‘I buy my clothes at the op shop’: On the front line of a lawyer exodus over pay

Kymberlei Goodacre is on the front line of a looming lawyer exodus. She runs her own law firm in northern NSW, but it’s a world away from the riches and excess depicted in courtroom dramas.

“I still buy my clothes at the op shop. We don’t have designer handbags. I’ve got a Kmart handbag,” the Coffs Law Co principal said.

Kymberlei Goodacre, principal of Coffs Law Co, says private lawyers are feeling the pinch taking on legal aid matters.Credit: Louise Kennerley

“There’s a big disparity between the big end of town and the solicitors who are doing legal aid work at the coalface.”

A former in-house Legal Aid lawyer, Goodacre is passionate about doing legal aid work for vulnerable clients.

It involves putting on “a social worker’s hat” at times, she said, as well as being able to explain complex law simply. But it’s getting harder financially to keep doing that work.

About 70 per cent of legal aid matters are handled by lawyers such as Goodacre in private practice, rather than by lawyers working in-house for Legal Aid NSW. Many cases involve family law and domestic violence.

Lawyers are paid from grants that Legal Aid allocates to approved clients. But the hourly rates private lawyers are paid for legal aid work are far below market rates, and this is contributing to a lawyer drought in parts of NSW.

About 70 per cent of Kymberlei Goodacre’s practice is legal aid matters, but the rates of pay make this difficult.Credit: Louise Kennerley

In family law matters, the rate is $165 an hour, excluding GST – about three times less than a lawyer can earn privately.

Goodacre said she is “lucky to break even” in family law matters and she “wouldn’t be afloat” without her private clients.

A first-of-its-kind national census of more than 1000 private lawyers doing legal aid work found 20 per cent of NSW respondents were unsure if they would continue to take on legal aid matters in 12 months, and 12 per cent planned to stop. Low pay was a factor.

The census was conducted in August last year for National Legal Aid by the University of NSW’s Social Policy Research Centre. The results were released last month.

National Legal Aid (NLA), representing Legal Aid NSW and its interstate and territory equivalents, urged the Standing Council of Attorneys-General to commission a review of private lawyer fees, grants and funding options to “stop the exodus of private lawyers doing legal aid work”.

NLA’s executive director, Katherine McKernan, said: “Successive governments have underfunded legal aid, leaving struggling families – especially in regional areas – to bear the brunt.

“We are approaching a cliff; a fifth of lawyers who do legal aid work are planning to abandon that work in the next few years.

“NLA’s recent survey shows that higher fees would help retain and attract private lawyers. Investing in legal aid will also save government money by preventing the ripple effects of unresolved legal issues, such as problems relating to housing and poor mental or physical health.”

Legal Aid NSW chief executive Monique Hitter said many parts of regional and remote NSW lacked private lawyers for legal aid work, including “western NSW, the New England area, the Central West, the Riverina, the South Coast, the Mid North Coast and parts of the Central Coast”.

“Some areas have no private lawyers at all to do legal aid work.”

The shortage had “reached critical levels”, Hitter said, and it was “now resulting in postcode injustice – meaning people in regional areas have less access to a lawyer than their city counterparts”.

Goodacre said that “I know $150 an hour might sound like a lot”, but when overheads were factored in, including office rent, staff salaries, insurance and professional fees, it was easy to see “why nobody wants to do this work”.

She was considering reducing her legal aid caseload from the current mix of 70 per cent legal aid to 30 per cent private work.

“I’ve got kids moving to do university. I can’t afford to send them to university if I don’t rejig my business,” she said.

A spokesperson for Commonwealth Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government “recognises and commends the important work of private practitioners who represent legally aided clients”.

The spokesperson said the Commonwealth committed $3.9 billion for legal assistance under the new National Access to Justice Partnership, “the largest Commonwealth investment in access to justice ever”, and every part of the legal assistance sector would receive increased funding from July 1.

NLA is disappointed the Commonwealth funding won’t address this issue.

A spokesperson for Dreyfus’ state counterpart, Michael Daley, said there were “some hard truths” in the survey report and the NSW government “acknowledges the pressures on lawyers involved in Commonwealth family and civil law matters”.

However, they noted that “[with] funding from the NSW government, private practitioners are now paid $195 per hour for their work on legal aid matters relating to state-based law”.

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