Grand Hyatt Hotel, Collins Street, Melbourne
– 10-11 August, 2006
The National Access to Justice and Pro Bono Conference 2006 was held in Melbourne on Friday 11 and Saturday 12 August 2006. It was hosted by the Law Council of Australia, the Australian Legal Assistance Forum and the National Pro Bono Resource Centre, as the Australian Pro Bono Centre was then known.
The conference follows on from the successful 2nd National Pro Bono Conference held in Sydney in October 2003 and the Legal Aid Congress held in Brisbane in November 2004. The vision is to inaugurate the event in Melbourne and look at it becoming the premier legal gathering concerned with access to justice issues to be staged every two years.
The key themes for the conference sessions were legal aid, pro bono practice, human rights, crime & punishment, family relationships and civil justice with an overall theme of moving towards universal coverage for legal services in Australia at least insofar as obtaining legal advice is concerned.
Conference Papers
Select conference papers listed below are available for download as PDF files. Copyright in articles is retained by the individual authors.
- Access to Justice
the Hon Murray Gleeson, Chief Justice, High Court of Australia (PDF 22.3KB)
- Access to Justice
Julian Burnside, QC, Victorian Bar (PDF 104KB)
- The agenda for civil justice reform – The English experience – Evolution of an improved justice system, or disguising a curate’s egg?
Robert Musgrove, Chief Executive, Civil Justice Council, Royal Courts of Justice, England (PDF 248KB)
- Some reflections on 30 years of a National Legal Aid Scheme
Dr Don Fleming, Lecturer, University of Canberra (PDF 48.1KB)
- Cooperative pro bono: finding and keeping partners: Cancer patients’ legal service
Elizabeth Ballinger, Head of Social Work Department, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Jennifer McVicar, Director, Pro Bono & Community Service, Baker & McKenzie (PDF 345KB)
- Legal costs in legal aid work – muzzle not the ox
Bill Grant, Chief Executive Officer, Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales (PDF 82.5KB)
- Engaging law firm leaders in pro bono and maintaining lawyers’ interest
Jennifer McVicar, Director, Pro Bono & Community Service and Kenneth Gray, Partner & Real Live Law Firm Leader, Baker & McKenzie (PDF 66.1KB)
- Cooperative pro bono: finding and keeping partners
Tony Woodyatt, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Griffith Law School and Belinda Abey, Pro Bono Solicitor, Clayton Utz (PDF 48.4KB)
- Unmet legal need: how to identify and meet it
Geoff Mulherin, Director, Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales (PDF 1.23MB)
The Law Council of Australia has also prepared a report of the conference (PDF 980KB).