Organisation : Justice Connect
Work type : Full-time, Contract/Temporary
Sector : Law, Justice & Human Rights
Salary type : Annual Package
Salary : $59,478.87 per annum, plus 9.5% superannuation, annual leave loading and generous salary packaging options
Application closing date : 22 Jun, 2021
About the organisation
An exciting opportunity has arisen to join one of Australia’s most successful public interest and social justice organisations. In the face of rising levels of unmet legal need, Justice Connect designs and delivers high impact interventions to increase access to legal support and progress social justice.
We are committed to taking an impact-focused approach, applying research and design principles to develop our products and services to ensure they make a tangible difference for our clients and sector peers.
We deliver services that assist both people and community organisations. Those we assist often struggle to navigate the law, are unable to use the law in their daily lives and experience the impacts of harsh and unjust laws. We aim to prevent and to solve legal problems so that we can prevent the negative impacts on people’s lives and organisations and empower the community to use the law as a force for good.
Given the scale of the challenges we address, we use digital innovation to extend our reach and impact, supporting us to be more efficient and accessible, while helping us capture and use data to better understand legal need and underlying systemic issues.
We harness the extraordinary pro bono contributions of over 50 member firms and the barristers we work with across the country. We channel pro bono effort through our innovative service models to ensure that pro bono hours deliver real impact for the community.
We develop strategic interventions to help address the system-level drivers of legal problems and barriers people face when engaging with the legal system. By addressing root causes of flawed or unfair laws and poorly designed systems, we prevent the long-term challenges that people and organisations continue to face.
Our creative and passionate staff drive us forward with a commitment to evaluation and iteration that ensures our impact increases year on year.
The Paralegal role is a member of Justice Connect’s Public Interest Law and Court Programs team, which were brought together to form a new team from January 2021. The team’s new strategy, aligned to Justice Connect’s strategy, aims to scale services reach more people, to strengthen our capacity to respond to emerging legal issues, and to carry out strategic work to address the drivers of unmet legal need and system-level issues.
About the role
Role purpose:
The Public Interest Law and Court Programs team works to increase access to legal support and progress social justice. It achieves this through three key focuses: providing legal support at scale through digital strategies, rapid responses to community need including disaster response work, and focused work on priority areas of financial and employment law problems.
The team uses a range of approaches including specialist advice, pro bono referrals and online resources. We leverage innovative technology and our network of over 10,000 pro bono lawyers that assist in delivering our legal services. We help across a wide range of areas of law and at all stages of legal issues. We have particular expertise in dealing with issues that have escalated to court proceedings with a long history of running court-based services across a range of jurisdictions.
By identifying and responding quickly to emerging legal trends and using a multi-intensity, multi-channel approach, we strategically tackle legal need in the community. In all our work, we centre client experience and our aspiration to maximise the impact of our interventions.
The Paralegal roles will support the service delivery activities of the team, including responsibility for overseeing intake and triage decisions, and working across our model of multi-channel and multi-intensity assistance to help seekers.
Key responsibilities:
- Intake of potential clients, including undertaking initial assessment of eligibility for assistance, and nature of assistance to be offered.
- Assisting the lawyers on the team with client, file and practice management activities
- Providing legal administrative assistance to the lawyers on the team including through client engagement, legal research, making referrals to firms via the Pro Bono Portal and preparation of volunteer briefs.
- Providing file management support to lawyers, including maintaining and closing client files, and maintaining client records as required.
- Undertaking legal research as requested and assisting with preparing and maintaining the legal content of resources.
- Administrative assistance to the team involved with maintaining a roster of volunteer lawyer support for court-based services, including liaising with pro bono partners, and preparing volunteer rosters.
- Together with the Project and Engagement Leads, working collaboratively to prepare data for reporting purposes as required.
- Supporting the maintenance of strong relationships with key stakeholders.
- Support the leadership team of the program to implement the team and organisational strategy. This may involve work to improve how the team identifies and responds to help seekers with multiple issues, the way in which the team collaborates to respond to need, and how it identifies efficiencies and opportunities for impact.
- Escalate risk and legal practice management issues to the Principal Lawyer or Manager.
- Contribute to program and organise-wide projects.
- Contributing to Justice Connect’s Reconciliation Action Plan activities.
Selection criteria:
- Please view the attached PDF for further information regarding the selection criteria.
Employee benefits:
Justice Connect offers employment benefits including salary packaging (making part of your salary tax-free), flexible working arrangements, above award annual leave provisions and opportunities for professional development. Justice Connect is an organisation that strives to show leadership, operate sustainably and demonstrate our effectiveness. You will be rewarded with a workplace culture that is professional, committed, collaborative and creative and where you can make a real difference through your work.
How to apply
Applications not allowed for this job listing.
Please quote in application: Paralegal ( 2 positions available) via Pro Bono Australia.
Sector: #Law_Justice_and_Human_Rights
