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:
Our Melbourne office has been a substantial part of the Victorian legal profession's coordinated pro bono response to the 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).
We have provided a range of pro bono assistance to Bushfire victims, through legal representation, staffing legal clinics in affected towns, providing community education and providing legal training to other volunteer lawyers. Between February and May 2009, our lawyers ran legal clinics in Alexandra, Yarra Glen and Flowerdale, and conducted insurance advice seminars at Kinglake, Whittlesea and Traralgon.
In the days after the fire, 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. Clayton Utz also provided a table of relevant limitation periods for use by all lawyers involved in Bushfire Legal Help.
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. Three of 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. We recently established a fourth program with Our Place in Sydney.
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.
World Vision Australia is a major pro bono client of the firm.
We recently provided pro assistance on an amazing project which will see carbon sequestration not just tackle 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.
The Australian Employment Covenant - www.fiftythousandjobs.com.au
In the second half of 2008, Clayton Utz prepared the legal documents which constitute the Australian Employment Covenant. The AEC is an ambitious industry-led initiative, launched by the Prime Minister in November 2008, to break the cycles of welfare dependency and poverty in Indigenous Australia, by creating 50,000 real jobs for Indigenous people within two years. It is accompanied by job-specific training programs for Indigenous people in the industry of their choice.
The AEC involves a three way commitment between:
Victims of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault
Each year our Sydney office acts for around 50 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. We have developed a strong referral relationship with Women's Legal Services and two Indigenous legal services – the Bourke/Brewarrina Family Violence Prevention Legal Service and the Walgett Family Violence Prevention Legal Service.
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 are often involved with community organisations in campaigns around significant areas of legal reform. 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.
The Centre’s submission is available at their website.
Partner, Sydney
Levels 19-35, No. 1 O'Connell Street Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
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