Interview with 2024 Australian Young Lawyer Award Winner, Ms Kate Adnams
25 November 2024
What does it mean to you to be awarded the 2024 Australian Young Lawyer Award?
As a community legal centre lawyer, I feel very privileged to be able to use my professional skills to work with children and young people in Queensland and so to be recognised for that work by the profession is an honour. There are so many inspiring and committed community legal centre lawyers who dedicate their careers to ensuring that people who would otherwise be unable to receive quality and considered legal advice and assistance can. I feel an immense amount of pride in the work that we are able to achieve for our clients at LawRight’s Homelessness Law and so to me, this award is also recognition for my colleagues, our pro bono partners and the frontline workers that we work with for their dedication to ensuring that our clients receive the best possible, holistic assistance.
Over the course of your career so far, what are some of the key highlights you are most proud of?
I am most proud of my work leading LawRight’s Stable Futures for Young Queenslander’s program. This program provides ongoing, holistic and trauma-informed legal assistance to children and young people aged 12-25 years old who connect with us through our community partnerships with Brisbane Youth Service and the Mater Young Adult Health Centre. Many of the clients that we assist have experienced family violence and sexual violence, homelessness, housing insecurity, financial hardship, and illness. During my time supervising this work, I have been able to oversee significant changes in how LawRight works with our young clients to ensure that their experience with lawyers is one that is empowering for them and assists them in their recovery from violence and marginalisation.
These experiences have also enabled me to engage in advocacy to other stakeholders and the Queensland Government around how services can better support young people and their families after these experiences. As an early career lawyer, I am incredibly proud to have the opportunity to engaged in such meaningful work. It has enabled me to take on leadership roles in my community. I’ve had the opportunity to mentor and support students, graduates, and other early career lawyers, so that they too can have meaningful and engaged careers in the law. Finally, Homelessness Law’s service delivery model gives me the opportunity to represent my clients in a way that’s collaborative, impactful and empowering. I’m proud of the positive impact we’ve had on the lives of the many young Queenslanders.
What’s next? What do you aspire to do in 2025 and beyond?
I hope to continue to be able to advocate for young people in Queensland. As a community, we have a shared collective responsibly for our children and young people to ensure that they have happy, healthy and thriving futures and I think that lawyers can and do play significant role in how our community responds and advocates for such a vulnerable and often overlooked cohort. I hope that my legal carer leaves a lasting impact on how we as a community support and advocate for young people.
From your perspective, what are some of the key legal issues and challenges the legal profession needs to focus on, particularly for young lawyers?
The legal profession, particularly the legal assistance sector, are already grappling with many interrelated issues that impact early career lawyers. Funding for community legal centres is uncertain and insufficient, which creates challenges for young lawyers wanting to build a career in the sector. Without appropriate funding, early career lawyers face barriers to entering the sector or progressing into leadership roles. For lawyers lucky enough to work in our sector, traditional models of legal assistance and funding limitations can make it difficult to provide legal services that are client-centred, trauma-informed, and that have lasting impacts on a client through the resolution of their legal matter.
Further to this, unrealistic expectations to continually meet increasing workload pressure and client demand can lead to burnout and vicarious trauma. At LawRight, we have focused over the last few years on how to design our service delivery to ensure, as much as it can be, that it’s safe for both client and the lawyer. This is something we will continue to prioritise. Finally, we’re experiencing compounding housing and income inequality crises. We are already seeing an increase in demand, as people try to navigate complex legal and social systems to resolve issues connected to disadvantage, health concerns, poverty and housing insecurity. Unless something monumental changes, this need is going to increase significantly in the coming years. There is an important role for the legal profession to respond to inequality: representing those most impacted by disadvantage, supporting organisations and institutions that seek to address inequality, and advocating for better systems to support everyday Australians.
Last Updated on 26/11/2024