ACLS HISTORY
The Australian Community Legal Service started
with simply an idea: to provide the community
with quick and easy access to free legal advice
and to raise awareness of that service.
Our aim was to strengthen and improve upon the
existing community legal service model by providing
legal advice via a free call advice line operating
from 8:30am to 5:30pm Monday to Friday. Our
improved model would see our advice line, staffed
by volunteer solicitors, paralegals and support
staff, address legal queries in a timely manner
at the convenience of the caller. No appointments
or pre-arranged scheduling are required. Our
vision was to allow any member of the community
requiring advice or assistance to pick up their
telephone and obtain the advice they required
instantly from our qualified staff.
In early 2004 our idea became a reality and
our telephone advice line was opened to the
community for the first time. Operating from
the Addison Road Centre in Marrickville, the
ACLS commenced providing our service with little
more than two volunteers and simple computer
and telephone systems. Our service quickly grew to require more volunteer staff and allowed us to support community schemes such as Work for the Dole and Disability Support. We are pleased to have received an overwhelming positive community
response to our free advice line.
The Australian Community Legal Service currently
receives an average of 58 daily requests for
legal advice, translating to over 15,000 calls
per year and we are pleased to note that this
average continues to increase over time.
ACCESSIBILITY OF OUR FREE ADVICE LINE
The ACLS made the
decision in its early stages of implementation
to provide the community with a free call telephone
number used to access our service. The free
call number allows calls to be made by members
of the community who require our assistance
at no cost, making the ACLS a service which
is completely free to the community.
AWARENESS OF OUR FREE ADVICE LINE
From the outset, we have noted that for a service
such as ours to be of assistance and for the
ACLS to really make a difference it must be
accessible to a community who is aware of its
existence.
Community awareness of our free advice line
was always one of the most important factors
used to determine the success of our organisation.
Drawing from funds generated from grants, donations
and fund raising events, the Australian Community
Legal Service continues to prioritise community
awareness which has seen a noticeable increase
in the demand for our service. Our efforts to
maximise community awareness are seen in the
following projects:
Over 500,000 pamphlets aimed at informing the
community of our service have been printed and
distributed in New South Wales alone.
We have established ties with dozens of community
centres throughout the state who currently display
our posters, cards and pamphlets.
We are currently supporting social workers who
inform members of the community of the existence
of our service as the need arises.
Thanks to the generosity of various organisations
we have raised funds to allow us to print small
advertisements in the legal section of the Yellow
Pages.
We have commenced the creation of a legal advice
booklet aimed at addressing common legal questions
in print form. The creation, printing and distribution
of this booklet heavily relies on grants and
donations.
LONG TERM AIMS
Our free advice line has been extremely well
received by members of the community and continues
to be our main focus. Our efforts to raise awareness
of our service have been well rewarded and we
are committed to continuing to raise the awareness
of our service well into the future.
We are constantly working on new projects aimed
at increasing the accessibility of legal advice
and information and we are always looking to
create and build upon ties with other organisations
who wish to help the community.
With the continued help of our kind volunteers
and with the much appreciated financial support
necessary to fund our projects we hope to continue
assisting more and more members of the community
well into the future.
VOLUNTEER SOLICITORS
Due to the increased volume of calls and the limited size of our office we have been unable to accomodate the level of volunteer solicitors and staff required to attend to requests for legal advice. For that reason, and to limit our exposure to high overhead costs, the Australian Community Legal Service decided to outsource many of our requests for legal advice to solicitors in private practice. Rather than have large numbers of volunteer solicitors and staff attend our office, many of our enquiries are now transferred to those solicitors who agree to assisting our callers from the convenience of their own offices.
Our initial trial of this methodology proved tremendously successful. We have found that solicitors appreciate the ability to assist the community from their own offices without having to travel to our marrickville office and participate in a roster system.
We are determined to ensure our core values are prioritied. As such, each and every solicitor who agree to assist our callers must make a committment to providing telephone advice at absolutely no cost to the community and must provide advice immediately to avoid keeping our callers waiting.
HELP ACLS AND THE COMMUNITY
Due to the increased volume of calls to our service we are desperately in need of more volunteer solicitors to assist in the following areas of law:
- FAMILY LAW (custody, access and property disputes, divorce advice)
- CRIMINAL LAW (drink driving charges, traffic offences, drug charges, appeals)
- COMPENSATION IMPACT CLAIMS (psychological impact claims, assault impact claims)
- WILLS (contesting, drafting and general advice)
- EMPLOYMENT LAW (unfair dismissal, redundancy, harrassment, discrimination advice)
If you are a solicitor and are willing to volunteer some of your time to provide free legal advice to the community, please click on the links below to find out more information about how you can join our Community Assistance Program.
Community Assistance Program Information
Community Assistance Program Application
