Corporate governance is the system by which our organisation is managed, directed and held accountable.
Sound corporate governance means:
- achieving our strategic objectives
- being accountable for our decisions and actions
- fulfilling legal requirements
- ensuring the Legal Aid Queensland Act’s requirements and philosophy are met
- managing risks
- monitoring, reporting on and evaluating our performance
- meeting government and community expectations.
Our corporate governance structure provides leadership in achieving our strategic and operational objectives (see Figure 1 for more information).
Figure 1. Corporate governance structure
Legal Aid Queensland Board
The Legal Aid Queensland Board (the board) is responsible for governing Legal Aid Queensland and ensuring the organisation achieves its objectives. The board is our organisation’s governing body and is responsible to the Attorney-General.
The board decides the organisation’s priorities and strategies, leads policy direction and ensures sound and prudent financial management.
The board usually has five members. Each member has specific knowledge or experience that helps in the organisation’s management. The areas of expertise include public administration, financial management, and law and legal services provision. The board is headed by a chairperson, who is appointed by the Governor in Council. Board members are appointed by the Governor in Council for three-year terms. The board met on 10 occasions in 2019–20 (see Table 1 for more information). The chief executive officer (CEO) and the senior directors (and formerly the deputy CEO) are invited to attend all board meetings. Executive Management Team directors also attend as needed to present papers and discuss issues with the board.
Board members (as at 30 June 2019)
Margaret McMurdo AC
Board chairperson since May 2017
Margaret McMurdo was appointed President, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Queensland from 1998 until 2017 and was Acting Chief Justice of Queensland in 2015.
Margaret graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Queensland in 1976. She began her legal career as a student volunteer in 1974 with the newly formed Aboriginal Legal Service.
In 1976, she became the first female paralegal in the Public Defender’s Office. She was admitted as a barrister in December 1976 and was an Assistant Public Defender from 1977 to 1989. She practised at the Bar from 1989 until 1991 when she was appointed to the District Court of Queensland. In 1993, she also held a commission as a Childrens Court judge.
Margaret has been awarded a number of honorary doctorates and is a founding Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and a member of the American Law Institute. She is patron of Women’s Legal Service, Caxton Legal Service and LawRight’s Civil Justice Fund. In 2017, Margaret was appointed chair of the Board of Governors of Queensland Community Foundation, the state’s largest public perpetual charitable trust. Margaret has been chairing the Victorian Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informers since December 2018.
Allan Welsh
Board member since July 2008
Allan Welsh has led major projects in the public and private sectors for the past 20 years, with extensive experience in managing capital infrastructure, information and business system projects and events. He was awarded a Public Service Medal in the 2008 Australian Honours for his work in managing capital projects in the arts sector.
Sandra Deane
Board member since September 2014
Sandra Deane is an experienced board member, tribunal member and an independent consultant in the energy and legal sectors with extensive private and public sector experience. She brings experience from senior positions (including as CEO) in the corporate (publicly listed, large private and government-owned corporations) and professional (legal) sectors. Sandra was admitted as a solicitor in 1988 and has more than 20 years’ experience in legal practice in corporate and private practice and tribunal roles. She also has more than 15 years’ experience in the energy sector. She brings professional expertise in contract management and negotiation, dispute resolution and compliance. She is currently an external Audit and Compliance Committee Member of the Local Government Association of Queensland Limited and is a part-time member of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Joshua Creamer
Board member since July 2017
Joshua is a descendant of the Waanyi and Kalkadoon nations from North West Queensland. He has been practising as a barrister since 2011. In 2009, Joshua was an Associate to the late Honourable Justice Peter Dutney in the Supreme Court of Queensland.
Joshua has developed a strong reputation as one of the leading lawyers in the country in matters that involve Indigenous Australians. In 2017, Joshua was awarded the National Indigenous Legal Professional of the Year Award. In 2016, he was recognised by Chambers Asia-Pacific as one of Australia’s Outstanding Young Lawyers. In 2013, Joshua received the Griffith University, Outstanding Arts, Education and Law, Young Alumnus of the Year Award. In 2008, he was awarded Griffith University’s Rubin Hurricane Carter Award for Commitment to Social Justice.
Lucia Taylor
Board member since August 2018
Lucia Taylor was admitted as a solicitor in 1991 and is an experienced family law practitioner based in Townsville. She has extensive experience having undertaken administrative decisions for the Child Support Agency for 17 years. Lucia was appointed a Queensland Law Society, Senior Counsellor in 2016 and in 2017 became a member of the James Cook University Human Research Ethics Committee. She has held key positions on community groups including the Townsville Community Legal Service, Zonta, Headspace Townsville and more recently the Queensland Community Foundation, North Queensland Sub-Committee. Lucia practises primarily in the North Queensland region.
|
Legal Aid Queensland Board
|
|
Act or instrument
|
Legal Aid Queensland Act 1997
|
|
Functions
|
Responsible for governing Legal Aid Queensland and ensuring the organisation achieves its objectives. The board decides the organisation’s priorities and strategies, leads policy direction and ensures sound and prudent financial management.
|
|
Achievements
|
Key achievements included:
- approving the draft Legal Aid Queensland Operational Plan 2019–20 and draft Strategic Plan 2020–24
- approving the internal audit strategy
- monitoring work, health and safety incidents and implementation of the workforce plan, ICT strategic plan
and financial strategy
- approving changes to Legal Aid Queensland’s organisational structure
- endorsing the ‘working smarter’ review of Legal Aid Queensland services to investigate how services can
be delivered more efficiently and cost-effectively.
|
|
Financial reporting
|
Not exempted from Audit by the Auditor-General and transactions of the entity are accounted for in the financial statements.
|
|
Remuneration
|
|
Position
|
Name
|
Meetings/sessions attendance
|
Approved
annual fee $
|
Approved
sub-committee
fees if applicable $
|
Actual fees
received1$
|
|
Board chairperson
|
Margaret McMurdo
|
11
(11 board meetings)
|
8829
|
0
|
8829
|
|
Board member, Accommodation Committee chairman
|
Allan Welsh
|
13
(9 board meetings, 4 sub-committee meetings)
|
6851
|
2519
|
9370
|
|
Board member, Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee chairman
|
Sandra Deane
|
15
(11 board meetings, 4 sub-committee meetings)
|
6851
|
2519
|
9370
|
|
Board member, First Nations Committee chairman
|
Joshua Creamer
|
14
(11 board meetings, 3 sub-committee meetings)
|
6851
|
2519
|
9370
|
|
Board member, Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee member
|
Lucia Taylor
|
15
(11 board meetings, 4 sub-committee meetings)
|
6851
|
1961
|
8812
|
|
No. scheduled
meetings/sessions
|
22 (11 board meetings and 11 sub-committee meetings)
|
|
Total out of pocket expenses
|
$7516
|
Table 1. Legal Aid Queensland Board information 2019–20
Accommodation Committee
The Accommodation Committee is a sub-committee of the Legal Aid Queensland Board and acts in an advisory capacity to the board. The committee assesses our long-term accommodation needs and options for office operations throughout the state.
The committee’s responsibilities include:
- assessing and making recommendations about the continued ownership and refurbishment needs of our Brisbane head office at 44 Herschel Street
- assessing sale, purchase and/or leasing options for our Brisbane central business district occupancy needs
- engaging with relevant stakeholders about our accommodation options
- providing advice and assessing the impact of our Brisbane head office’s land and building valuation
- considering significant issues relating to regional office accommodation
- determining the timeframe for the committee’s tenure
- engaging external contractors to help with assessments as needed.
The committee comprises Legal Aid Queensland Board member Allan Welsh (chairman).
The meeting is also attended by:
- CEO Anthony Reilly
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Legal Practice senior director Nicky Davies
- Chief finance officer (CFO) Gavin Holdway
- Facilities and procurement manager Terry Kelly.
Allan Welsh is the board member appointed to the committee and received remuneration for his attendance and representation in addition to the remuneration he received for attending board meetings.
Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee
The Audit, Risk and Compliance Committee is a sub-committee of the Legal Aid Queensland Board and acts in a review and advisory capacity to the board. The committee provides independent assurance and assistance to the board on our financial administration and reporting, audit control and independence, legal compliance, internal controls, and risk oversight and management.
The committee’s key achievements in 2019–20 included:
- continuing to review the charter annually to ensure ongoing effectiveness of the committee’s authority, objectives and responsibilities
- reviewing the 2018–19 end of financial year statements before signing by the board chairperson and CFO
- reviewing the external auditor’s recommendations from the 2018–19 audit and 2019–20 interim audit
- reviewing the organisation’s strategic risks register and overseeing the register’s maintenance
- reviewing the compliance assurance tools and endorsing the ongoing bi-annual compliance reporting program.
The committee comprises:
- Legal Aid Queensland Board member Sandra Deane (chairman)
- Legal Aid Queensland Board member Lucia Taylor
- a Queensland Treasury representative
- a Department of Justice and Attorney-General Financial Services representative
- Alison D’Costa, external committee member, independent audit and risk specialist (1 July 2019 – 12 November 2019)
- Jeanette Shanahan, external committee member, independent financial management, regulatory compliance and audit practices specialist.
Sandra Deane and Lucia Taylor are board members appointed to the committee and received remuneration for their attendance and representation in addition to the remuneration they received for attending board meetings. There are three other external committee members. The representatives from Queensland Treasury and the Department of Justice and Attorney-General are public servants and did not receive remuneration for attending meetings. External committee member Alison D’Costa received $500 remuneration in 2019–20.
The meeting is also attended by:
- CEO Anthony Reilly
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- CFO Gavin Holdway
- Governance manager Stephen Shirvington.
The committee operated in line with its charter and met four times during the year. The charter is based on Queensland Treasury’s Audit Committee Guidelines and s30 of the Financial and Performance Management Standard 2019.
First Nations Advisory Committee
The First Nations Advisory Committee is a sub-committee of the Legal Aid Queensland Board and acts in an advisory capacity to the board. The committee leads the ongoing development of Legal Aid Queensland’s cultural capability in providing best practice legal services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The committee’s responsibilities include:
- monitoring the First Nations Strategic Plan 2018–22
- reporting to the board about the plan’s implementation
- providing advice to the board about issues relating
to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander strategies
and policies.
The committee comprises:
- Legal Aid Queensland Board member Joshua Creamer (chairman)
- representatives from two community organisations that provide general help to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- an Indigenous Lawyers Association of Queensland representative
- two Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employee representatives—one lawyer and one administrative officer.
Other stakeholders and staff members attend meetings to provide specialist advice on matters as needed.
Joshua Creamer is a board member appointed to the committee and received remuneration for his attendance and representation in addition to the remuneration he received for attending board meetings.
Executive Management Team
The Legal Aid Queensland Act 1997 creates the position of CEO and gives the position responsibility, under the board, for managing Legal Aid Queensland’s day-to-day administration, providing legal services to legally assisted people, and arranging and supervising the legal services provided by Legal Aid Queensland lawyers.
The CEO is supported in this role by the Executive Management Team. The team’s functions are to:
- monitor our strategies, activities and performance to ensure legal assistance is provided to financially disadvantaged people in the most effective, efficient and economical way
- review and approve policies and standards and ensure these are implemented so we meet our statutory obligations
- ensure management systems and practices are effective and reflect ethics obligations and the Code of Conduct
- oversee our budget and monitor financial performance
- promote, sponsor and develop a culture of risk management, service delivery improvement and innovation to ensure we have an organisational culture and environment that attracts and retains high-performing employees
- consider and make decisions on significant issues affecting the organisation
- communicate important information to staff.
The team meets fortnightly and comprises:
- CEO Anthony Reilly
- Legal Practice senior director Nicky Davies
- Family Law and Civil Justice Services director Toni Bell
- Criminal Law Services director Peter Delibaltas
- Public Defender Rob East
- Grants director Louise Martin
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Information and Advice Services director Katrina Smith
- CFO Gavin Holdway
- Communication and Community Legal Education manager Amanda Catania.
The meeting is also attended by Governance manager Stephen Shirvington.
Finance Committee
The Finance Committee monitors and reviews our financial, budget and performance processes.
The committee’s responsibilities include:
- overseeing the annual budget preparation and recommending its endorsement by the CEO and approval by the board
- ensuring our budget is framed to maximise achieving objectives outlined in our strategic plan and government priorities
- ensuring the budget is effectively managed so we achieve budget targets and comply with government requirements
- monitoring and reporting on our financial performance and position, identifying key financial performance drivers and establishing measures for determining success
- monitoring compliance with external financial reporting requirements.
The committee comprises:
- CEO Anthony Reilly (chairman)
- Legal Practice senior director Nicky Davies
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Grants director Louise Martin
- CFO Gavin Holdway.
The meeting is also attended by:
- Financial Services and Business Analysis manager Melissa Gill
- Principal financial accountant Yin Mand Ng.
Information Communication and Technology Steering Committee
The Information Communication and Technology (ICT) Steering Committee ensures information technology (IT) and communication operations, investments and initiatives are aligned with Legal Aid Queensland’s strategic objective of building on our business capability and sustainability.
The committee’s responsibilities include:
- providing corporate governance for planning, approving and prioritising significant ICT investments and initiatives
- ensuring whole-of-organisation coordination and oversight of ICT and its deployment within the organisation
- ensuring ICT investments and initiative proposals:
- are and remain consistent with the organisation’s strategic plan, priorities, budget strategy and resourcing capability
- are responsive to identified client and staff needs
- fully consider people management, change management and communication priorities
- ensuring whole-of-organisation engagement with the organisation’s ICT priorities and challenges
- monitoring IT service delivery performance against approved targets and initiating corrective action where needed.
The committee comprises:
- CEO Anthony Reilly (chairman)
- Legal Practice senior director Nicky Davies
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Grants director Louise Martin
- Information and Advice Services director Katrina Smith
- Chief information officer Andrew Michajlow
- Records and Information Management manager Nancy Taia
- a Department of Justice and Attorney-General representative.
The meeting is also attended by:
- Communication and Community Legal Education manager Amanda Catania
- Technical operations manager Paul Ninnes
- Business engagement manager Rae Fletcher
- Principal facilities and procurement officer Jeffrey Patterson.
People, Culture and Capability Committee
The People, Culture and Capability (PCC) Committee determines Legal Aid Queensland’s approach to support the strategic objective of building on our business capability and sustainability. The committee considers organisational issues relating to resourcing, performance, structure, culture and skills development, and aims to meet organisational needs while engaging employees.
The committee’s responsibilities include:
- guiding our workforce plan’s development, monitoring and evaluation
- ensuring resource levels, mix and allocation adequately support the organisation’s current and future needs
- maintaining an awareness of PCC trends, assessing their applicability for Legal Aid Queensland and implementing initiatives for continuous improvement
- approving new and updated PCC policies and procedures in line with the strategic framework
- noting operational PCC metrics and key performance indicators
- encouraging a culture of performance through active people management and development
- ensuring the organisation complies with relevant legislation and directives.
The committee comprises:
- CEO Anthony Reilly (chairman)
- Legal Practice senior director Nicky Davies
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Criminal Law Services director Peter Delibaltas
- Grants director Louise Martin
- Information and Advice Services director Katrina Smith
- Family Law and Civil Justice Services director Toni Bell
- PCC assistant director Kelly Camden
- Senior advisor Margaret Hornagold.
Work, Health and Safety Committee
The Work, Health and Safety Committee provides a consultative forum (with particular reference to the requirements of the Work, Health and Safety Act 2011) that can effectively address arising health and safety matters as well as recommend proactive initiatives to promote health and safety in Legal Aid Queensland.
The committee’s responsibilities include:
- helping to develop, monitor and review health and safety policies and procedures
- considering proposals for, or changes to, the workplace, policies, work practices or procedures, which may affect the health and safety of employees
- considering measures for training and educating employees about health and safety
- promoting the importance of health and safety among management and employees
- monitoring Legal Aid Queensland’s health and safety performance
- reviewing the circumstances surrounding workplace incidents and hazards referred to the committee for review
- helping to resolve health and safety issues.
The committee comprises:
- Principal consultant (Work Health and Safety) Rosemary Mason (chair)
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren (management representative)
- Senior lawyer Darren Lewis (southern regional offices representative)
- Criminal lawyer Craig Ryan (northern regional offices representative)
- Lawyer Jason Czinki (Basement/Ground – 44 Herschel St Brisbane)
- Senior consultant (rehabilitation) Janice Hawes (Level 1/2 – 44 Herschel St Brisbane)
- Criminal Law Services coordinator Patrick O’Brien (Level 3/4 – 44 Herschel St Brisbane)
- litigation support officer Christopher Pell (420 George St Brisbane)
- Conference organiser Merrilyn Cox (193 North Quay Brisbane)
- Principal procurement and facilities officer Jeffrey Patterson
- Senior procurement and facilities officer Delina Smail
- Facilities and assets officer Emma Vallance (Brisbane representative)
- Security officer
- HR officer Jenni Nobbs (secretariat).
External scrutiny
We are subject to all of the external accountability mechanisms that apply to a statutory body in Queensland, including regular budget and performance updates with Queensland Treasury and the Department of Justice and Attorney-General.
Accountability mechanisms that complement the internal corporate governance framework include:
- external audit and certification
- judicial review of administrative decisions
- the Queensland Ombudsman
- the Crime and Corruption Commission Queensland
- Parliamentary Estimates Committee Hearings
- the Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee
- the Legal Services Commission
- public performance reporting, for example, through this annual report and the annual Service Delivery Statement.
Human Rights Act
The key provisions of the Human Rights Act 2019 began on 1 January 2020. The Act’s main objects are to:
- protect and promote human rights
- help build a culture in the Queensland public sector that respects and promotes human rights
- help promote a dialogue about the nature, meaning and scope of human rights.
Legal Aid Queensland is committed to human rights principles. To fulfil this commitment, and further the objects of and ensure compliance with the Act, we have adopted the following measures:
- setting up a Human Rights Act Implementation Working Group under the CEO’s direction, with membership from across the organisation
- drafting a Human Rights Policy
- reviewing policies for compliance, including our case management and client service standards
- updating internal procedures to improve alignment with the Act’s principles and requirements
- implementing staff awareness measures and compulsory staff training.
In preparing for the start of the Human Rights Act, we made changes to our complaints systems and processes to ensure we could capture and effectively address any human rights complaints received. We did not receive any human rights complaints in 2019–20.
Community legal education
CLE activities are an integral part of the services offered by Legal Aid Queensland. Our CLE activities are coordinated through a strategy that responds to priority client groups and legal problems and aims to:
- improve community understanding of the law
- reduce litigation and costs to the justice system
- help community members to understand their legal rights and responsibilities and how to access legal help if they need it
- help stakeholders to understand our services and how to access them.
Our CLE Strategy is delivered through:
- CLE activities and engagement with priority groups including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities
- legal information sessions and webinars for community members and community, health and education workers
- collaborative projects that focus on increasing awareness of the law and our services within more hard-to-reach communities
- connecting with existing networks and establishing new networks through strong relationships
- participation in community events such as Homeless Connect
- web-based legal information and multimedia resources
- written materials including factsheets and legal information guides.
The NPA’s focus on prevention, early intervention legal services and collaboration has been a key driver for the strategy and coordinating our CLE work.
During the year we:
- worked with Indigenous service providers and networks to improve access to our specialist services, like child protection, and facilitated CLE through relationship building and using existing project resources like Blurred Borders
- participated in community engagement meetings with service providers, including service delivery ‘hubs’ and co-located services in regional areas to provide information about our services and delivering CLE
- facilitated collaborative service delivery opportunities and CLE skills sessions as part of our CLE legal assistance forum – a specialist forum of the Queensland Legal Assistance Forum (QLAF)
- distributed editions of our e-newsletter Head Note to stakeholders
- increased our social media presence to promote our resources and key legal information
- participated in community events across Queensland including Homeless Connect, Finance Fairs, Musgrave Park Family Fun Day, Regional Council community events and other NAIDOC Week regional events, and the Mosaic Multicultural Festival
- coordinated our CLE webinar program for community, health and education workers; we planned and delivered six webinars and YouTube videos on topics like young people and the law, understanding the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and our services, exploring Queensland’s new Human Rights Act, common consumer leases and ‘lemon laws’, Buy Now Pay Later and other loan products, practical tips for caseworkers supporting clients living with domestic and family violence, credit reports and Legal Aid Queensland’s services
- delivered 158 CLE activities to 8482 people and produced 50 resources in response to community agency requests and identified need; topics included Legal Aid Queensland’s services, young people and the law, cyber bullying and sexting, domestic and family violence, dealing with clients with impaired capacity, consumer law, mortgage stress, human rights, and credit reporting
- coordinated and administered the CLE Collaboration Fund’s 10th round to resource collaborative initiatives and partnerships to extend the reach of our CLE work. The fund allows us to resource community legal centres (CLCs), the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (ATSILS) and Regional Legal Assistance Forums (RLAFs) and specialist forums to educate priority communities across Queensland. The eight funded projects will deliver CLE activities and resources to help tenants in regional Queensland, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and communities, young women who are pregnant and parenting and deliver CLE practice professional development to legal assistance workers in regional and remote areas.
Discrete assistance
Information and referral
Legal Aid Queensland provides comprehensive statewide free legal information and referral services to disadvantaged Queenslanders. Our legal information and referral services can be accessed online via the Legal Aid Queensland website (www.legalaid.qld.gov.au), by phone through our client contact centre or in person at one of our 14 offices throughout metropolitan and regional Queensland.
The Legal Aid Queensland website complements our information and referral services by providing comprehensive legal information and a statewide network of referral agencies. Clients can also access information in person by visiting one of our offices or community access points.
Website
Our website allows all Queenslanders to access accurate legal information and service provider referrals.
The website includes features such as:
- mobile accessibility, making the site easy to read on smart phones and tablets
- efficient search functionality, where users can simply type in what they are searching for without the need to understand where the information is located on the site
- a quick exit button on the right of each page, which allows users who are viewing sensitive information to quickly exit the site and redirects them to another website
- a built-in screen reader and translation tool called ‘Browsealoud’, which will read out our content to users (especially useful for people with vision impairments or low literacy levels and people from a non-English-speaking background)
- a ‘For lawyers’ section, which includes announcements, key policies and procedures (like the Grants Handbook, best practice guidelines and case management standards) for our preferred supplier lawyers
- a ‘Find a lawyer’ search feature, which allows users to locate a preferred supplier law firm or CLC near them
- legal information written in plain language to make it easier to use and understand.
During the year, our website was accessed 1,708,032 times with 3,166,167 pages being viewed.
Client contact centre
Our client contact centre is based in Brisbane and operates Monday to Friday during business hours.
The client contact centre answered 139,003 calls in 2019–20 and provided 81,562 legal information and referral services to clients.
The team also provided 946 legal information and referral services via email.
We continued to give prisoners in correctional centres priority access to our client contact centre to reduce their waiting time. Prisoners are considered highly vulnerable clients as they have extremely limited access to legal services and support and are at a high risk of social exclusion and financial disadvantage. Prisoners’ call times are restricted and time waiting in a queue counts towards their call limit and impacts their capacity to deal with their legal issues.
In 2019–20, we continued our partnership with the Queensland Police Service as a community service provider for the Police Referrals Management Service. The service helps people who come into contact with police and other community agencies and organisations, and who require support for legal issues. During the year, we handled 3029 referrals from this program.
We also worked to improve our business processes and systems to further streamline information and advice delivery to clients. The changes included:
- continuing to improve our intake process and referral pathways
- continuing our monthly ongoing training program with specialist sessions on psychological wellness, cultural awareness and human rights
- using videoconferencing and recording technology for regional front counter staff to participate in ongoing training sessions
- providing training for new front counter staff to support them to deliver face-to-face services at regional front counters
- continuing to streamline the call management process using a client-focused call pathway
- improving specialist reporting to allow improved analysis of incoming calls and service delivery trends.
Client Assistance Service
This year, we continued to help some of our particularly vulnerable clients, especially those with multiple legal issues, through our Client Assistance Service. The service is targeted to clients who need extra help accessing legal help. The Client Assistance Service triages the client’s legal problems and provides the support they need to ensure they can access timely and appropriate legal services. This year, the service continued to grow, providing support to 347 clients. To meet the demand, several client information officers from the client contact centre have received specialist training to help clients who have been referred to the service.
Your Story Disability Legal Support
In September 2019, Legal Aid Queensland started a new service helping people to share their experiences with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. The service has been named ‘Your Story Disability Legal Support’ and is a free and independent national legal service jointly delivered by National Legal Aid and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS). Clients access the service online via the Your Story Disability Legal Support website (www.yourstorydisabilitylegal.org.au) or by calling the national Your Story Disability Legal Support information line.
The service has staff in each legal aid commission in Australia and in Aboriginal legal services around the country. Online and phone inquiries are answered by a small team of client information officers based at Legal Aid Queensland who have completed specialist disability awareness and trauma-informed practice training.
Your Story Disability Legal Support answered 1392 calls from 844 clients in 2019–20 and 496 callers identified as a person with disability. Your Story Disability Legal Support provided 1,184 legal information and referral services to clients during 2019–20.
Legal advice and legal task services
Financially disadvantaged Queenslanders can access our free legal advice and legal task services by telephone, including through the National Relay Service, by videoconference or face-to-face at Legal Aid Queensland offices and at designated outreach services.
Figure 7. Legal advice and legal tasks services 2019-20
We provide free legal advice to eligible clients in:
Criminal law
- Criminal charges in the Magistrates, District and Supreme Courts
- Youth justice
- Traffic matters
- Mental health law
Family law
- Parenting issues (eg arrangements about children)
- Relationship issues (eg divorce, property settlement)
- Domestic and family violence
- Child support and maintenance
- Child protection
- Family dispute resolution
Civil law
- Anti-discrimination and human rights
- Farm and rural debt issues
- Social security appeals
- Peace and good behaviour
- Victim Assist
- Motor vehicle property damage
- Consumer and debt disputes
- Employment
- National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
In 2019–20, we provided legal advice and legal task services to 36,643 people.
The legal advice service is primarily provided by our Brisbane-based First Advice Contact Team (FACT), specialist legal teams and regional offices.
FACT provides face-to-face advice to eligible clients at our Brisbane office and remote legal advice via a statewide telephone service. FACT also provides legal task services for people who might need help with preparing letters and other documents following initial legal advice. They also help as domestic and family violence duty lawyers as needed.
Prison Advice Service
Our Prison Advice Service primarily uses videoconferencing to provide legal advice services to people in Queensland’s prisons. Videoconferencing reduces travel time and provides cost savings. The Prison Advice Service and some regional advice lawyers also provide face-to-face advice services at designated prisons.
In 2019–20, the Prison Advice Service provided 1710 advice services to Queensland prisoners.
Refugee and Immigration Legal Service advice referrals
We worked with the Brisbane based Refugee and Immigration Service (RAILS) to provide a warm referral pathway for clients who have family law, domestic violence or child protection issues. The lawyers provide advice through these referrals pathways and help clients apply for legal aid (if appropriate).
Victim Assist advice clinic
We provide specialist legal advice and minor assistance to victims of crime about applications for financial help to Victim Assist Queensland. We provide a weekly Victim Assist telephone advice clinic.
Consumer advice clinic
During 2019–20, we continued to provide telephone advice clinics five days a week, and face-to-face consumer advice clinics at our Inala, Woodridge and Ipswich offices. We provided advice about:
- mortgage stress and housing repossession
- debt and debt collection practices
- credit cards and personal loans
- car loans
- small amount (payday) loans and consumer leases
- telephone and other utilities contracts
- insurance including home and contents, car insurance and funeral insurance
- Australian Consumer law including faulty cars, unsolicited consumer agreements and training colleges and courses
- bankruptcy and part IX agreements.
Anti-discrimination advice clinic
During the year, we continued to provide specialist advice clinics about state and federal anti-discrimination laws three days a week. From January 2020, we also provided advice about state human rights protections in these clinics.
We also provide a specialist advice clinic one afternoon a week through an arrangement with the Queensland Human Rights Commission (QHRC). The clinic is available to clients whose complaints have been accepted by the commission. Clients receive advice face-to-face or via telephone about their complaint, the complaint process, the conciliation process and how to proceed to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT). During these clinics, we also provide minor assistance to clients to help facilitate their access to justice.
Employment law advice clinic
We provide specialist legal advice and task assistance to federal system employees about federal employment law matters under the Fair Work Act 2009, including unfair dismissal, general protections, bullying, discrimination, civil penalty provision breaches, stand downs, flexibility arrangements and JobKeeper. We also provide advice on entitlements and disciplinary processes, and help clients apply for legal aid if appropriate. We provide telephone advice clinics five days a week. We also provide a specialist advice clinic three days a week through the Fair Work Commission’s Workplace Advice Service.
Social security appeals advice clinic
During the year, we established a specialist in-house legal advice clinic that focusses on providing advice to clients who do not yet have an appeal before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), including those who need help to lodge an appeal with the tribunal. This allows clients to achieve an early resolution rather than having to wait until their appeal reaches the tribunal. The clinic also supports clients whose appeal was unsuccessful and who are unsure how to progress their matter.
We also continued to provide social security appeal advice clinics in collaboration with the AAT and Basic Rights Queensland. We provide clinics at the AAT’s Social Services and Child Support Division and General Division two days each week. These clinics help clients who may be eligible for a grant of aid for their General Division appeal. The clinic at the Social Services and Child Support Division provides advice and minor assistance to clients who are representing themselves and many appeals are resolved at this level. We also refer vulnerable clients with merit to Basic Rights Queensland for casework assistance.
NDIS advice clinic
We continued to provide an in-house NDIS advice clinic one day a week for clients who have received their National Disability Insurance Agency internal review decisions but who have not yet lodged an appeal before the AAT. We also help those who need help to lodge an appeal with the tribunal.
During the year, we also provided NDIS appeals advice clinics through an arrangement with the AAT. This weekly advice clinic helps clients who have lodged external reviews in the AAT.
At these clinics we provide specialist NDIS advice to participants in the NDIS, prospective participants, and nominees in relation to their appointments and, if appropriate, help them apply for legal aid.
Legal Advice Referral Pathways Program
We continued to provide our Legal Advice Referral Pathways Program, which helps vulnerable clients, particularly women who have experienced domestic and family violence, to receive priority legal advice. The program operates in 10 locations around the state—Brisbane, Caboolture, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Woodridge, Maroochydore, Toowoomba, Bundaberg, Mackay and Townsville.
Women’s Domestic Violence Court Assistance Service and Application Assistance Program
During the year, we provided legal advice, support and information to women dealing with domestic and family violence matters and related child protection and family law matters, including through the Application Assistance Program and the Women’s Domestic Violence Court Assistance Service.
The Application Assistance Program helps women applying for domestic and family violence protection orders in the Brisbane Magistrates Court by:
- helping women prepare and lodge applications for domestic and family violence protection orders
- providing support for women in court
- helping women with risk assessments and safety planning
- referring women to legal and support services.
The Women’s Domestic Violence Court Assistance Service provides free and confidential help to all women who attend the Brisbane Magistrates Court for domestic and family violence matters. The service is available to all women applying for, or responding to, a domestic and family violence protection order, and helps them:
- access the court’s safety facilities
- understand what protection orders are, including their conditions and what to do if an order is breached
- understand the court process, including support and information
- talk to the police prosecutor and court staff
- make a safety plan
- access relevant legal and community services for crisis counselling and emotional support
- complete applications for legal aid.
Child Protection Early Legal Service
During the year, the Brisbane-based Child Protection Early Intervention Program changed its name to the Child Protection Early Legal Service. The service continued to focus on providing legal advice and advocacy for vulnerable parents early in child protection interventions. The team’s lawyers work collaboratively with community-based support agencies to make sure the program reaches vulnerable parents involved, or at risk of becoming involved, with the child protection system. Early legal support involves advocating for parents to receive support and guidance to keep their children safe so that statutory child protection intervention occurs only as a last resort. This support may involve legal advice and help before the start of court proceedings.
Child Protection Outreach Legal Service
The Child Protection Outreach Legal Service provides legal advice services to Mount Isa, Mackay, Longreach, Emerald, Biloela, Gladstone, Kingaroy, Cherbourg, Murgon, Cleveland, Roma, Charleville and Cunnamulla. The service also provides regular Child Protection Duty Lawyer Services in Gladstone, Mackay and Cleveland. The service is provided by Brisbane-based lawyers who regularly fly in and out of regional Queensland.
We have established referral pathway partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including the Director of Child Protection Litigation, the Office of the Child and Family Official Solicitor and the Office of the Public Guardian to help clients in these areas to get legal advice.
Child support advice clinic
We continued to provide child support advice two days each week. The clinic provides people with legal advice about reviewing child support decisions, child support agreements, paternity and enforcing outstanding child support payments. Lawyers provide advice to clients on their prospects of success and/or evidence, and if appropriate, help them apply for legal aid.
Family law advice clinic
We continued to provide legal advice each week to people experiencing complex family law issues. Lawyers provide advice to clients on their prospects of success and/or evidence, and if appropriate, help them apply for legal aid.
Domestic and family violence advice
During the year, we continued to provide specialist domestic and family violence advice services five days a week to help those affected by domestic and family violence and those who are responding to an application for a domestic and family violence order.
Youth Legal Advice Hotline
Our Youth Legal Advice Hotline continued to provide legal advice and support to young people, and assistance to youth justice stakeholders and Queensland Police. The hotline was established in November 2017 to help young people with improved access to early legal advice with the aim of increasing the likelihood of their issues reaching an early resolution, and promoting diversionary options or bail release for young people suspected by police of having committed an offence. Following new laws requiring Queensland Police to notify a legal aid organisation that a child is in custody for questioning, the hotline operating hours were expanded in December 2019 to provide services on a 24 hour basis from Friday until Sunday afternoon. The hotline now operates Monday to Thursday from 8am to 9pm and from Friday 8am to Sunday 5pm. During the year, staff provided early legal advice and help for 1276 matters.
Duty lawyer services
Criminal Law Duty Lawyer Service
Our Criminal Law Duty Lawyer Service operates in 99 Queensland Magistrates and Childrens Courts and plays a crucial role in our youth and adult justice systems. The service offers free initial legal advice and representation to people charged with criminal and serious traffic offences who are on bail or in custody in Queensland. Duty lawyers represent people on guilty pleas, make bail applications and request remands for clients.
Duty lawyer services are provided by our in-house lawyers, authorised private lawyers and the ATSILS who deliver services under roster or tender arrangements.
We are committed to case conferencing and mediating matters with the prosecution to ensure our clients have their legal issues resolved as soon as possible. This can have significant sentencing benefits for clients and can also result in savings to the criminal justice system by avoiding court time being wasted. It also means witnesses and victims do not have to go through the stress of attending court.
Family Law Duty Lawyer Service
Our Family Law Duty Lawyer Service provides help to self-represented litigants in the Family Court of Australia and the Federal Circuit Court throughout Queensland for family law matters. We provide services in Brisbane, Southport, Ipswich, Maroochydore, Toowoomba, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns.
The duty lawyer service provides information, legal advice, referrals and in some cases, representation for clients with matters in court that day. We also help people complete their own forms and documents, negotiate and settle consent orders, and seek adjournments. We help people complete applications for legal aid or access our review process if they have previously been unsuccessful with applications for aid.
Family Advocacy and Support Services
The Family Advocacy and Support Services operate in the Commonwealth law courts in Brisbane, Townsville and Cairns. This is a federal government funded service focusing on giving more and earlier help to clients impacted by family violence.
The service recognises people coming to the family law courts need more than just legal help—it involves lawyers and social support workers who can work together to address the client’s legal and non-legal needs.
The service provides legal advice and help for unrepresented people on their court date, complementing the Family Law Duty Lawyer Service. Legal help is also provided for clients who are not in court but have a very urgent family law issue, such as seeking recovery, or airport watch list orders for children.
Lawyers give people information and legal advice, negotiate with other parties, prepare simple court documents and represent people in court (in some situations). Support workers can help clients with safety planning and referrals for their social support needs. The service continues to provide a wrap-around legal and social support service to clients who need urgent help.
Domestic and Family Violence Duty Lawyer Service
We continued our role as a key partner involved in the Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Courts at Southport, Beenleigh, Townsville, Mount Isa and Palm Island. We operate duty lawyer services to support clients and the court. The service gives people access to free legal help before their court appearance. The service’s clients include those affected by domestic and family violence and those who are responding to an application for a domestic and family violence order. In Southport, the service also provides legal help to defendants charged with breaching domestic and family violence orders and related criminal cases. The duty lawyers provide legal advice, representation and referrals to other legal and support services for people appearing before the specialist courts.
This year, the duty lawyers in the Specialist Domestic and Family Violence Courts have helped 10,671 people appearing before the court for civil domestic and family violence matters.
We also operated domestic and family violence duty lawyer services in 25 other court locations around Queensland.
The duty lawyers provide free legal information and advice, help clients fill out forms and documents needed for that day in court, discuss the clients’ eligibility for ongoing support from Legal Aid Queensland in the domestic violence matter and other related legal problems, and provide referrals to appropriate support services. In some circumstances, the duty lawyer may also appear in court on the client’s behalf for their domestic violence matter.
The duty lawyer services are provided in the 30 courts by in-house lawyers and lawyers from preferred supplier law firms and CLCs. Providing legal help and referrals early in the court process helps applicants and respondents to better understand their options and the legal implications of these options. It also helps people to connect with support services early to keep them and their children safe.
Child Protection Duty Lawyer Service
We operated the Child Protection Duty Lawyer Service in Brisbane, Ipswich, Southport, Maroochydore, Toowoomba, Caboolture, Pine Rivers, Rockhampton, Townsville and Cairns Childrens Courts.
The Child Protection Outreach Legal Service provided duty lawyer services in Mackay, Gladstone and Cleveland.
The duty lawyers provide free legal help to parents and young people before they appear in court for their child protection matter.
The service is a court-based advice model where lawyers provide free legal information and advice, help people fill out forms and documents needed for that day in court and also talk to the clients about their eligibility for ongoing legal representation from Legal Aid Queensland. In some circumstances, the duty lawyer may also appear in court on the client’s behalf for their child protection matter.
The Child Protection Duty Lawyer Services are provided by in-house lawyers and lawyers from preferred supplier law firms and CLCs. Lawyers being available to provide advice to people about their child protection issues help the clients to be properly informed before going into court, to feel more confident negotiating the legal process and more accepting of the outcomes.
Facilitated resolution processes
Resolving family law problems through dispute resolution processes
Legal Aid Queensland is a national leader in providing lawyer-assisted family law dispute resolution. We provide a statewide lawyer-assisted family dispute resolution program. We aim to resolve family law disputes before matters go to court or before a final hearing if court proceedings have started. The program achieved an outstanding result in 2019–20, with 78 percent of matters achieving an early resolution.
We have dispute resolution conference organisers in Brisbane and regional centres around the state to help families. Family law dispute resolution conferences are held at our Brisbane and regional offices and by telephone and videoconference. An important part of our dispute resolution program is our property arbitration program, which allows parties to settle property disputes.
During the year, we started a property mediation conference process to allow parties with property disputes to resolve these in a two-step conference process that allows property disclosure and discovery to occur.
Providing services to the farming community
Our Farm and Rural Legal Service provides free legal help to Queensland farmers and primary producers experiencing financial hardship related to their business, including those with severe debt problems or those in dispute with their lenders.
During the year, we provided legal advice via telephone or face-to-face and represented clients in 11 mediations with their banks and finance providers. The service was provided by our in-house lawyers and involved travelling thousands of kilometres on outback Queensland roads to see farmers on their properties.
Representation services
Our in-house practice, together with hundreds of private
law firms and barristers, provide representation services to legally-aided clients in serious crime, general crime, juvenile justice, family law, child protection, domestic violence and other civil law matters. We use grants of aid to purchase these services from private lawyers and manage in-house work allocations.
About 75 percent of our legal representation is provided by private lawyers, with the remainder provided by our in-house practice.
In 2019–20, our expenditure to private lawyers for representing clients was $68.4 million.
Processing applications for grants of aid
Our Grants division is responsible for processing applications for grants of legal assistance and managing these grants following approval.
We assessed 44,718 new applications for legal aid and approved 34,755 applications in 2019–20.
We saw an increase in the number of applications for family and civil law matters compared with 2018–19. Applications are processed by staff in our Brisbane and regional offices. Demand for our services is high so we use strict criteria when granting aid for legal representation. In determining whether to approve a grant of aid, grants officers assess requests in line with our guidelines, which are set by the Legal Aid Queensland Board, and apply the means and merits tests. This process looks at the financial means of the person applying and the case’s merit. If an application is refused, internal and external review processes are available to applicants.
We also allocate independent children’s lawyers in family law proceedings and separate representatives in child protection proceedings from the specialist panels we maintain.
Figure 8. Applications for grants of aid received and approved 2019-20
Managing grants of aid
In addition to processing initial applications for legal aid, during the year we managed nearly 40,000 ongoing cases—this involved assessing and issuing 75,809 extensions to the initial grants as matters progress, paying 75,698 accounts, and recovering financial contributions from clients and external agencies.
Improving grants of aid
In consultation with our stakeholders, we conducted our annual fee review and identified funding responses in particular areas for review in 2020–21 when further funding may become available.
We entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Queensland Police Service to allow Grants staff to access copies of police material needed to assess legal aid applications through a secure portal. This has allowed us to assess and process applications without needing to follow up with clients about this information.
Commonwealth Family Violence and Cross-Examination of Parties Scheme
We receive funding from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department to fund the Commonwealth Family Violence and Cross-examination of Parties Scheme. During 2019–20, we developed and implemented a response to the scheme allowing representation in matters where there is a ban on personal cross-examination in family law hearings. We receive applications for funding, which are not subject to means or merits testing, and usually allocate these to a preferred supplier to prepare for and conduct the hearing where the cross-examination is to occur. The scheme began operating
on 10 September 2019 and funded 212 applicants.
In-house legal practices
Criminal law services
Magistrates Court
We provide legal representation in the Magistrates Court for guilty pleas, summary trials, committals and other Magistrates Court matters.
Our lawyers are involved in the Magistrates Court call-over process in Brisbane and provide case conferencing services for summary and committal matters. During the year, we continued our in-house duty lawyer services in Brisbane to help unrepresented defendants in the criminal jurisdiction of the Brisbane Magistrates Court and the Holland Park Magistrates Court. These services are well received by the Magistrates Court and provide legal help and representation to a significant number of defendants.
Consistent with the state government’s commitment to diversionary court programs, we have actively participated in supporting these courts in Queensland. The Queensland Drug and Alcohol Court continued to operate this year, and our extensive knowledge and experience of previous drug court programs has allowed us to positively contribute to the successful operation of this important specialist court program. We also continued to provide duty lawyer services to help unrepresented defendants in the Court Link criminal call-over in Brisbane. Court Link is a bail-based case management program monitored by the Magistrates Court and aims to address the underlying causes of offending such as homelessness.
Serious and general crime
Our lawyers specialise in the defence of complex and general criminal law cases in Commonwealth and state jurisdictions.
We provide legal assistance in Dangerous Prisoners (Sexual Offenders) Act 2003 (DPSOA) matters and continued representation to cover prisoners who may fall within the parameters of No Body, No Parole (NBNP) hearings before the Parole Board of Queensland.
In DPSOA matters, we act for people responding to dangerous prisoner applications brought by the Attorney-General, at periodic reviews of continuing detention orders, and in contravention proceedings for breaches of supervision orders. Where NBNP provisions apply, a prisoner will be detained, without release, for the rest of their sentence without a regular review mechanism. In cases involving a life sentence, this would result in a prisoner never being released into the community on parole.
Representation in our criminal litigation teams is often delivered in serious criminal matters such as murder, major fraud and complicated drug prosecutions. The defence of these matters is challenging and demanding, requiring extensive research, investigation and preparation.
Lawyers also provided help to clients who must appear before hearings conducted by the Crime and Corruption Commission Queensland or the Australian Crime Commission.
The General Crime team has helped in absorbing the growing demand in criminal law work across all jurisdictions, particularly in south east Queensland’s District and Supreme Court jurisdictions.
Our experienced lawyers continued to contribute to criminal justice system consultation to help increase efficiencies in the superior courts, particularly in relation to streamlining criminal justice processes.
Appeals
Legal Aid Queensland represents people on appeal in the District Court appellate jurisdiction, Queensland Court of Appeal and the High Court of Australia. Appellate jurisdictions are the safety net for the criminal justice system and our lawyers appear in many appeals alongside in-house counsel.
Our lawyers work with stakeholders in the appellate jurisdictions to improve representation and the justice system generally. Our Appeals team has also been actively engaged with the Court of Appeal to ensure we provide efficient and effective defence representation in legally-aided appeals.
Mental Health Court
Our Mental Health Unit provides advice and representation for people charged with criminal offences who have been referred to the Mental Health Court. The team is also committed to helping Queenslanders affected by mental illness or significant impairment and strives to provide them with a voice in the justice system.
The team works closely with our in-house counsel and Mental Health Review Tribunal team to conduct matters, representing the vast majority of non-privately represented clients appearing in the Mental Health Court.
Legal representation in the Mental Health Review Tribunal
We continued working with the Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT) to provide legal representation services to patients appearing before the tribunal under the Mental Health Act 2016.
The tribunal sits in 72 locations across Queensland, and during the year we provided 2255 legal representation services to clients.
The MHRT is an independent statutory body protecting the rights of people receiving involuntary treatment for mental illness. It provides an independent review process and makes decisions about whether treatment should occur either in hospital or in the community.
To help service clients statewide, we have an in-house MHRT team based in Brisbane and in-house regional lawyers along with a network of 45 external legal service providers (private law firms that do legal aid work and CLCs).
Our in-house team, working together with the network of service providers, gives legal help to some of Queensland’s most vulnerable people appearing in the tribunal across the state.
Arranging representation for MHRT referrals
Our Dispute Resolution Service is responsible for arranging free legal representation for people appearing before the MHRT where the MHRT has identified a need for legal representation and where those people would otherwise be unrepresented. Funded by Queensland Health to help meet its statutory obligations, we administer the allocation of legal representation from a specialist panel including lawyers in our MHRT team as well as preferred suppliers and CLCs.
In 2019–20, we allocated representation for 3214 matters.
Helping young people in the criminal justice system
Our Youth Legal Aid team provides specialist legal assistance to children and young people in the youth justice system, particularly in south-east Queensland. The team is a significant stakeholder in the youth justice sector and advocates strongly on behalf of vulnerable children.
During the year, we continued to provide advice and policy submissions to government on issues relating to youth justice. Our youth justice lawyers also used their knowledge, experience and expertise to provide statewide legal training programs for youth justice stakeholders to improve justice outcomes for young people.
The state government continued to fund us to deliver the Youth Legal Advice Hotline and our Remand Reduction Strategy. The hotline enables young people and youth justice stakeholders to access legal information and advice about a criminal law matter by telephone, while providing Queensland Police investigating officers with an available lawyer to help promote early resolution of matters and diversionary options.
The Remand Reduction Strategy provides an important legal advice and representation service for young people detained in custody, helping them to pursue bail applications where the case has merit. During the year, our Remand Reduction team considered 968 referrals and completed 69 bail applications before the Childrens Court of Queensland.
Our in-house Youth Legal Aid team represents young people in casework matters and also provides legal advice services at regular sessions to young people in detention. The team has also continued to deliver duty lawyer services to court locations in south-east Queensland to accommodate the increased numbers of young people before the Childrens Court. The state government also funded us to deliver expanded Childrens Court representation in the Townsville, Burdekin, Herbert River and Mount Isa areas.
In 2019–20, we developed and launched the Youth Justice Practitioners Guide for defence and prosecution lawyers who appear in the Childrens Court so they can be aware of the specific provisions of the Youth Justice Act, its principles and procedures. We developed and implemented a Youth Practitioner Certification Program for all youth justice lawyers who do legal aid work. Training and education packages were delivered in 16 locations across Queensland and via webinar to improve the quality and effectiveness of legal representation for young people. Certification training included elements such as cultural capability, developmental psychology and impairment, trauma, speech and language, and competence in youth justice legislation.
Family law services
Social science work
Our social scientists play an integral role in delivering our legal services to vulnerable clients. They support people through legal processes, chair family dispute resolution conferences, complete social assessment and family reports and provide counselling services. We provide social work services from our Brisbane and Townsville offices.
During the year, our social workers completed forensic assessment reports and psychological reports for independent children’s lawyers and separate representatives involved in family law and child protection matters and provided testimony before the courts. They helped our lawyers by providing clients with information and referrals to appropriate external organisations for help with non-legal matters such as mental health problems, substance dependencies and accommodation difficulties.
Helping those affected by domestic and family violence
We represent people in domestic and family violence matters through grants of aid to private law firms and to our in-house legal practice.
Our specialist multi-disciplined Violence Prevention and Women’s Advocacy team helps clients experiencing domestic and family violence. The team comprises specialist lawyers and social workers who provide services to people and practical advice about service delivery in domestic and family violence cases.
Rockhampton Domestic Violence unit
The Commonwealth funded Domestic Violence Service in Rockhampton provides a wrap-around service to clients impacted by domestic violence.
The service is designed to support the client’s legal and non-legal needs by involving lawyers and support workers working together to address the client’s needs. The service provides advice and assistance for clients in the domestic and family violence and family law jurisdictions in Rockhampton and surrounding areas.
Counselling Notes Protect
We work to deliver the Counselling Notes Protect service in partnership with Women’s Legal Service. The service provides advice, assistance and representation to clients about Queensland law that protects the counselling records of victims of sexual assault or alleged sexual assault from being used in some courts.
Helping people with child support issues
We provide information, referral, legal advice and representation services to clients in some child support areas. We can explain how the child support formula works, how the Family Tax Benefit is affected and how to prove paternity.
Children and young people
Helping children, their families and the courts to assess the best interests of children involved in legal proceedings is a key focus of the work conducted by our family and child protection lawyers. We continued to provide legal services for children and young people involved in family law and child protection matters in 2019–20.
Courts exercising family law and child protection jurisdiction make a significant number of independent children’s lawyer and separate representative appointments, where judicial officers order a child’s interests be separately represented. Independent children’s lawyers and separate representatives provide best interests representation for children, playing a unique and difficult role within the family law and child protection systems. They gather and assess independent evidence, help children and young people to participate in legal processes that affect them, and provide measured guidance and recommendations to the courts about the best interests of children and young people. The cases they work on are complex and demanding. Many of these matters are dealt with by specialist in-house lawyers. Our in-house independent children’s lawyers and separate representatives have significant experience and knowledge about parenting and child protection cases.
In addition to appearing in complex child protection and family law matters, our in-house lawyers also perform considerable work in the Family Court of Australia’s Magellan list—a case management list devoted to cases where there are allegations of serious physical abuse or sexual abuse of children.
We facilitated independent children’s lawyer and separate representative panel meetings to help ensure knowledge is shared and issues are discussed between the private practitioners on the panel and in-house specialist lawyers. This ensures a consistent, quality approach to representing children and young people.
Child protection
We are the largest child protection legal service provider to individuals in Queensland, providing information and advice, representation of parents, direct representation of young people, separate representation of children and young people in the Childrens Court of Queensland, and limited representation in the QCAT in respect of reviewable decisions.
Civil justice services
Anti-discrimination services
We provide representation in matters involving anti-discrimination, sexual harassment, victimisation and vilification. We provide representation in the Australian Human Rights Commission, QHRC, QCAT, Queensland Industrial Relations Commission, Queensland Court of Appeal and Federal Court of Australia. From January 2020, our casework included discrimination and, as appropriate, attached human rights actions.
Employment law
We provide specialist legal representation to federal system employees for unfair dismissal and general protections matters covered by the Fair Work Act 2009. We provide representation in the Fair Work Commission, Federal Circuit Court and Federal Court of Australia.
Civil Law Legal Aid Scheme
The Civil Law Legal Aid Scheme is an outlays only scheme that helps financially disadvantaged people who have a civil law claim for which no grant of legal aid is available. Funded by the Public Trustee of Queensland and administered by Legal Aid Queensland, the scheme covers outlays required to prepare civil law claims for settlement negotiations and/or court proceedings. The scheme does not fund legal professional fees and lawyers accessing the scheme must agree to speculate their fees. The scheme operates under guidelines independent of Legal Aid Queensland’s grants of legal aid.
The scheme will consider providing funding for outlays where:
- there are reasonable prospects of the scheme recovering outlays
- the action can be dealt with in the Queensland legal jurisdiction
- an approved firm is willing to act on a speculative basis for their professional fees.
Applications are subject to means testing and merit assessment, and assistance will only be approved if it is considered the claim has reasonable prospects of success.
As a result of findings from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the Limitation of Action Act 1974 (Qld) was changed, removing the time limit restriction on childhood abuse personal injury claims. During the year, the scheme experienced an increase in applications for help with childhood abuse personal injury claims resulting from the removal of time limits.
Legal help for war veterans and their dependents
We receive federal funding under the War Veterans’ Legal Aid Scheme to provide help to veterans and their dependents in relation to appeals of Veterans Review Board decisions about:
- war caused disability pension entitlements or assessment claims under Part II of the Veterans Entitlement Act 1986
- claims under the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2004 about warlike or
non-warlike service.
In 2019–20, we helped eight veterans and their dependents to file appeals.
Consumer protection
We provide representation in credit, debt and consumer law matters. We provide advice to clients as well as lawyers and financial counsellors throughout Queensland. During the year, we helped people with:
- mortgage stress
- housing repossession
- debt (including debts faced by people experiencing family violence)
- credit cards and personal loans (including car loans)
- telecommunications and utilities
- misleading and deceptive conduct, unfair contract terms and unsolicited consumer agreements (including door-to-door selling)
- insurance (including flood and bushfire insurance claims)
- debt collection practices
- credit reporting
- bankruptcy and part IX agreements.
Farm and Rural Legal Service
The Farm and Rural Legal Service provides advice and representation at farm debt mediations to Queensland farmers and primary producers facing financial hardship related to their business, including severe debt problems or those who are in dispute with their lenders.
Social security appeals
We provide casework assistance and representation for social security appeals in the General Division of the AAT and the Federal Court of Australia.
National Disability Insurance Scheme appeals
During 2019–20, we continued to provide legal representation to eligible people who have applied for an external review to the AAT of a decision by the NDIA.
Counsel
In 2019–20, our team of in-house barristers continued to demonstrate their commitment to providing quality specialist legal advocacy services to disadvantaged Queenslanders and continued to work efficiently and effectively.
Rob East was appointed Public Defender in August 2019 and QC in November 2019. This prestigious accolade is an appropriate testament both to the quality and expertise of our in-house barristers generally, and to Rob’s personal standing as an advocate and leader in the profession. Experienced barrister and member of the Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council, Katarina Prskalo, was appointed Deputy Public Defender in December 2019. Rob and Katarina together with Catherine Morgan, Deputy Public Defender, form Counsel’s leadership team.
Counsel continued to undertake complex trials and sentences in the Supreme, District and Magistrates Courts, and appeared at all Mental Health Court sittings throughout the year. Counsel also appeared for respondents to applications brought under the DPSOA before the Supreme Court in its civil jurisdiction.
In 2019, Deputy Public Defender Catherine Morgan appeared as junior counsel to Peter Callaghan SC (as His Honour then was) in the landmark case of R v TAL, successfully opposing first application for a retrial under the statutory exceptions to the double jeopardy rule. This was an achievement of which Legal Aid Queensland can be proud, involving a well-coordinated team effort by Counsel, our Appeals team and Toowoomba office, supported by thorough research by our Library staff.
Senior barristers regularly provided advice on the merit of applications for grants of aid for appeals against conviction and sentence. They also appeared in appeals against conviction and sentence before the Queensland Supreme Court and Court of Appeal.
Members of the in-house Counsel team shared their legal expertise by contributing to Legal Aid Queensland’s continuing professional development (CPD) program, and by helping in training programs for expert witnesses in the area of mental health. In-house barristers have also regularly helped with the training of Bar Practice students, as ‘judges’ for mock trials, and as presenters in advocacy training sessions. More temporary acting opportunities in Counsel have been provided, to help junior legal practitioners within Legal Aid Queensland to develop their advocacy skills under the guidance of more senior practitioners.
Ensuring quality legal services
Legal Aid Queensland aims to provide quality legal services to financially disadvantaged people and we continue to improve the quality of our work and the outcomes for our clients.
Measuring client satisfaction
In March 2019, we commissioned market research consultants Colmar Brunton to conduct our biennial client survey. This involved a telephone survey of 500 previous clients. Clients were asked about their overall satisfaction with Legal Aid Queensland, and more detailed questions about the specific services they received and their experiences.
The survey revealed positive outcomes for Legal Aid Queensland in overall service satisfaction and performance across our key service areas. Overall satisfaction was rated 7.1 out of 10 and satisfaction was generally high across most client groups in Queensland. The results indicated we are performing strongly on information, advice and casework services.
Client satisfaction with legal representation and advice services increased respectively from 8.6 and 7.6 in 2017, to 8.7 and 7.7 in 2019. In particular, 80 percent of clients receiving representation were very satisfied, and the survey reported a very high satisfaction level with representation services provided by both in-house and private lawyers.
Satisfaction scores are influenced significantly by the outcome of a client’s application for a grant of aid for representation in court. Clients who did not receive a grant of aid were the least satisfied, with a mean score of 3.5 out of 10, whereas clients who received a grant of aid scored the application service at 8.6 out of 10.
The research provided useful information to help us prioritise future service improvement initiatives.
In-house lawyers
We continued to use our Quality Legal Services Framework for Legal Aid Queensland employed lawyers. The document lists the measures we have in place to ensure we maintain a high standard of service delivery to our clients.
This includes:
- recruiting and selecting lawyers through open, merit based selection processes
- providing an induction program for new lawyers to ensure they are familiar with standards of conduct, professional requirements and administrative processes
- developing and delivering a CPD program for lawyers
- compliance with legal profession standards
- compliance with legal service standards, case management standards and practice management standards
- providing legal professional supervision to lawyers
- regularly reviewing files and auditing lawyers
- responding to client feedback and complaints
- conducting a client satisfaction survey every two years to guide improvements to service delivery.
Preferred supplier law firms
Our preferred supplier law firms are required under their agreement with Legal Aid Queensland to meet our policies, guidelines, and file management, practice and case management standards.
As part of our commitment to ensuring funding is used in line with the terms and conditions of approved grants, we implement a rolling program of compliance checks. These compliance checks focus on particular aspects of compliance across a large number of grants of aid and suppliers.
In 2019–20, we continued to focus on the following areas of compliance:
- confirming a conference with counsel and the client happened before the client signed instructions to proceed to trial
- holding signed instructions for trial before requesting a grant of aid for trial.
We communicate all compliance activity outcomes to the participants and use these to continuously improve our grant funding processes.
We require the work performed by preferred supplier firms to be at a high professional and ethical standard and the preferred supplier firms comply with the terms of the preferred supplier agreement. We respond to complaints received from clients and other stakeholders about preferred suppliers in line with our complaints policy and procedures. We assess complaints to identify any concerns about the preferred supplier’s compliance with the agreement. If we identify concerns, the complaint is investigated by seeking a response from the preferred supplier and gathering any other material relevant to the complaint. We consider all available information and decide whether the complaint is substantiated or not substantiated. We then notify the complainant and the preferred supplier once the investigation is finalised.
We record all complaints and these can be used to identify a pattern of non-compliance. Substantiated non-compliances can be dealt with under the clauses of the preferred supplier agreement including a notice of breach or by terminating the preferred supplier agreement. Complaints of a serious nature can also be referred to the Legal Services Commissioner.
During 2019–20, we continued to send monthly e-newsletters to inform all preferred suppliers of updates to our policies and procedures, and current issues of interest. Additionally, we began developing broader training materials to support preferred supplier firm interaction with the Grants division and to maintain compliance with our requirements. We also delivered training at the Queensland Law Society Criminal Law Conference and tailored training sessions for individual firms during the year.
Working to improve equitable briefing of barristers
Legal Aid Queensland remains committed to the objective of the Law Council of Australia’s Equitable Briefing Policy of achieving a level playing field for all members of the legal profession, particularly the target of briefing women barristers in at least 30 percent of all matters and paying 30 percent of the value of all brief fees to women barristers.
Due to the impact of COVID-19 on the courts’ operations in the final quarter of 2019–20, we have examined the briefing figures for the first nine months of the financial year to measure our success in applying the Equitable Briefing Policy. Our in-house legal practice continues to have no difficulty in exceeding the Law Council of Australia’s target, with 41 percent of briefs allocated to women barristers during the first nine months of 2019–20. We are also pleased to report the percentage of women in-house counsel has increased to 50 percent this year, compared with 45 percent in 2018–19.
We are continuing to implement strategies to encourage private law firms that do legal aid work (preferred suppliers) to adopt the Law Council of Australia’s Equitable Briefing Policy. Our preferred supplier firms are required under their preferred supplier service agreements, when selecting counsel, to make a reasonable endeavour to comply with the Equitable Briefing Policy, and if required, provide information about the efforts made to identify and consider briefing female counsel.
Based on the briefing figures for the first nine months of the financial year, while some firms performing our work still have some way to go in achieving this important objective, we are pleased to note other firms have improved their female briefing rate, with some exceeding the 30 percent target.
As a strong supporter of women in the legal profession, we were delighted to present the Equitable Briefing Award at the 2019 Women Lawyers Association Queensland Awards. Congratulations to law firm Jeffery, Cuddihy and Joyce in Gympie on receiving the Legal Aid Queensland Equitable Briefing Award. We hope this award encourages law firms to reflect on their briefing policies so they brief women barristers more frequently and more women are encouraged to join and remain at the Queensland Bar, enriching the legal profession and the community it serves. We will continue to implement strategies to pursue the Equitable Briefing Policy goals in the years ahead.
Briefing counsel policy and committee
Our In-house Lawyers Briefing Counsel Policy ensures probity and accountability in decisions by our in-house lawyers when briefing counsel.
Our briefing policy sets out general briefing guidelines and provides specific procedures for briefing counsel in expensive or extraordinary cases.
The general briefing guidelines include requirements to:
- consider the Law Council of Australia’s Equitable Briefing Policy which aims to promote diversity, equality and respect to improve the retention of women barristers within the profession
- genuinely consider briefing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander barristers where it is possible
- consider briefing in-house counsel to ensure cost effectiveness
- briefing regional barristers wherever a barrister of sufficient experience and expertise is available
- briefing in a way that develops a wide and diverse pool of barristers who can do legal aid work
- rs who have appropriate experience and expertise
- being objective, independent, apolitical and impartial.
A Briefing Monitoring Committee is chaired by the CEO to monitor in-house lawyers’ briefing practices and ensure the In-house Lawyers Briefing Counsel Policy’s goals are supported.
Access by disadvantaged groups
Assisting culturally and linguistically diverse clients
During the year, we continued our commitment to clients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. We promoted our services within these communities to increase people’s awareness of Legal Aid Queensland and improve their access to justice by:
- delivering CLE sessions on common legal topics to people from migrant and refugee backgrounds in a TAFE and settlement support setting
- distributing translated legal information to people from migrant and refugee backgrounds
- using free interpreter services for clients in line with the state government’s Language Services Policy
- promoting our website, which includes a built-in screen reader and translation tool called ‘Browsealoud’, that can translate content into 90 languages.
Improving services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients
We are committed to providing high quality services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. During the year, we:
- implemented our First Nations Strategic Plan 2018–22, which continues to:
- increase awareness and accessibility of our services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- position the organisation as a centre of excellence for culturally capable legal services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- position us as a significant employer of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the legal profession
- contribute to developing a more equitable justice system that addresses the disparity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the broader legal profession
- continued the Remand Reduction Strategy which provides a legal advice and representation service for young people detained in custody, helping to reduce the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children on remand
- continued the Child Protection Early Legal Service which provides legal advice and advocacy for vulnerable parents early in child protection intervention, helping to reduce the overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the child protection system
- established partnerships with key Indigenous child protection service providers
- facilitated the delivery of ongoing cross-cultural awareness training to staff to help ensure staff delivering services are culturally competent
- enhanced our cultural awareness training to understand the importance of communication for those who speak several Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages in a legal setting
- continued to promote our Indigenous Hotline, which gives priority to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander callers so they can access legal information and advice for the cost of a local call from a landline anywhere in Queensland
- provided an information stall at NAIDOC Week events in Brisbane, Caboolture, Ipswich, Rockhampton, Townsville, Cairns and Mount Isa
- assisted the Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network to deliver financial planning services to Palm Island people
- maintained best practice guidelines for in-house and private lawyers performing legal aid work to ensure legal services are provided to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients in a culturally appropriate way
- participated in legal assistance forums and the QLAF Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Strategic Working Group which aim to promote cooperation and collaboration between legal assistance service providers and non-legal services working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- continued to implement our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment plan and increased the percentage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees, which improves service delivery to clients
- continued our graduate lawyer program with one of the graduates being appointed to a permanent lawyer position in Cairns
- delivered cultural capability training as part of the Youth Practitioner Certification Program for lawyers to more than 600 people across Queensland.
Helping people with a disability
We recognise many people with disabilities experience legal problems and require services that respond to their individual needs and circumstances. Our website is accessible to users, including people with disabilities, as required by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines endorsed by the Australian Government.
Web accessibility focuses on providing equal access and opportunity for people with disabilities. For example, websites should be compatible with screen readers used by people with vision impairment and with devices used by people who cannot use a mouse because of a physical impairment. It also benefits people with literacy issues, older users and mobile device users.
When people with a disability make contact with our client contact centre or visit one of our offices, we have processes in place for identifying their vulnerabilities and giving them priority and supported access to our services.
People who are deaf, or who have a hearing or speech impairment, can contact us through the National Relay Service.
The Client Assistance Service operates in the contact centre to help some of our particularly vulnerable clients, especially those with multiple legal issues, who need extra help to access our services.
In September 2019, we started a new service helping people to share their experiences with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. The service—Your Story Disability Legal Support—is a free and independent national legal service jointly delivered by National Legal Aid and NATSILS. For more information about the service, see page 28.
Legal services for regional, rural and remote Queenslanders
Legal Aid Queensland is committed to providing frontline legal services to rural, regional and remote areas of Queensland. We have 13 regional offices providing services throughout regional Queensland, and a statewide network of regional preferred supplier private law firms that contribute to supporting Queensland’s justice system.
We also work closely with 38 CLCs across the state. Many CLCs help Legal Aid Queensland deliver domestic and family violence duty lawyer services in courts across Queensland.
We provide direct legal services such as grants of aid for court representation, legal information and advice, and duty lawyer services to people in rural, regional and remote Queensland (see Figures 9 and 10). About 40 percent of our legal advice and representation services are delivered to clients in non-metropolitan areas.
Other frontline legal aid services available to regional Queenslanders include:
- criminal law duty lawyer services in Magistrates and Childrens Courts in regional towns across Queensland
- family law duty lawyer services in Townsville, Cairns, Mackay, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Maroochydore, Toowoomba, Southport, Hervey Bay and Ipswich
- domestic and family violence duty lawyer services in Richlands, Beenleigh, Southport, Caboolture, Holland Park, Cleveland, Pine Rivers, Redcliffe, Sandgate, Ipswich, Toowoomba, Maroochydore, Hervey Bay, Bundaberg, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Yeppoon, Mackay, Townsville, Cairns, Mount Isa and Palm Island
- child protection duty lawyer services in Ipswich, Pine Rivers, Caboolture, Cleveland, Southport, Maroochydore, Gladstone, Mackay, Cairns and Townsville
- child protection legal advice services in Mount Isa, Mackay, Longreach, Emerald, Biloela, Gladstone, Kingaroy, Cherbourg, Murgon, Cleveland, Roma, Charleville and Cunnamulla
- a Domestic Violence Service in Rockhampton, which meets clients’ legal and non-legal needs
- a Farm and Rural Legal Service, which provides free legal help to Queensland farmers and primary producers experiencing financial hardship related to their business, including those with severe debt problems or those in dispute with their lenders
- providing legal help to residents of bushfire and flood affected areas of Queensland
- in-house counsel appearing in regional and remote courts including circuits to Mount Isa, the Gulf of Carpentaria, Thursday Island, Cape York Peninsula, Bowen, Charters Towers, Hervey Bay, Gympie, Bundaberg, Kingaroy and Maryborough
- legal outreach clinics, where lawyers travel to surrounding regions or link in by videoconference to provide legal advice services, to Cooktown and Tully (Cairns office), Bribie Island (Caboolture office in conjunction with local CLCs), and Dirranbandi, Goondiwindi and Tara (Toowoomba office).
We also:
- help the ATSILS and the courts on circuit to the remote areas of Normanton, Burketown, Mornington Island and Doomadgee (from our Mount Isa office), and Thursday Island and other Torres Strait Islands (from our Cairns office)
- provide a statewide telephone legal information line and an Indigenous Hotline where people can call from a landline from anywhere in Queensland for the cost of a local call
- work with 42 community access points across Queensland that provide information about our services, access to some of our publications, and help people access free telephone legal advice.
Women as a priority client group
We treat women, especially women experiencing domestic and family violence, as a priority client group. We support the Queensland Government strategy to reduce domestic and family violence by delivering legal information, advice and representation to disadvantaged Queenslanders experiencing domestic and family violence. We support and acknowledge Queensland’s domestic violence laws’ objective—to maximise or increase the safety, protection and wellbeing of people who fear or experience domestic violence, including their children.
Our specialist Violence Prevention and Women’s Advocacy team works with clients who experience domestic and family violence. Their mission is to increase women’s access to our services and improve our responsiveness to meet women’s legal needs. They work to develop and maintain effective working relationships with service providers and identify, review and respond to issues impacting on women’s access to justice.
The team acts for women with complex legal issues in the areas of family law, child protection, discrimination, domestic violence and crime. They also provide services to women from culturally diverse backgrounds and women with intellectual disabilities. We have a network of family lawyers in our 13 regional offices who deliver legal services to local communities in response to issues arising from family relationships, including domestic and family violence, and child protection.
Our Violence Against Women Strategy is an integrated, collaborative and consistent response to clients who have been affected by domestic and family violence. Under the strategy, we have developed and implemented practical tools for our practitioners including:
- Best practice guidelines for working with people who have experienced domestic violence
- Best practice guidelines for lawyers working with respondents in domestic violence proceedings
- Best practice guidelines for working with sexual assault victims
- a domestic violence risk assessment tool
- an internal policy for responding to staff experiencing domestic violence.
Figure 9. Legal advices provided by location 2019-20
Figure 10. Applications for grants of aid received by location 2019-20
|
Key disadvantaged group
|
Criminal law %
|
Family law %
|
Civil law %
|
Total %
|
|
Legal advice
Female
Indigenous
Regional and remote
Culturally diverse
|
26.69
11.65
12.72
9.53
|
66.30
6.47
14.33
12.42
|
52.28
7.14
12.35
13.32
|
50.67
8.16
13.26
11.87
|
|
Applications received
Female
Indigenous
Regional and remote
Culturally diverse
|
23.12
18.36
14.60
5.28
|
62.20
10.33
15.72
10.83
|
62.45
13.76
14.70
10.79
|
35.71
16.20
14.84
7.06
|
|
Applications approved
Female
Indigenous
Regional and remote
Culturally diverse
|
22.40
19.39
13.93
5.01
|
60.08
11.59
13.77
9.12
|
67.97
15.91
13.72
9.02
|
31.59
18.06
13.89
5.92
|
Table 6. Access by key disadvantaged groups 2019–20