession-wide response involving the Queensland Law Society, Legal Aid Queensland, the Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House, community legal centres and some in-house legal departments.
We have provided a range of pro bono assistance to Bushfire and Flood victims, through legal representation, staffing legal clinics in affected towns, providing community education and providing legal training to other volunteer lawyers.
In the days after the Fires, we jointly prepared a series of legal factsheets for immediate distribution to the Salvation Army, Red Cross, Community Legal Centres and the 13 relief centres across Victoria, including information on how to reclaim identity documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates, driver's licence, passport, social security etc) and access bank accounts in circumstances where everything had been lost in the fires. Those factsheets were reproduced for the Floods.
And in WA, we seconded a lawyer from our Perth office to travel to Carnarvon at the beginning of January 2011 with Geraldton Resource Centre and the WA Legal Aid Commission, to assist people affected by the worst in 50 years flood of late December 2010. The legal team visited outlying communities and properties and provided information and advice on issues including tenancy, obtaining copies of water-damaged identification documentation, insurance, and access to government benefits and financial counselling.We worked with local microfinancing charity World Education Australia Limited, to realise a fantastic idea which has revolutionised their operations. The project is the creation of an online microfinance loan portal called "Good Return". World Ed has long-term microfinance institution (or MFI) partners in a number of developing countries in our region. The online portal profiles individual loan applicants seeking small loans. (These applicants are identified by the local MFI, and vetted by World Ed). Australians can make loans directly via the website to these micro entrepreneurs. The "loans" are on a no-interest basis, and will be repaid by instalments over 12 months to the original "lender".
Homelessness
Homelessness remains a major social crisis in Australia, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2006) estimating that 105,000 Australians experience homelessness on any given night.
Clayton Utz operates four drop-in legal clinics for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. These clinics are run through the Homeless Persons' Legal Clinic projects of the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH) in Melbourne and the Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House (QPILCH) in Brisbane.
Each of these clinics involves everyone from partners to new graduates, treating clients with respect while helping them with a range of legal issues.
Common matters involve fines, setting up debt payment plans, guardianship issues, victims compensation claims, the recovery of money owed by employers and social security and tenancy issues.
A recent client had been evicted from his boarding house and his landlord was refusing to repay bond money. We helped our client make an application to the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, and eventually the money was returned to him. Our client wrote to us that it was "great to have someone looking out for the little man".
We have acted since 2005 with Street Swags, a charity which distributes swags to homeless people throughout Australia. Founder Jean Madden began the program to combat the effects which a lack of sleep and sleeping on concrete has on physical and mental health. The swags are waterproofed and rolled up to become a bag, with room to store extra belongings while still being discreet enough to protect the dignity of the owner. The Brisbane office has worked with Street Swags to provide advice on a range of corporate issues, including matters relating to the incorporation of the organisation as a charity and obtaining appropriate tax status, employment issues, employment contracts, manufacturing and distribution agreements.
Compensation for Victims of People Trafficking
We are working with the Anti-Slavery Project to seek compensation for women who have been trafficked into Australia and forced into sex slavery. We presently have around a dozen compensation claims on foot for clients who were trafficked from Thailand, and who have been involved in the successful prosecution of brothel keepers under s 270.3(1)(a) of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth).
Victims of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
Each year our Sydney office acts for around 60 clients who have been the victim of domestic violence or sexual assault, to obtain compensation before the NSW Victims Compensation Tribunal. This includes clients in Bourke, Brewarrina and Walgett in outback NSW.
Dealing with clients solely by telephone is not ideal. It is very difficult to obtain the sort of personal and often very sensitive information which is required when you are only a distant voice at the other end of the line. We therefore send our lawyers to these remote towns, to meet face to face with clients and with the legal service staff.
We represented Anaphylaxis Australia Inc (AAI) in the WA Coronial Inquest into the death of a young woman who at died on holiday at Coral Bay, near Ningaloo Reef, 500 kms south of Karratha. The deceased person was allergic to peanuts, and had died from anaphylaxis less than two hours after eating at a local café.
AAI is an advocacy group raising awareness about food allergies in the community. AAI gave evidence before the Inquest about the need for people with severe food allergies to have an appropriate management plan, as it is impossible to totally eliminate the risk of anaphylaxis. The Coroner's recommendations reflected much of the expert evidence presented by AAI about:
Clayton Utz has acted since 2007 on behalf of a number of older Indigenous clients in rural NSW, to bring applications to the Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme. The Scheme was set up by the NSW government to repay wages and entitlements which had been put into Trust Funds held by the Aborigines Protection Board and the Aborigines Welfare Board (AWB) between 1900 and 1969, and which have never been repaid to those Indigenous workers.
One recent success involved our client "Betty", born near Casino in 1934*. At the age of 8, the government records show that Betty was "affected by the jurisdiction of the Aborigines Welfare Board". She was taken from her parents and placed along with her sisters in Cootamundra Girls' Home, one thousand kilometres from where she had grown up. The sisters knew no-one else at Cootamundra.
Betty completed some schooling and from the age of 15 was sent out to do domestic work on various farms in the local area. She worked from 6 am to 6 pm. In the mornings, Betty chopped wood, made a fire, got breakfast for the family, bathed the kids and got them ready for school. Then she did household chores, washed up, laundered clothes, did the ironing, and prepared vegies for tea. In the evenings, she fed the family, washed up and went to bed. Betty never saw any money for her work, although she understood that she would be paid.
No records could be found of Betty's actual trust fund or how much it held, largely due to the comprehensive loss of state archives involving the AWB. We were able to prepare a detailed statutory declaration from Betty and present enough evidence to obtain an ex gratia payment by the Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme.
Sixty two years on, Betty finally received her lost wages.
* Our client's details have been altered in this report
World Vision Australia is a major pro bono client of the firm.
One of our matters provided pro assistance on an amazing project which sees carbon sequestration tackle not just climate change but also community poverty in Africa.
In 2007, World Vision Australia and World Vision Ethiopia executed an Emissions Reductions Purchase Agreement (ERPA) with the World Bank's International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
The project is an elegant and simple solution in response to a global problem. It is focused on the regeneration of what will become the 2,700 hectare Humbo Community Forest in rural southern Ethiopia. The (former) forest was land cleared in the 1960s. Seven local Humbo community districts are regenerating the forest with native trees. The additional forest products to be harvested from the area will immediately provide direct and sustainable economic benefits.
The big picture solution offered by this project is that the seven local communities are able to sell carbon credits from the forest to the BioCarbon Fund of the World Bank. The project aims to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by 2017.
By helping to establish a workable arrangement at a local community level, the model provides an international example of how communities in the developing world can combine environmental sustainability with development aid. Of all the pro bono work which we have undertaken over the last decade, this matter will probably have some of the most widespread impact on peoples' lives.
In February 2009, Clayton Utz assisted the Human Rights Law Resource Centre to prepare its submission regarding proposed Corrections Regulations in Victoria. This submission addressed aspects of the proposed Regulations relating to the treatment of prisoners, including in relation to the use of force, the use of restraints, classification and placement of prisoners, visitation rights and strip searching.
In April 2009, the Human Rights Law Resource Centre was informed by the Department of Justice that provisions of the proposed Regulations had been amended in response to the Centre's recommendations. Consequential changes included requirements that restraints be applied for no longer than is necessary and the use of any restraint must be reported to the Prison Manager; the mandatory consideration of a prisoner's medical and psychiatric condition when deciding placement or making a separation order; the introduction of a ‘checklist' to promote the right to a fair hearing in prison disciplinary proceedings; amendments to improve prisoner access to visitors and correspondence; and a requirement that an officer ‘believe on reasonable grounds' that a strip search is necessary in order for that search to be lawful.
