In Brief Issue #1028

Nominations for the next Victorian Bar Pro Bono Awards are now open.

The next Victorian Bar Pro Bono Awards Ceremony is scheduled for March 2023. In a change from previous practice, nominations for the next Victorian Bar Pro Bono Awards will now open approximately 18 months in advance. 

Usually, the call for nominations occurs for a limited period before the ceremony. However, nominations for the 2023 awards are now open from September 2021 to November 2022. 

This change to the period in which nominations are open will enable a greater number of nominations and will permit members and court personnel, who know the great pro bono work done in our courts and tribunals, to immediately recognise outstanding pro bono activities by submitting a nomination as and when the work occurs.

If you are aware of barristers who are making an outstanding contribution representing parties on a pro bono basis, please consider making nominations throughout the nomination period.

For more information or to submit a nomination, click here.

Information about the Awards includes a short video featuring the Honourable Chris Maxwell AC, President of the Victorian Court of Appeal, explaining how pro bono assistance provided by barristers makes a difference to vulnerable people in our community. The Pro Bono Committee is grateful to Michael Rivette, barrister and past Deputy Chair of the Pro Bono Committee and past Chair of the Communications Committee, for all his hard work in creating this excellent video.

Members are reminded that information about how you can get involved in the Victorian Bar’s Pro Bono Schemes is available on the Pro Bono page of the members’ website here.

Converge International understands that people face many challenges in their lives and that these sometimes require specialised support. We believe the counsellors providing this support should be specialists with specific social or cultural experience, knowledge and understanding. Converge offers access to members to one session of specialist support (available during business hours only), in addition to Converge’s existing Employee Assistance Program services.

For more information about the specialist phone lines, please read the brochure.

Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Regulations 2021

The new Commercial Tenancy Relief Scheme Regulations 2021 were passed on Tuesday, 24 August 2021 and are effective from Wednesday, 28 July 2021 to Saturday, 15 January 2022.

Click here to view the COVID-19 BCL Rent Relief Scheme with details on eligibility, criteria and application form.

BCL’s ability to continue to provide this relief and support to those most in need depends on the support of those Bar members who can continue to pay rent.

If you have any questions, please contact BCL by email at bclrentrelief@vicbar.com.au.

COVIDSafe

Please refer to Staying COVIDSafe at BCL for all information, communications, helpful links to COVID safe plans and restrictions as they happen and what we all need to do.

Members working on pro bono matters can once again seek assistance from selected Monash University law students through the Open Justice Project. Students can assist with legal and paralegal tasks, such as legal research, simple drafting, and preparing chronologies or summaries of evidence. The Project is now in its second intake; during the first intake, barristers reported that they received very high-quality assistance on a wide range of matters. Barristers seeking the assistance of a student for a pro bono matter should complete the request form on the Open Justice Project webpage.

The Open Justice Project is a collaboration between the Victorian Bar and the Monash Faculty of Law. It establishes a panel of later year undergraduate and postgraduate students at the Faculty who provide pro bono legal assistance (such as research and paralegal assistance) to barristers in pro bono matters. The Patron of the Project is the Honourable Chris Maxwell AC, President of the Court of Appeal. For further information about the Project, members can see the Open Justice Project webpage here.

The Law Council of Australia (LCA) has invited the Victorian Bar to nominate a person for the 2021 Law Council’s President’s Award.

Members are invited to put forward their suggestions on whom the Bar Council should nominate for the Award. The eligibility criteria for the Award are available to read here.

Please email Miranda.Tulloch@vicbar.com.au with your suggestions and include a CV and a statement about the nominee’s achievements and how he or she fits the eligibility criteria by COB Friday, 24 September 2021. This will enable the Bar Council sufficient time to meet and consider all suggestions and submit a nomination to the LCA in early October.

Background

Each year, five of the Law Council’s most recent Past Presidents participate in a judging panel for the President’s Award. This is a prestigious annual award conferred in recognition of an Australian lawyer’s outstanding contribution to the public or other service. The Award is presented at the Law Council’s Gala Dinner. The judging panel will convene to consider the nominations following the close of nominations. The Law Council Gala Dinner is scheduled for Thursday, 25 November 2021, held at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

Previous recipients of the President’s Award are (2007) Mr Lex Lasry QC, (2008) The Hon Ted Mullighan QC, (2009) Mr Bret Walker SC, (2010) Mr Colin McDonald QC, (2011) Ms Debbie Mortimer SC, (2012) Mr Mark Woods, (2013) Ms Elizabeth Heenan, (2014) Mr Geoffrey Eames AM QC and Ms Raelene Webb QC, (2015) Mr Ian Kennedy AM, (2016) Mr Julian McMahon, (2017) Mr David Neal SC, (2018) Mr Phillip Boulten SC, (2019) Ms Haley Allan and Mr Bill Mitchell and, (2020) Mr Stephen Keim SC.

Victorian Bar members are encouraged to use the Member Benefits online portal, where you can access a wide variety of discounts, special offers, and member-only deals as part of your Bar membership.

The exclusive benefits are available Australia-wide and are not generally open to the public.

To activate your account and access the benefits, please click here. You must log in using your vicbar.com.au login details.

For up-to-date information about the Courts’ responses, please visit their websites:

• Federal Court of Australia – see here.
• Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia – see here.
• Supreme Court of Victoria – see here.
• County Court of Victoria – see here.
• Magistrates’ Court of Victoria – see here.

County Court of Victoria

The County Court of Victoria has reviewed our operational settings, and the following will apply until further notice.

Circuits

Consistent with the easing of restrictions in regional Victoria (except for Ballarat), the Court will resume circuits at the following locations from Monday, 20 September 2021:

• Geelong
• Latrobe Valley
• Mildura
• Warrnambool
• Wodonga
• Shepparton

When the Court resumed circuit jury trials in May, it coincided with an exemption from physical distancing and density quotient limitations for juries. While most circuit regions have now come out of lockdown, the exemption was not provided in the latest Health Directions.

As a result, jury trial procedures have been modified to meet density quotient and physical distancing requirements. In particular, for empanelment:

• To obtain a reasonable jury panel size but still comply with density limits, the panel will be spread between the jury pool room and the trial courtroom (including the jury box) and in some courts at a third location (civil court or jury deliberation room).
• Jurors are escorted to the courtroom for excuses (written excuses may be conveyed at the presiding judge’s discretion) and the parade.
• If selected, jurors receive a lanyard and return to their assigned seat (whether in the jury pool room, trial courtroom or another location).

Linked here is a Circuits criminal jury trials where physical distancing is required – a guide for the profession and court users which sets out the necessary modified procedures.

In light of restrictions in place in Ballarat, circuit will remain suspended there until further notice. The Court will aim to resume circuit at Ballarat after restrictions are lifted and in accordance with the prevailing Health Directions.

Melbourne criminal jury trials

As there have been no significant changes to restrictions in metropolitan Melbourne, jury trials in Melbourne remain suspended.

Melbourne – onsite attendance by practitioners and other court users

The operational court settings that have been in place since 18 August 2021 will remain.

This means only matters of urgency or priority can be conducted by the Court onsite and only where there is no reasonable alternative. The restrictions explicitly limit the attendance of court users (practitioners, parties and others) to the extent necessary to support the functioning of the court.

Onsite attendance at Melbourne or Ballarat by any practitioner or court user will be very much by exception and will require approval of the Chief Judge, coordinated through the chambers of the presiding judge.

Parties with matters listed during the lockdown period should contact the chambers of the presiding judge in the event of any uncertainty.

Melbourne and circuit - mask-wearing

Mask setting 1 will apply to criminal jury trials on circuit. This means all trial participants (including the judge and counsel) must wear a mask.

Mask setting 2 will apply to non-jury matters at Melbourne and on circuit provided the overall number of court users in the courtroom are at a minimum. This means, those in a speaking role (including the judge and counsel) are not required to wear a mask, but all other participants and other court users must wear a mask. In circumstances where in-person attendance of a large number of court users may be necessary, mask wearing by all court participants (including those in a speaking role such as the judge and counsel) will be required.

Melbourne and circuit - Letters of authority

The profession should obtain any letter of authority or work permit to attend onsite at court from their respective organisations, should this be required. 

An accused’s bail papers will suffice to attend onsite at court.

The Supreme Court of Victoria has new rules relating to court file searches and affidavits, which will come into effect soon.

As of Friday, 1 October 2021, evidentiary documents filed in a proceeding, including affidavits, exhibits to affidavits, witness statements, expert reports, written submissions, outlines of argument and chronologies, may not be inspected by any non-party until the document has been read or relied on in open court or for an application determined without a hearing. 

Prior to a hearing or determination, parties to proceedings will be required to provide details to the Court of any evidentiary documents they intend to rely on. 

There is no change to the process for submitting a file search request. However, there will be some changes to how documents will be made available upon a search.  Further information on those changes will be published soon. 

The way affidavits and exhibits are filed with the Court will also change. From Friday 1 October 2021, they will be required to be filed as a single paginated document with a maximum of one exhibit or bundle exhibit if more than one document is referred to in the affidavit. Multiple exhibits or separate affidavits and exhibits will no longer be accepted. These requirements will not extend to affidavits filed with the Registrar of Probates, which will remain unchanged.

Practice Note SC Gen 20 Inspection of Civil Court Files by Non-Parties and Notice to the Profession (Changes to File Inspections and Affidavits) have been published on the Court’s website, providing further details of the changes and how they apply in the Common Law Division and Commercial Court.

Further information on these changes can be found in the Supreme Court news story.

Please refer to the letters below for information on the election process for the Disciplinary Board and Disciplinary Appeals Board members for counsel and the representative of counsel in the Advisory Committee on Legal Texts (ACLT).

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Counsel Support Section at the e-mail address css.elections@icc-cpi.int.

Appointment of the representative of counsel in the Advisory Committee on Legal Texts

Elections of Members of the ICC Disciplinary Organs

KordaMentha and the Australian Bar Association are seeking views of practitioners about concurrent evidence practices in Australia.

If you have first-hand experience with concurrent evidence and would like to be part of the survey, we encourage you to participate.

More information is here. Take the survey here. The survey closes on Friday, 17 September.

The Sentencing Advisory Council has released a report on Sentencing Older Offenders in Victoria.

The report studies 30,033 offenders sentenced when aged 60 and over in the ten years from 2010 to 2019 in Victoria, finding that:

• between 2010 and 2019, the number of older offenders sentenced each year increased substantially, well beyond the growth of people aged 60 and above in the Victorian population.
• the increase in older offenders in the higher courts was mainly due to an increasing number of historical sex offence cases. Almost one in five sex offence cases involving older offenders was sentenced 40 years or more after the offending.
• the increase in older offenders sentenced in the Magistrates’ Court was mainly caused by an almost doubling of traffic/vehicle offences cases involving older offenders. The number of older offenders sentenced for assault and justice offences also more than doubled.
• the number of older offenders sentenced to imprisonment each year more than doubled between 2010 and 2019, partly explaining Victoria’s aging prison population.

The report is available on the Council’s website here.

Reinforce your argument with authoritative legal resources available to you 24/7 at the Richard Griffith Library and the Digital Bar Library.

The collections are curated by law librarians who can also assist you with case research, database selection, and research strategies.

Find out more at lawlibrary.vic.gov.au.

CIArb Australia will be hosting the Annual Lecture 2021 during Australian Arbitration Week on Tuesday, 19 October 2021 between 5:00–6:00pm AEDT. The speaker for this year's lecture is Mr Bret Walker AO SC and the lecture topic is Privacy or Secrecy? Open Justice Values as a Challenge to Arbitral Procedure.

Click here to view the flyer for more information and to register.

UNCITRAL National Coordination Committee for Australia invite you to join us for an online lecture on the Singapore Convention on Mediation. The live, interactive webinar will occur across two consecutive afternoons from 5:00pm (AWST) on Wednesday, 20 October 2021 and from 5:00pm (AEST) on Thursday, 21 October 2021.

The lecture will include a keynote address from Khory McCormick, a past Australian delegation member for UNCITRAL Working Group II, which produced the Singapore Convention. Laura Kelly, Founder and Managing Director of Immediation, an online dispute resolution platform, will join the discussion.

For more details, including registration (free of charge) and about the speakers, see the flyer here.

The flyer available here is for a free event held by the Australian Academy of Law, most likely streamed online.

The annual Address was inaugurated in 2012, given by the Academy of Law’s then Patron, the Hon Robert French AC, then Chief Justice of Australia.  In 2020 it was given by Her Excellency The Honourable Margaret Beazley AC QC; in 2019 by the Academy of Law’s present Patron, the Hon Susan Kiefel AC, Chief Justice of Australia; and in 2018 by the then Chief Justice of New Zealand, the Right Honourable Dame Sian Elias GNZM PC.

The Australian Academy of Law is grateful to The Hon James Allsop AO, Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia, for agreeing to deliver this, our tenth, Patron’s address. The topic of this year’s address – "Thinking about Law: the importance of how we attend to the problem at hand and of context”.

Last year, the IBA held a one-of-a-kind virtual event, the IBA 2020 – Virtually Together Conference, which took place during November. It was a resounding success with over 13,000 registrations! We are grateful to you, members and non-members, for supporting the conference.

This year the IBA invites you to join us for yet another first-of-its-kind event, the IBA Global Showcase taking place 25-29 October 2021. The IBA Global Showcase will be a virtual event, and registration will be FREE to both members and non-members of the IBA.

The IBA Global Showcase will highlight the wide range of important work undertaken, the huge expertise, and the experience the IBA membership has to offer and provide an important platform to share that knowledge with the widest possible global audience.

Throughout the week, there shall be a series of high-profile sessions, which will discuss some of the biggest issues and challenges facing the legal profession globally.

Furthermore, there shall be extensive networking opportunities for all who attend. The IBA Global Showcase will bring together the IBA’s membership and provide the opportunity of meeting once again, as well as the opportunity of making new friends and contacts through the networking sessions.

Whilst we are hopeful for a brighter tomorrow, we urge all our members to continue to take care and to engage with the IBA and the global legal community so that we can continue to support each other and protect the rule of law, human rights and core values of our profession.

We look forward to having you join us. Let us make this yet another memorable IBA event!

Click here to register.

Please click here to view the flyer for the upcoming AILA webinar on Thursday, 28 October 2021 (1:00–2:00pm).

The webinar focuses on ‘judicial expectations and arrangements for remote hearings’ and includes Bar members Mary Anne Hartley QC, Michael K Clarke and Lachlan Howe.