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As family and estates law enters a period of rapid transformation, FLENA’s general manager has identified some of the biggest challenges and emerging pressures that will shape the profession’s future – issues it can no longer afford to ignore.
Few areas of legal practice are changing as rapidly as family and estates law.
While legislative reform and the modernisation of court processes continue to reshape the profession, they represent only one part of a much broader transformation underway.
According to Family Law Education Network Australia (FLENA) general manager Victoria Rebellato, a new wave of challenges is emerging that will fundamentally change the way family and estates lawyers practise – and they are challenges the profession needs to start addressing now.
Rebellato warned that family and estates law is entering a new era of complexity, with increasingly sophisticated financial matters and rapidly evolving client expectations shaped by artificial intelligence placing new demands on practitioners.
“There are a few pressures right now. Financial complexity in property matters keeps climbing. Client expectations, shaped by a world of AI, are outpacing how most firms are structured to deliver,” she said.
Beyond the growing complexity of legal practice, Rebellato warned that a less visible challenge is also taking hold across the profession, describing lawyer burnout as a “quiet crisis” fuelled by the emotional toll of helping clients navigate some of life’s most difficult moments.
“Burnout is a quiet crisis in this profession; we ask practitioners to hold huge emotional weight on behalf of clients going through some of the hardest moments of their lives, often without the support structures to sustain that long-term,” she said.
While these pressures are becoming increasingly recognised, Rebellato said one of the profession’s most significant challenges continues to receive far less attention than it deserves: access to justice in regional and remote Australia.
She highlighted that practitioners in these communities are often being stretched to their limits, managing growing caseloads with limited resources while demand for legal services continues to increase.
“One of the big challenges that we think gets the least airtime is access to justice outside the major metros,” she said.
“Regional and rural communities are often served by a handful of stretched practitioners, facing court delays, thin referral networks, and limited access to specialist support.
“I have the benefit of living in one of these regional communities and witnessing this first-hand.”
To help address these challenges, Rebellato said FLENA has partnered with ALA Law and JustFund to launch the Access to Justice Roadshow and Regional Voices Project.
The initiative is designed to amplify the experiences of practitioners and communities across regional Australia, while shining a spotlight on the structural barriers that continue to impact access to legal services.
Commencing in September, the project will travel across the Northern Territory, Western Australia, and South Australia, visiting communities including Tennant Creek, Katherine, Broome, Port Hedland, Albany, and Ceduna, to hear directly from those navigating the realities of regional service delivery.
Rebellato expressed how this initiative will bring greater attention to the barriers facing regional communities, where vast distances, interpreter shortages and limited resources continue to complicate access to timely legal and support services.
“We’re going to listen: to the distance people travel for a single court date, to the interpreter shortages that cause adjournments, to what it actually takes to keep family violence and child protection services reaching communities spread across hundreds of thousands of square kilometres,” she said.
“Practitioners navigating these pressures need a profession that’s actively listening and building infrastructure to support them, and that’s exactly the gap we want to highlight, to encourage attention and discussion on the issue.”
Beyond advocating for greater support across the profession, FLENA has also experienced significant growth in recent years by expanding its practical tools, education offerings, and resources available to members.
Rebellato attributed this growth to FLENA’s focus on listening to practitioners and developing the tools and support they genuinely need, rather than making assumptions about what the profession requires.
“I think it comes down to the fact that we built what practitioners actually asked for, not what we assumed they needed,” she said.
“Practitioners have recognised FLENA isn’t just another membership body. We’re trying to be a genuine partner in how this profession modernises.”
