Caxton Community Legal Centre staff described the pressures and priorities of a “legal ER” when they presented at the inaugural Queensland Law Society Specialist Practice Conference yesterday.
Elder Law Emergency Room: What to do when the client needs help today was one of more than 20 sessions presented at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre on day one of the three-day conference.
Senior Lawyers Stephanie Saint James, Jessica Sebastian and Alexia Zsigmond each presented a real-life case study from their practice, after an introduction from Managing Senior Lawyer Nicky Mitchell.
The practitioners described the elder abuse cases using a framework of triaging, investigating, stabilising, and planning ahead, involving tasks such as ensuring client safety, securing evidence, and making referrals.
Ms Saint James emphasised that the goal of the first 48 hours was not to solve the case but to protect the client.
She said clear themes were evident from the cases presented: family members held power or control over a client’s money, housing and decision making; the client had lost control over a key aspect of their lives; important information was missing that needed to be obtained urgently to give competent and meaningful advice to the client; and evidence gathering and preservation was critical.
“The clients were experiencing vulnerability due to factors such as age, illness, hospitalisation, isolation, dependency, mental health concerns or housing insecurity, and the multidisciplinary responses were essential, with lawyers working alongside hospitals, social workers, banks, financial counsellors, mental health services, real estate agents and other supports,” she said.
“A really key takeaway across all cases is that the first 48 hours focus on risk reduction, stabilisation, and safety rather than resolving the entire legal problem at that point in time.”
The opening day’s focus was on succession and elder law; personal injuries; and workplace relations and employment law.
The third stream closed out with a discussion of the merits of a Fair Work Court, involving barrister Mitch Rawlings, Queensland Council of Unions General Secretary Jacqueline King, IRiQ Law Legal Practice Director Rebecca Pezzutti, and Thomsons Partner Rose Dimitrious.
“The design needs to take into account accessibility for migrant or vulnerable workers and individuals who don’t have legal representation, because in many cases the actual value of the claim might be modest, but the implications can be significant across a workforce,” Ms Pezzutti said.
“Individuals need to be in a position where they feel that enforcing their right to an entitlement, albeit modest, is practically achievable.”
Ms Pezzutti said another important consideration was sustainability for the workload in the jurisdiction, primarily because of the rapid rate of reform, change and other shifts in industrial relations.
Ms Dimitrious suggested that instead of, or possibly in addition to, having another court, existing processes could be improved, perhaps through benchbook-style guidance.
Mr Rawlings posited that in a “web of a jurisdiction”, another court could create further complication.
Ms Pezzutti likened a Fair Work Court to the notion of “one ring to rule them all”.
She said there were already good processes in the Federal Circuit Court and the Federal Court for high-value or more complex matters.
“We’d probably end up with the same result if we tweaked and improved those, so I think that there’s a strong argument against another court being established in that we already have something that we could improve, where resources have already been dedicated, and we already seem to know our way around it,” she said.
“And if the notion is that that gets absorbed into this brand-new court, then we’re into that territory where we’re doing what we’ve always done but expecting a different result, and you know what they say about that.”
She also pointed to the possibility of fragmentation of issues, where different aspects of a dispute could end up in different courts.
More than 460 practitioners from around the state have registered to attend the conference, which is delivering specialist content across a range of practice areas.
It continues today with a focus on property and commercial law; government law; and commercial litigation and dispute resolution.
Share this article