Earlier this year, the Australian Liberal government released the national budget whereby the family law system was prioritised with a focus to assist those facing violent situations. The budget was successful in allocating funds to assist the strained family law system in Australia, with $87.9 million allocated to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia’s Lighthouse Project pilot and $52.4 million to Legal Aid Commissions.
Although the injection of funds is a step in the right direction to improve efficiencies in the family law system, many law professionals have noted that the government has neglected to cater for those who surpass the threshold to apply for legal aid but are unable to afford private legal fees. It is in these instances, Australians who fall into this gap may turn to representing themselves in family law matters as Self-Represented Litigants (SRLs).
It is from this issue that several law professionals are working to make representation a more accessible topic for SRLs such as Barrister, Chauntelle Ingenito. The Lawyers Weekly 30 under 30 Barrister award recipient was motivated to see what she could do to help the Family Court system run more efficiently when she entered the Bar.
A system that is already running with increasing caseloads and is currently well over a manageable capacity, Chauntelle found that SRLs may sometimes escalate delays by taking up the Court’s time with incomplete applications as they can (understandably) miss simple, key information such as: a lack of evidence, insufficiently stating their position on a matter and unclear wording. Indicating that SRLs, although likely well intentioned, have not historically been provided with enough technical resources to combat these areas in a manner that is easily understood by those who have studied law.
This is one of the many reasons why Chauntelle attributes her time outside of her daily duties to collaborate with fellow practitioners to provide education for self-represented persons: “I have always had a fond spot for working with those who don’t have the resources to help themselves. Since I was a young practitioner, I have worked on legal aid matters. When I was a principal solicitor myself, I derived substantial work from legal aid. When I came to the Bar, I felt it was my obligation to continue to represent those persons who need help the most, often older people who have limited resources but deserve representation to properly get their position across.”
Compounding issues in this space is a shortage of skilled law professionals having the capacity to take on Legal Aid work due to low fees, in addition to a lack of counsel available in rural areas. Rates for lawyers who opt to take on Legal Aid cases means that professionals will often have to work at a financial loss, resulting in a decline of firms over the last 20 years that elect to take on these matters. Additionally, Ms Ingenito highlighted in a recent Lawyers Weekly article that, “there aren’t many barristers who are regionally based. It’s becoming harder for barristers to fill legal aid hearings, which are low fee and don’t always have allowances for travel and accommodation costs.” An analysis of Legal Aid cases between July 2020 and March 2021 indicated that the majority of legal aid grants were provided to men facing criminal cases, whereas grant resources for family law cases were half the amount that was provided to the criminal law sector.
Putting the pieces together, it is understandable why so many SRLs are often left with no choice but to manage their family law matters independently. Barrister Chauntelle Ingenito is helping to transform the way that SRLs approach their cases to assist the courts and families by collaborating with the team from Family Law 101 to host online workshops: “I have found that by obtaining a greater understanding of family law and the pathways to resolution of matters, many more SRLs are resolving matters quickly, cheaply, and appropriately. This is an incredible benefit for the overrun and underfunded Courts system, who is now facing the backlog of COVID, and needs as much support from practitioners as possible.”
Whilst contributing to a variety of workshops to assist both the courts system and the individuals who find themselves the position of an SRL, Chauntelle is a strong advocate for law practitioners to broaden their experience and partaking in legal aid work: “To any practitioner who wants a world-class on the job legal education and career, I could not more highly recommend doing legal aid work or working in house with legal aid.”
Chauntelle’s work in this space is contributing to shifting the dialogue that lawyers are only interested in financial gain and couldn’t care less about the outcome: “In family law, there is a common misconception that lawyers are bad, they are trying to hurt the family themselves, they are only in it for the money, and that they are all corrupt. Since running the workshops and being able to hear the concerns of those SRLs, the dialogue has started to shift. I always found that the family law matters were the most interesting, and got a lot of joy out of having matters finalise favourably to clients”
As a Barrister, Chauntelle maintains her work outside of the courts to help Australian families resolve their law matters and continues to provide legal education and resources to SRLs and junior practitioners. She hopes to see the developments that have occurred in the family law space throughout the last 2 years, continue to be encouraged and upheld across the board. As the October release date of the Labour government’s federal budget nears, will those in charge recognise that more resources need to be provided to the family law and legal aid sectors to address the various issues still facing this area of law? Or will the responsibility to drive change in this space continue to fall on independent practitioners? Time will tell.
