Seniors Law Manager

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 Seniors Law has provided specialist legal help to older people for over 15 years. Through a Health Justice Partnership (HJP) model, our lawyers across Victoria and New South Wales work closely with health professionals to identify older people who are experiencing or at risk of abuse and refer them to our services for specialist support.   

Our lawyers use a range of interventions and provide holistic and specialist support to address both legal and non-legal causes and consequences of elder abuse. We work to prevent the escalation of legal problems and family conflict; and, ultimately, promote the economic security and independence of older people, as well as their control in decision-making and choice in care.  

In this role, you’ll work to:

• Manage, motivate and offer strategic guidance to Seniors Law staff, pro bono lawyers, secondees, and volunteers, including in relation to projects and priority cohorts.
• Ensure ongoing and adequate funding for Seniors Law, including managing relationships with current funders and supporters, and securing new sources of financial and in-kind support.
• Prioritise and lead Seniors Law’s compliance with all governance, reporting, data responsiveness, measurement, evaluation & learning requirements, including reports for the Justice Connect Board and external funders.
• Oversee Seniors Law’s existing projects, including our future planning project, along with identifying and progressing related funding and innovation opportunities.
• Engage in systemic advocacy, strategic engagement, consumer outreach, and community-based education activities, including contributing to submissions on areas of law or policy related to Seniors Law’s clients and advocacy priorities

Our ideal candidate

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

• Experience in leading high-quality legal services, including motivating and developing staff and volunteers.
• Experience in seeking government and philanthropic support for services and projects
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, and the ability to successfully manage stakeholder relationships, including with Seniors Law clients, government and philanthropic funders, the pro bono legal profession, the health, legal assistance and community sectors, and other stakeholders.
• Experience in managing risk escalation, preferably in a not-for-profit context.
• Experience in engaging in systemic advocacy and strategic engagement work.

Expertise that you may have that would support our team:

• Be an Australian legal practitioner eligible to hold an unrestricted practising certificate

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

A week in this role

If you were here last week, you would have:

• Held a supervision catch-up with one of the Seniors Law team members to discuss issues arising in their role, monitor workload and capacity, brainstorm ideas to raise the profile of our work, and check-in on wellbeing.
• Met with one of Seniors Law’s partners, such as government, community sector & pro bono stakeholders in relation to our innovative future planning project, which promotes the uptake of enduring powers of attorney as an important safeguard against future abuse.
• Finalised an evidence-based report and engaged with a current Seniors Law funder, sharing data and client insights about our collaborative impact in preventing and better responding to financial elder abuse.
• Met as part of Seniors Law’s senior leadership team to discuss client-focused, evidence-based priorities and trends, including how these inform the program’s current strategy implementation process.
• Contributed to managing the risk associated with leading a high-impact community legal centre practice

What we offer

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

How to apply