Senior Lawyer- Innovation

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.

Justice Connect’s Access Program is a multidisciplinary team of in-house legal, data, project, and service design expertise. We collaborate to increase access to legal assistance and progress social justice by responding quickly to a wide range of legal problems with a particular focus on disaster response, financial rights and employment law problems. We have 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. 

Our legal services use a range of approaches including specialist advice, pro bono referrals (leveraging our network of over 10,000 pro bono lawyers) and online resources to help people experiencing legal problems. We also operate weekly pro bono clinics for help seekers involved in litigation in Victorian courts, Federal courts and VCAT. 

Our strategy commits us to identifying ways to scale legal help with digital solutions, including our in-house developed digital platform, Justice Connect Answers (JCA). We seek to identify and respond quickly to emerging legal need in the community. In all our work, we centre client experience and our commitment to impact. 

You'll bring to the team experience in the following areas:

• Experience supervising intake, triage, and provision of legal assistance.
• A demonstrated commitment to continuous improvement of legal service delivery and taking a client-centred approach to development of responses to unmet legal need.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to successfully build and maintain key relationships, including with sector collaborators and internal stakeholders
• Ability to demonstrate flexibility and agility with openness to pivoting as organisational priorities change.
• (Desirable) Post-admission experience in one or more of the relevant areas of civil law, including credit and debt, tenancy matters, and/or general contractual disputes.

Expertise that you may have that would support our team:

• Bachelor of Laws / Juris Doctor,
• Current unrestricted practicing certificate with a minimum of 4 years post-admission experience.

Candidates will need to demonstrate commitment to Justice Connect's vision, strategy and values.

In this role, you’ll work to

•  Deliver a strong legal practice with a particular focus on improving the Justice Connect Answers legal practice and use of the platform.
• Build and maintain strong stakeholder relationships to maintain confidence in our legal services, innovative approaches, and to underpin service delivery collaboration.
• Identify risks and issues impacting stakeholder relationships, service delivery and projects.
• Embed Justice Connect’s values in the work of the team, share knowledge, and provide leadership focused on delivering Justice Connect strategy, including the use of databased decision making in legal practice and use of technology products.

If you were here last week, you would have:

• Participated in a meeting with a key stakeholder about use of digital platforms to better provide legal services
• Engaged with a key stakeholder on insights from analysis of our end of quarter service delivery data to determine what steps we could take to further improve our services to meet project objectives
• Discussed legal advice provided by our pro bono firms as part of Justice Connect Answers
• Collaborated with a colleague to deliver a one-hour referrals workshop with a key referrer to surface any pain points and opportunities to streamline the referral process
• Collaborated with a pro bono firm to develop and draft a new self-help resource in response to an emerging legal need
• Met with the Access Program leadership to review service data and staff insights to support decision making on how to further improve our processes
• Attended a team meeting to celebrate successes, provide updates and confirm the focus of project activities for the upcoming fortnight

If you want your next role to have purpose, support you to master new skills and build meaningful relationships then Justice Connect is the place to work.

We believe in creating an environment where people will thrive, we offer a range of benefits including:

• Progressive leave entitlements
• Flexible working arrangements with a minimum of 40% in the workplace attendance across the month
• Access to EAP
• New hire and ongoing learning and development

Please upload your resume and a cover letter which outlines your skills and experience that will help you achieve success in this role.  

For further information contact Hannah Muller on 02 8599 2***

Applications close at 11:59 PM on 3 July 2024.

The position reports to the Manager of Innovation.

Employment is part time (30 hours per week) fixed term until 6 December 2024.

The salary for this role is $105,965.63 per annum (pro rata), plus 11% superannuation, annual leave loading and generous salary packaging options  

This role can be based at our Melbourne or Sydney CBD offices with 40% of the month in the workplace with hybrid working arrangements.

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