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A matter of interest
When weighing up your career options, consider throwing public interest law into the mix. Zoe Lyon speaks to three lawyers from Legal Aid NSW who have discovered the appeal.
WORKING IN a commercial law firm won’t suit all lawyers, and organisations focusing on public interest law, such as Legal Aid NSW, can offer a fulfilling alterative. Though some lawyers know from the get-go that their future lies in public interest law, others test the waters of the private sector before deciding to make the switch.
Monique Hitter is the director of civil law at Legal Aid, a role which involves managing the civil law division’s 93 staff. Her previous experience includes working as a social worker, working as a lawyer at the Marrickville Legal Centre and a brief stint as a pro bono lawyer for a major law firm.
The attraction of Legal Aid for Hitter was the scope of public interest legal work available, which includes some specialist legal services for older persons, homeless people and those with mental health issues.
“The primary reason Legal Aid exists is to provide legal services for socially and economically disadvantaged people and that’s where my passion lies – to do work that promotes access to legal services and ensures that particularly disadvantaged people can protect and enforce their rights,” she said.
Nicole Dwyer began her career working as a solicitor at a number of rural law firms before stopping work for family reasons. She took up a job at Legal Aid when she returned to the workforce, and became the solicitor in charge of the Wagga Wagga office earlier this year.
As with Hitter, the highlight of Dwyer’s job is being able to help those who wouldn’t otherwise have access to legal services. “I like helping out the underdog and the socially and economically disadvantaged clients that we have,” Dwyer said.
“One of the other attractions [of Legal Aid] is that you don’t have to go looking for clients – I’m not worried about marketing and networking and I’m not worried about sending out accounts.”
Dwyer and Hitter, who both have young children, also cited flexible working conditions as a drawcard of working in the public service. Hitter explained that there was flexibility outside Legal Aid’s core hours of 9.30am to 3.30pm and time worked over 35 hours per week could be accumulated as flexi-time.
“You’re not always able to take [flexi-time] because you’ve got big work commitments, but there is this sense that they do really want to encourage work-life balance as much as they can,” said Hitter. “One of the major goals of our organisation is to make sure we do things in keeping with encouraging lawyers to have a work-life balance,” she said.
David Coorey, now a senior lawyer in civil litigation at Legal Aid, has truly tested all the waters, and his resume boasts experience at both a top-tier Australian firm and a UK magic circle firm.
After launching his career with a relatively brief stint at the Crown Solicitor’s Office, Coorey moved to Britain to take up a position at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. A year later he returned to Sydney and was snapped up by Freehills where he worked in the areas of commercial litigation and employment law.
It was during his time at Freehills that he got a taste for community legal work, when he was given the chance to go on secondment to the Kingsford Legal Centre.
“I absolutely loved it. As soon as I got out to Kingsford I thought ‘This it what I really have to be doing’,” Coorey said. “It was supposed to be three months, then it was [extended to] six months, but I was there for a year, which I think is the record.”
Following the secondment he returned to Freehills and at one stage considered joining the bar. However, his time at Kingsford still played on his mind and when his wife became pregnant, he decided to seriously pursue a career in public interest law.
“I thought ‘Well I do really want to work in public interest law’ and I had known about Legal Aid when I was working at Kingsford, so I [made it] my goal to get here,” he said. That goal was fulfilled in 2002 when he joined Legal Aid’s consumer law section.
Coorey’s current position is varied and incorporates not only litigation, but also policy work and community legal education. “It’s a really interesting mix that you probably wouldn’t get anywhere else – it’s an interesting, challenging place to work.”
One of the highlights of his job, he said, is the opportunity he’s had to head up major litigation. “I’ve run a couple of matters, and you’d probably describe them as multimillion-dollar claims, and I’ve got responsibility which a partner might have at a [private sector law firm],” he explained. “You get that responsibility which, in one sense, can be a bit scary, but ultimately it’s very rewarding.”
Coorey believes that his experience at Freehills provided good grounding for his current role. “Coming from Freehills you get everything thrown at you in terms of training. There isn’t any harm if you want to become a public interest lawyer in starting out and getting the training in [a commercial law firm], then testing the waters by getting involved in Kingsford Legal Centre or pro bono work,” he said.
“Ultimately organisations like Legal Aid benefit from it because you are trained up in the basics about what you need to be a good litigator.”
That said, both Coorey and Hitter believe one of the biggest misconceptions about Legal Aid concerns the quality of the lawyers that it attracts, many of whom come from a community sector background.
“Opponents do underestimate us,” Coorey said. “I think we actually have a strategic advantage just because of the fact that people don’t realise that Legal Aid actually has lawyers that mix it with the best of them.”
Hitter concurred: “The lawyers that come from the community sector are, in my experience, very skilled. And Legal Aid does as much as it can to encourage training and we provide a lot of training in-house. You don’t necessarily have to come from the private sector in order to become a highly skilled litigator or lawyer.”
Another misconception of Legal Aid concerns remuneration, which Coorey believes some people in the private sector underestimate.
“I think it’s better than a lot of people expect. Certainly it’s better than the community sector generally,” he said.
Hitter offered another perspective: “You’ve got to look at it from a more holistic point of view – when you think about the benefits of flexi-time, leave entitlements, maternity leave entitlements – put all that together and you get a very, very favourable comparison.”
22-Aug-2008
Related Tags
legal aid , Aboriginal Legal Service
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