“Every time when I deal with the CALD community, it’s actually a learning curve and a learning experience for me. As the practice started growing, we were approached by community leaders seeking legal advice and representation in areas such as family day care, criminal matters and child protection,” he said.

“So, from there onwards, we were asked by community leaders to educate the community in certain areas of law through seminars. We found that the communities are quite keen and eager to know about their rights and Australian law.”

Ms Chong added that doing that community work allows them to go beyond just legal work for CALD people.

“I felt that practitioners have a professional responsibility, and we are in a privileged position to assist others as we have the ability to navigate them to the right direction. On a personal level, I feel that especially dealing with litigation, it is like a ground battle where the parties are always at each other’s throat,” she said.

“And you always have to be in the game, which brings us to a different headspace. I feel that doing community work allows us to have some human touch in the things that we do, and most of all, embrace humility. So, we brought that all along in our practice, and we definitely look forward to continuing doing that.”

However, the CALD community has experienced a number of challenges during the pandemic, ineffective communication being a key issue.

“It is a challenge in substituting face-to-face interaction with digital communication as virtual communication reduces the transmission of social cues typical in face-to-face meeting. Face-to-face interaction affords more than verbal cues; it allows pick up on nonverbal cues such as facial expression, gesture, posture and backchannelling cues. This is particularly important in personal legal matters,” Ms Chong added.  

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“I also find that for certain legal disciplinary and depending on the tasks involved, with virtual communication when compared to face-to-face, it takes a longer time for decision-making and problem-solving process, perhaps due to the lack of socio-emotional cues and low immediacy of communication.”

Therefore, Ms Chong said that practitioners in this area should have a number of specialised skills, including cultural competence and communication skills.

“I think one of the skills that practitioners should embrace is cultural competence. Where you have the ability, you respond respectfully and effectively to people in a manner that recognises and values diversity. Whether it be the culture, language, ethnicity, background, religion, whatever that diversity factors are. Because CALD communities, they uphold the importance of a sense of community. And oftentimes, they may have a network of support. So, it is not uncommon that a client comes with their family members or anyone from their community,” she said.

“So, in order for you to do your job, it would be appropriate to courteously explain to the people who comes together with a client, providing their support, by explaining to them the purpose they cannot be involved in certain conversation is probably due to privacy or that you wouldn’t want the client to be influenced by them when you are taking instructions. And the instruction has to be from the client as this is how the legal system works.

“Simplifying the communication is very important. We have to use concrete language rather than abstract language because sometimes, when it’s being translated, there are no such words for it or that it could be longer than it is in one sentence.

“For interpreter-mediated interactions, legal practitioners should be conscious in listening to and reading cues to assess the clients’ understanding, as some concepts or legal context with direct interpreting may be alien to them; or that interpreters may omit, paraphrase or substitute culturally offensive in discussing taboo topics due to cultural sensitivity.”

Mr Mathew echoed a similar sentiment – and said that legal practitioners working with CALD communities should have additional training as well as additional skill sets.

“I think cultural competence training for legal practitioners should be introduced to increase cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity because, for example, giving a wrong cue or wrong body language to certain cultures may offend them. Also, legal practitioners are challenged in striking the balance between our professional roles as legal practitioners and morally our cultural responsibilities towards our clients,” he said.

“Both hard and soft skills are equally important and go hand in hand as practitioners. Having cultural awareness helps to build meaningful relationships and trust as well as increases client satisfaction and appreciation, especially dealing with all sorts of cultures. Australia is a multicultural country with a diverse society.”