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
- complying with privacy obligations
- 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 usually for three-year terms (see Table 1 for more information). The chief executive officer (CEO) and the senior directors 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
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 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 chaired the Victorian Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informers from 2018 to 2020.
Since March 2021, Margaret has been chairing Queensland’s Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce.
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 and tribunal member 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 25 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 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
received $
|
|
Board chairperson
|
Margaret McMurdo
|
12 (11 board meetings and 1 special board meeting)
|
8829
|
0
|
8093
|
|
Board member, Accommodation Committee chairman
|
Allan Welsh
|
19 (11 board meetings, 1 special board meeting,
6 accommodation committee meetings and 1 special accommodation committee meeting)
|
6851
|
2519
|
8589
|
|
Board member, Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee chairman
|
Sandra Deane
|
16 (10 board meetings, 1 special board meeting, 4 audit risk and compliance committee meetings and 1 special audit risk and compliance committee meeting)
|
6851
|
2519
|
8589
|
|
Board member, First Nations Committee chairman
|
Joshua Creamer
|
9 (4 board meetings, 5 sub-committee meetings)
|
6851
|
2519
|
8589
|
|
Board member, Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee member
|
Lucia Taylor
|
14 (10 board meetings, 1 special board meeting,
3 sub-committee meetings)
|
6851
|
1961
|
8077
|
|
No. scheduled
meetings/sessions
|
36 (12 board meetings, including 1 special board meeting and 17 sub-committee meetings, including 1 special audit risk and compliance committee meeting and 1 special accommodation committee meeting)
|
|
Total out of pocket expenses
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$8261
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Table 1. Legal Aid Queensland Board information 2020–21
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 (chairperson).
The meeting is also attended by:
- CEO Nicky Davies
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Legal Practice senior director Peter Delibaltas
- Chief finance officer (CFO) Gavin Holdway
- Acting Facilities and procurement manager Jeffrey Patterson.
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 2020–21 included:
- continuing to review the charter annually to ensure ongoing effectiveness of the committee’s authority, objectives and responsibilities
- continuing to advise on better practice governance trends
- reviewing the 2019–20 end of financial year statements before signing by the board chairperson and CFO
- reviewing the external auditor’s recommendations from the 2019–20 audit and 2020–21 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 (chairperson)
- Legal Aid Queensland Board member Lucia Taylor
- a Queensland Treasury representative
- a Department of Justice and Attorney-General Financial Services representative
- 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 Jeanette Shanahan received $2190 (including superannuation) remuneration in 2020–21.
The meeting is also attended by:
- CEO Nicky Davies
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- CFO Gavin Holdway
- Governance manager Stephen Shirvington.
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
- developing the First Nations Strategic Plan 2021–23
- 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 (chairperson)
- 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 Nicky Davies
- Legal Practice senior director Peter Delibaltas
- Family Law and Civil Justice Services director Toni Bell
- Acting Criminal Law Services director Kerry Bichel
- Acting Public Defender Catherine Morgan
- 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 managers Miranda Greer and Amanda Catania.
The meeting is also attended by Governance manager Stephen Shirvington and Senior advisor Margaret Hornagold.
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:
- CFO Gavin Holdway (chairperson)
- CEO Nicky Davies
- Legal Practice senior director Peter Delibaltas
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Grants director Louise Martin.
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 Nicky Davies (chairperson)
- Legal Practice senior director Peter Delibaltas
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Grants director Louise Martin
- Information and Advice Services director Katrina Smith
- Acting Chief information officer Paul Ninnes
- Acting Records and Information Management manager Michael Johnston
- a Department of Justice and Attorney-General representative.
The meeting is also attended by:
- Communication and Community Legal Education managers Miranda Greer and Amanda Catania
- Technical operations manager (currently vacant)
- Business engagement manager Rae Fletcher
- Acting Facilities and procurement manager Jeffrey Patterson.
People, Culture and Capability Committee
The People, Culture and Capability (PCC) Committee helps determine 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 strategy 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 Nicky Davies (chairperson)
- Legal Practice senior director Peter Delibaltas
- Business Support senior director Ian Warren
- Acting Criminal Law Services director Kerry Bichel
- Grants director Louise Martin
- Information and Advice Services director Katrina Smith
- Family Law and Civil Justice Services director Toni Bell
- Acting Public defender Catherine Morgan
- Chief people officer 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)
- 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)
- Acting Facilities and procurement manager Jeffrey Patterson
- Senior facilities and procurement officer Delina Smail
- Security officer
- Consultant (payroll) 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:
- implementing 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.
Our complaints systems and processes ensure we can capture and effectively address any human rights complaints received. We did not receive any human rights complaints in 2020–21.
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 peoples 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 with priority community groups
- connecting with existing networks and establishing new networks through strong relationships
- participation in community events such as Homeless Connect and NAIDOC week
- web-based legal information and digital resources
- written materials including factsheets and legal information guides.
The NLAP’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 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander 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 the CLE legal assistance forum — a specialist forum of the Queensland Legal Assistance Forum (QLAF)
- distributed ‘CLE news updates’ via email to our subscribers
- increased our social media presence to promote our resources and key legal information
- participated in community events across Queensland (in a COVID-19 safe context), including Homeless Connect, Finance Fairs and regional council community events
- coordinated our CLE webinar program for community, health and education workers and MPs; we planned and delivered six webinars and YouTube videos on topics like understanding insurance claims, mortgage repossession following financial hardship, buying a car, domestic and family violence: best practice in the legal assistance sector, dealing with the post COVID-19 debt cliff and Legal Aid Queensland’s services
- launched a Law for All podcast channel to provide information about legal issues affecting everyday people with everyday problems in a relaxed chat-based style for community, health and education workers and community members; we produced four episodes: Recognising financial control in domestic and family violence, Legal tips and pitfalls: buying a used car in Queensland and dealing with insurance, Buy now pay later, and Damage when a natural disaster hits
- delivered 183 CLE activities to 6818 people and produced 32 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, consumer law, mortgage stress, human rights and credit reporting
- coordinated and administered the CLE Collaboration Fund’s eleventh 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 six funded projects will deliver CLE activities and resources to help people in detention with disabilities, families and advocates, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, school aged young people in regional and remote areas, older people and people who have experienced coercive control, and the workers supporting them.
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 access to 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 1,853,163 times with 3,243,001 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 137,090 calls in 2020–21 and provided 84,262 legal information and referral services to clients.
The team also provided 1622 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 2020–21, we continued to participate in the Queensland Police Service Police Referrals Service. The service helps people who come into contact with police and other community organisations to obtain support for legal issues.
We also worked to improve our business processes and systems to further streamline information and advice delivery to clients by:
- continuing our monthly ongoing training program with specialist sessions on psychological wellness, cultural awareness, human rights and contemporary social issues
- using videoconferencing and technology to improve access to legal advice services
- embedding our client-focused call pathway in our training and work practices
- 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 Aid Queensland services. 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 474 clients.
Your Story Disability Legal Support
Legal Aid Queensland continued to provide information and advice services to people wanting to share their experiences with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through Your Story Disability Legal Support. This service is a free and independent national legal service jointly delivered by National Legal Aid and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services. 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 on 1800 77 1800.
Your Story Disability Legal Support answered 2471 calls and provided 1282 legal information and referral services to clients during 2020–21.
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 2020–21
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
- Natural disasters
- National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
In 2020–21, we provided legal advice and legal task services to 44,019 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.
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 2020–21, the Prison Advice Service provided 1292 advice services to Queensland prisoners.
Refugee and Immigration Legal Service advice referrals
We worked with the Brisbane based Refugee and Immigration Legal 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).
Consumer advice clinic
During 2020–21, we continued to provide telephone consumer advice clinics five days a week. 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. We also provided advice about state human rights protections in these clinics.
We 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 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 task 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 four days a week. We also provide a specialist advice clinic through the Fair Work Commission’s Workplace Advice Service.
Social security appeals advice clinic
During the year, we continued to provide 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. During 2020–21, we provided telephone advice clinics through 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 Social Services and Child Support Division clinic 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 appeals before the Social Services and Child Support Division 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 (NDIA) 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. These advice clinics are held two days a week to help 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 1402 matters.
Natural Disaster Legal Help
During the year, we provided legal advice and representation to people affected by bushfires, flooding and severe storms in Queensland. We also attended community meetings and forums to provide advice to Springfield residents still experiencing problems with their insurance claims following the ‘Halloween 2020 hailstorm’.
Duty lawyer services
Criminal Law Duty Lawyer Service
Our Criminal Law Duty Lawyer Service operates in 107 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 13,928 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, Beenleigh, 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 2020–21, with 77 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 continued 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 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 75–80 percent of our legal representation is provided by private lawyers, with the remainder provided by our in-house practice.
In 2020–21, our expenditure to private lawyers for representing clients was $72.9 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 45,909 new applications for legal aid and approved 35,389 applications in 2020–21.
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 2020–21
Managing grants of aid
In addition to processing initial applications for legal aid, during the year we managed 42,923 ongoing cases—this involved assessing and issuing 77,573 extensions to the initial grants as matters progress, paying 79,323 accounts, and recovering financial contributions from clients and external agencies.
Reviewing decisions
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we updated our external review processes to allow a more flexible approach for review dates and times.
We met with Queensland Corrective Services representatives to help improve processes for prisoners wanting to discuss their matters with external review officers.
Improving grants of aid
In January 2021, we expanded our family law dispute resolution response to include funding for the court-based alternative dispute resolution program implemented by the family law courts in November 2020. Resolution of matters at any stage before preparation for, and appearance at, hearing delivers better outcomes for clients and courts and reduces the overall unit cost of matters which settle. We funded 86 matters for dispute resolution under this program.
Improving grants operations
During the year, we upgraded our internal grants officer audit program to ensure compliance with approved processes and requirements, and to identify areas of improvement for interactions with our suppliers.
Commonwealth Family Violence and Cross-Examination of Parties Scheme
We receive funding from the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department to administer the Commonwealth Family Violence and Cross-examination of Parties Scheme. Demand for representation through the scheme has been high with 403 notifications received from the family law courts during 2020–21. Each notice may relate to a number of parties and each party is invited to apply. We approve applications for funding about 12 weeks before the hearing date where the cross-examination is to happen. Applications for funding are not subject to means or merits testing, and we usually allocate these to a preferred supplier to prepare for and conduct the hearing where the cross-examination is to happen. In 2020–21, we approved 204 parties for funding.
In-house legal practices
Criminal law services
Magistrates Court
We provide legal representation in the Magistrates Court for guilty pleas, summary trials, committals, applications pursuant to s172 of the Mental Health Act, 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. In 2020–21, we began piloting a criminal law duty lawyer advice and representation service in the Brisbane and Holland Park Magistrates Courts. The pilots involve expanding existing advice services and aligning them with the duty lawyer service to minimise the need for processing grants of aid and streamline representation of people. These services were well received by the Magistrates Court and other stakeholders, and provided 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 and Ipswich. Court Link is a very successful 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.
In DPSOA matters, we act for people responding to dangerous prisoner applications brought by the Attorney-General, at periodic reviews of continuing detention orders, in contravention proceedings for breaches of supervision orders, and in applications to amend and extend supervision orders.
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 investigation and preparation.
Lawyers also provided advice and representation to clients who must appear before hearings conducted by the Crime and Corruption Commission Queensland or the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. Advice and representation is also provided to witnesses or family in inquests held in the Coroner’s Court of Queensland.
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 Court team provides advice and representation for people charged with criminal offences who have been referred to the Mental Health Court. The team is 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 is also a first point of contact for inquiries from practitioners and stakeholders about issues arising from the implementation of the Mental Health Act 2016.
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 108 locations across Queensland, and during the year we provided 2316 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 23 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. The in-house team also plays an important role in providing legal advice to people in relation to tribunal process and procedure, the impacts of tribunal decisions, and options for appeal or review.
Arranging representation for MHRT referrals
Our Dispute Resolution Service is responsible for arranging free legal representation for people appearing before the MHRT where s 740 of the Mental Health Act 2016 requires the appointment of a representative. 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.
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 continue 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 Legal Advocacy Program. 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 Legal Advocacy program 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 team considered 968 referrals and completed 69 bail applications before the Childrens Court of Queensland.
Our in-house Youth Legal Aid team has 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, Palm Island and Mount Isa areas.
In 2020–21, we continued to provide a Youth Practitioner Certification Program for all youth justice lawyers who do legal aid work. Training and education packages were delivered face-to-face 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 2020–21.
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 also perform significant work in the Evatt List in the Federal Circuit Court dealing with matters where there are serious allegations of family violence or other allegations heightening risk to children or parties, through the Lighthouse Pilot being trialled in the Brisbane registry.
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 under state and Commonwealth laws. Where appropriate we attached ‘piggy back’ actions relating to relevant considerations under the Human Rights Act to state anti-discrimination complaints in the QHRC. We provide representation in the Australian Human Rights Commission, QHRC, QCAT, Queensland Industrial Relations Commission, Queensland Court of Appeal and Federal Court of Australia.
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 2020–21, we helped seven 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, storm 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 AAT and the Federal Court of Australia.
National Disability Insurance Scheme appeals
During 2020–21, 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 2020–21, 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.
The Public Defender, Rob East QC, was appointed as an acting judge in the District Court from 1 February 2021 for four months. The Deputy Public Defenders, Catherine Morgan and Katarina Prskalo, have shared the Public Defender role and continued to lead the in-house Counsel team.
Counsel continued to undertake complex trials and sentences in the Supreme, District and Magistrates Courts across the state, 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. Following an acquittal in a matter, the Townsville Intercultural Centre recognised the work undertaken by our regional counsel, Frank Richards.
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 training programs for expert witnesses in the area of mental health. In-house barristers also regularly helped train Bar Practice students by acting as ‘judges’ for mock trials and as presenters in advocacy training sessions.
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
Legal Aid Queensland undertakes a client satisfaction survey every two years. The last survey was conducted in March 2019 with the next survey scheduled for September 2021.
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 program of compliance checks. These may focus on particular aspects across a large number of grants of aid and suppliers or focus on identified areas. During 2020–21, we focussed on specific issues and conducted targeted audits across a number of suppliers and areas of work.
We communicate all compliance activity outcomes to the participants and use these to continuously improve our grant funding processes.
During the year, we developed and released an online training package for our preferred suppliers and their support staff to support compliance with requirements around applying for and managing grants of legal aid.
Working to improve equitable briefing of barristers
Legal Aid Queensland’s in-house legal practice again exceeded the Law Council of Australia’s target for equitable briefing of female barristers, with 41 percent of briefs allocated to women barristers during 2020–21. In addition, the percentage of female in-house counsel now exceeds 50 percent.
Our strategies to encourage private law firms that do legal aid work (preferred suppliers) to adopt the Law Council of Australia’s Equitable Briefing Policy include a requirement under the preferred supplier service agreement, 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.
In 2020–21, a number of preferred supplier private law firms continued to reach or exceed the Equitable Briefing Policy target of 30 percent.
Legal Aid Queensland will continue to implement strategies to pursue the Equitable Briefing Policy goals of driving cultural change within the legal profession, supporting the progression and retention of women barristers, and addressing the pay gap and underrepresentation of women in the superior court.
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; including developing barristers through our First Nations Junioring Program
- 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
- briefing barristers 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
- 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 Legal Advocacy Program 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
- celebrated NAIDOC Week by encouraging our staff to produce Acknowledgement of Country videos about their personal expressions of acknowledgement
- 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 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Assistance Forum which aims to promote cooperation and collaboration between legal assistance service providers and non-legal services working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
- continued to work towards increasing the percentage of First Nations employees
- continued our graduate lawyer program
- launched a First Nations Junioring Program to develop barristers through:
- mentoring and coaching opportunities
- access to junioring opportunities
- training and development opportunities
- access to circuit opportunities
- continued to deliver cultural capability training as part of the Youth Practitioner Certification Program
- delivered cultural induction training for all new staff.
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. We can also organise Auslan interpreters if needed.
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 Your Story Disability Legal Support which supports people to share their experiences with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. For more information about the service, see Your Story Disability Legal Support above.
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 and CLCs 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, child protection and criminal law 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, Beenleigh, Southport, Toowoomba, Maroochydore, Gladstone, Mackay, Cairns and Townsville
- family law, domestic violence law, and criminal law legal advices
- child protection legal advice services in Mount Isa, Mackay, Longreach, Emerald, Biloela, Gladstone, Kingaroy, Cherbourg, Murgon, Cleveland, Roma, Charleville and Cunnamulla
- Domestic Violence Duty Lawyer Services in Rockhampton and Yeppoon, from a dedicated Domestic Violence Unit in Rockhampton providing legal and social work support, 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, Maryborough, Emerald and Gladstone
- Federal Circuit Court sittings across regional areas
- 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 Cooktown, 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 2020–21
Figure 10. Applications for grants of aid received by location 2020–21
|
Key disadvantaged group
|
Criminal law %
|
Family law %
|
Civil law %
|
Total %
|
|
Legal advice
Female
Indigenous
Regional and remote
Culturally diverse
|
26.74
15.11
13.53
10.00
|
66.69
7.80
15.60
11.97
|
53.46
8.78
13.00
14.50
|
48.34
10.75
14.11
11.97
|
|
Applications received
Female
Indigenous
Regional and remote
Culturally diverse
|
23.22
18.21
13.45
5.62
|
62.89
10.89
16.41
10.31
|
63.13
14.92
15.62
10.23
|
35.74
16.00
14.70
7.20
|
|
Applications approved
Female
Indigenous
Regional and remote
Culturally diverse
|
22.40
19.39
13.93
5.01
|
61.47
11.60
15.49
8.41
|
69.22
16.67
14.68
7.76
|
31.77
17.33
13.79
6.13
|
Table 6. Access by key disadvantaged groups 2020–21
Our people
Workforce strategy
The Workforce Strategy 2020–23 supports achieving Legal Aid Queensland’s vision to be a great place to work where our people are respected, valued, safe and supported. The workforce strategy outlines three areas of focus—people, culture and capability. We embrace diversity, flexibility, learning and continuous improvement to deliver quality legal services.
Our Workforce Strategy is aligned to our strategic and operational plans as well as relevant Queensland Government frameworks including:
- 10 Year Human Capital Outlook
- Leadership Competencies for Queensland
- Be Healthy, Be Safe, Be Well Framework
- Multicultural Action Plan.
The strategy is supported by the Workforce Action Plan 2020–21, which outlines the initiatives to be undertaken during the year in response to feedback from the Working for Queensland Employee Opinion Survey. During the year, we made progress in implementing initiatives from the Workforce Action Plan 2020–21. In particular, we focussed on embedding the new approach to flexible work following the return to workplaces after COVID-19 lockdowns. This included continued training for managers on leading remote teams and enhanced support for employees using technology for remote working.
Learning and development
We continued to provide our in-house CPD program during 2020–21. Most sessions are open to all staff, as well as law firms that provide legal aid services, CLCs and the ATSILS. Sessions returned to face-to-face when COVID-19 restrictions eased and sessions continued to be available via videoconferencing, webinar or recording. Our program aims to ensure our lawyers and those that provide legal aid services are up to date with the latest legislation changes and have the opportunity to develop their professional skills and legal knowledge. The program allows legal staff to earn CPD points, which are needed to renew practising certificates each year.
During the year, we also developed and implemented a Grants Training Framework to expand our ability to provide online training to Grants staff across our Brisbane and regional offices and increase operational capacity.
Other development opportunities for staff included:
Conferences and intensives
- Criminal law duty lawyer conference
- Regional principal lawyer conference
- Youth practitioner certification training
- Continuing professional development program
Cultural competency program
- Cultural awareness
- Cultural competency
Psychological wellness training program
- Vicarious trauma
- Responding to threats of harm
- Managing aggressive client behaviour
- Understanding addiction and substance abuse
- Sustaining resilience
Essential skills
- Induction training for all new staff
- Human rights
- Good decisions
- Computer systems, including in-house systems
- Library and research
- Communication skills
- Applying for jobs
- Train the trainer workshops
- Change management
- Effective planning and time management
- Work, health and safety
Leadership pathways program
- New managers course
- Leading remote teams
- Recruitment and selection
- Supervision and feedback
- Transitioning to management
- Corporate skills for new managers
- Navigating uncertainty and complexity
Staff have access to the Study and Research Assistance Scheme and the Certified Agreement training initiatives, which provide funds for higher educational requirements. Staff can also access external training and conferences for individual development needs.
We also provided staff with face-to-face and online e-learning opportunities to familiarise them with our policies and procedures, and to develop their skills and knowledge. Most in-house training is regularly reviewed by staff evaluations and improvements are made where appropriate and in conjunction with the facilitator.
Attracting and retaining staff
We focus on supporting our staff’s wellbeing. We offer various forms of flexible working options, including accessing accrued time leave, working part time, job sharing, remote working and purchased leave arrangements.
We have implemented strategies to help our staff effectively manage the possible psychological impacts of their work. We are particularly aware our lawyers, grants officers and support staff are routinely involved in work that is confronting and stressful, which puts them at risk of suffering vicarious trauma. These risks were addressed by arranging workshops on managing the psychological impacts of practising law and managing aggressive client behaviour. We also provided staff with information about support networks and self-help strategies, and access to confidential counselling services (see Figure 11 for staff absenteeism and turnover rates).
Figure 11. Staff absenteeism and turnover
Graduate recruitment program
Graduate lawyers continued on the graduate program during 2020–21. We had six graduates in regional and Brisbane centres—three graduates identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.
Workplace composition (full-time equivalents)
At 30 June 2021, Legal Aid Queensland had 567.72 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees working in 14 centres throughout the state (see Figures 12 and 13 for more information).
Figure 12. Actual staff by employment type (by FTE) 2020–21
Figure 13. Staff age profile (by headcount) 2020–21
Equal employment opportunity
We are committed to equal employment opportunity (EEO) principles and have successfully implemented these principles across the organisation. Our EEO statistics highlight our commitment to equitable recruitment, selection and promotion policies (see Figure 14 for more information).
Figure 14. Equal employment opportunity target group membership 2020–21
Measuring staff engagement
We continue to participate in the whole-of-government Working for Queensland Employee Opinion Survey. Our results in 2020 were very positive compared with the wider Queensland public sector. Eighty percent of staff completed the survey, with 80 percent of those who responded reporting high levels of engagement. Seventy-nine percent of staff indicated they engage in flexible work.
The feedback we received from the survey was invaluable in identifying areas for improvement and we will continue to implement changes in response to the survey feedback. The next survey will be conducted in September 2021.
Code of conduct
Legal Aid Queensland is covered by a whole-of-government Code of Conduct. The single Code of Conduct reflects ethical values contained in the Public Sector Ethics Act 1994 and covers the following principles:
- integrity and impartiality
- promoting the public good
- commitment to the system of government
- accountability and transparency.
The code guides us in managing issues like:
- conflicts of interest
- personal conduct
- commitment to service delivery
- information sharing and relationship building across agencies
- adherence to organisational values and policies
- continuous performance improvement
- appropriate use of official information and resources.
Our Workplace Behaviours Policy also provides standards relating to appropriate workplace behaviour and outlines obligations relating to the Code of Conduct. We manage Code of Conduct breaches in line with the Public Service Commission’s Discipline Guide.
We provide staff with Code of Conduct and workplace behaviours training when they start work and then annually.
Our systems and processes
Records and information management
Under the Public Records Act 2002, we are required to make and keep full and accurate records of our activities, and to comply with records and information management policies, standards and guidelines issued by the State Archivist. We use the Micro Focus Records Manager 8 (RM8) electronic document and records management system (eDRMS) and plan to upgrade this system to Content Manager 9 in 2021–22. This will involve the system integrating with other core business systems, which will further improve how we manage client records.
In 2020–21, we continued records and information management reforms to improve and support good corporate governance by:
- implementing Queensland State Archives requirements in relation to identifying and managing records for vulnerable people and records relating to incidences and allegations of abuse
- consulting with our staff to provide guidance on corporate recordkeeping requirements in relation to the Records Governance Policy
- refining digitisation processes to continue expanding Legal Aid Queensland’s corporate memory
- performing risk assessments on process changes and software implementation needed to respond to the COVID-19 situation.
We progressed the transition from paper to digital records by:
- upgrading our digitisation software and associated infrastructure to increase our processing capacity
- identifying opportunities where a scan-first process can be implemented.
We improved our records and information management system’s reliability and security by:
- participating in the organisation’s response to the recommendations of ‘Operation Impala’
- participating in user group sessions to keep abreast of the organisation’s eDRMS capabilities and implementing changes.
We continued to implement appropriate disposal activities by:
- planning a project that involves reviewing legal files that do not have a ‘Client authority to dispose’ as required by the Australian Solicitor Conduct Rules so that we can dispose of client files that have met their retention requirements, allowing us to reduce the expenses associated with off-site storage of physical files
- reviewing our disposal procedures and implementing appropriate changes in line with best practice.
We have collaborated with other government agencies to share knowledge about best practice records and information management by participating in:
- focus group discussions with agencies such as Queensland State Archives
- professional development opportunities delivered by Records and Information Management Professionals Australasia—the core industry professional body for records and information management.
Library services
Our library provides comprehensive reference, research and research-training services to our staff. It supports legal service delivery, planning and management through its modern collection, knowledge management and current awareness services, and experienced staff.
During the year, we:
- maintained our specialty collections of criminal law, family law and civil law judgments to provide our lawyers with case law tools designed for their needs
- trained staff to effectively use information resources for legal research
- produced 12 case law and five legislation alerting services for legal teams
- launched five new specialty alerting services to disseminate news, professional development opportunities and new resources in the library
- upgraded the comparable sentencing decisions databases to provide new search options for finding relevant cases, and improved how we display results.
Key in-house legal information resources are available to preferred supplier law firms, CLCs and the ATSILS to help them provide high quality legal services to clients.
Reducing environmental impact
During 2020–21, we continued work to improve energy and conservation efficiencies to help reduce our environmental impact.
Efforts to achieve savings have continued through:
- major upgrades to the high efficiency water chiller for our air-conditioning system at 44 Herschel Street to drive efficiencies and control over air-conditioning through the building
- upgrades to lighting systems installed as part of our main Brisbane office’s refurbishment, including motion sensors to minimise energy use
- using multifunctional devices for printing, copying, faxing and scanning to reduce our energy use and carbon footprint
- using rainwater collected in our three 16,000 litre water tanks to flush our toilets and irrigate our gardens at our 44 Herschel Street, Brisbane office building
- reusing water (condensation) from our air-conditioning systems to flush our toilets
- closely measuring, monitoring and publicising our energy and water use figures to inform and encourage staff
- implementing an electronic electricity use and reporting tool, which is monitored daily
- monitoring our daily water use to check for potential water leaks in our systems and reporting on water loss
- reducing our air-conditioning use during the cooler months
- modifying our air-conditioning water pumps so they shut down when the chiller cycles off
- increasing sensor lighting to reduce energy use
- introducing timer technology to reduce use of water boilers, hot water systems and water pumps
- educating staff about ways they can help save water and energy
- managing our cleaning contract and service hours to reduce after-hours lighting use
- participating in a long-term whole-of-government energy supply contract to increase purchasing power and improve supply conditions, while also reducing energy pricing and costs
- using videoconferencing facilities to reduce transport-related carbon emissions, energy use and associated costs
- choosing more energy efficient cars when replacing vehicles in our fleet
- recycling paper, cardboard, cans, glass and printer toner cartridges
- constantly looking for opportunities to further reduce our water and energy use.
Figure 15. Herschel St, Brisbane office water consumption
Figure 16. Herschel St, Brisbane office energy consumption
Information Communication and Technology program
During 2020–21, we continued to complete all scheduled work within the Information Communication and Technology (ICT) 2020–23 Strategic Plan. We also started several business improvement projects related to establishing a robust infrastructure, improving mobility and implementing modern technologies.
The ICT 2020–23 Strategic Plan included the service delivery and strategic direction Information Technology (IT) Services are undertaking to support the organisation. The plan outlines the key areas in which IT Services will focus planning, investment and delivery through four strategic objectives:
- supporting the effective and efficient operation of the organisation and its business through ICT
- advancing the organisation’s business with better use of ICT on a modern mobile digital platform
- engaging more easily with the public, preferred suppliers, government departments and non-governmental organisations
- building a capable, trusted and more forward-looking ICT provider.
During the year, we:
- implemented Office 365 and Windows 10 across all Legal Aid Queensland computers; this has been essential to allow work from home capability during the COVID-19 pandemic
- reviewed two legacy business critical, bespoke systems and determined these should be replaced when funding is available
- conducted a Disaster Recovery Test to verify business continuity processes
- conducted a server replacement project to replace 86 servers that are essential for business continuity
- conducted a statewide Uninterrupted Power Supply upgrade that is essential for business continuity
- continued working towards completing initiatives outlined in the ICT 2017–20 Strategic Plan and developed the ICT Strategic Plan 2020–23
- completed multiple projects to enable working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, including:
- upgrading the internet connection and associated hardware to allow all staff to work from home
- rolling out 200 new Surface Pro devices to staff
- implementing multiple communication technologies to allow all staff to use videoconferencing and collaboration tools
- upgrading software and hardware capabilities to allow staff to access business critical systems
- implementing softphone capabilities so staff can make/receive calls on their mobile device.
Open data
Data about the Queensland Language Services Policy is available on the Queensland Government Open Data portal. To access more information, government data and the Annual Report 2020–21 Open Data, visit www.data.qld.gov.au