Recruiting – Mental Health Senior Solicitor
January 14, 2021
Current Opportunities
Job Opportunities
Recruiting – Mental Health Solicitor
January 14, 2021
Professional volunteers
We are always on the look out for solicitors, barristers, psychiatrists or psychologists who are willing to donate their expertise on a pro bono basis.
We use our professional volunteers to:
- staff our Telephone Legal Advice Service;
- appear before the Mental Health Court or in complex Mental Health Review Tribunal or Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearings;
- prepare resources for use by other legal practitioners or the public, like our Queensland Handbook for Practitioners on Legal Capacity;
- prepare advice on complex or novel issues;
- prepare expert reports.
Please contact 07 3844 4200 or qai@qai.org.au if you are interested in supporting QAI’s work.
Student Placements and Volunteers
We partner with the University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology to offer legal clinic placements to students each university semester.
We also accept applications to volunteer independently when we have remaining capacity, or it is outside of university semester. You can check here to see if we are accepting applications of this type.
Volunteer vacancies: next intake will take place March 2021
To apply for a volunteer role please forward your current CV and a short covering email as to why you are interested in volunteering with QAI, with the subject line “Application to volunteer at QAI” to qai@qai.orga.au. It assists if you can advise us of your availability, including days you are able to volunteer and potential start dates. Law students further on in their degree may be preferred, unless the applicant has relevant experience in other areas.
Applicants will be required to attend a short interview, either by telephone or in person, before a position is offered.
The best time to seek volunteering opportunities is 2-4 weeks before the start of university semester, so that new volunteers can be inducted at the same time as clinic students. Another good time is towards the end of semester, when our clinic students are finishing and we are looking for extra support from volunteer students.
Student are involved in tasks ranging from legal research and drafting, to preparation of counsel briefs, photocopying, and other administrative tasks. It provides students with the valuable opportunity to be exposed to a legal office environment.
Due to the training involved, students are expected to commit to at least 10 full days. This can be spread over 10 weeks, or over a shorter time period by negotiation.
QAI is extremely grateful for the commitment of student volunteers who generously donate their time and enable QAI to maximise our output.
Practical Legal Training
From time to time, QAI is in a position to take on students who need to complete their practical legal training (PLT) in order to become a qualified solicitor.
PLT students support the work of the lawyers at QAI. This may include:
- client contact, including intake and information gathering;
- drafting correspondence and court documents;
- preparing and managing case files;
- legal research;
- attendance at tribunal hearings.
Please contact QAI on 07 3844 4200 or qai@qai.org.au to see if we have capacity to consider your application.
We will then ask you to submit your CV together with a covering letter outlining:
- How many hours/days your placement requires;
- Why you particularly want to do your placement with Queensland Advocacy Inc;
- What you hope to achieve during your placement.
... my time at QAI challenged my understanding that a legal practitioner does only legal work. QAI is a legal and systemic advocacy organisation, and these two branches work alongside together and complement one another. During my work experience, the entire office was kept up to date with the different systemic advocacy work that QAI was doing and new developments in relation to issues of social justice (including pertinent judgments, Government announcements and news articles). One client faced a violation of their rights in a manner that QAI had not come across before, and in amongst the legal work for this client, there was also discussion of potential research papers, submissions to the government and the creation of fact sheets for public use to address the wider systemic problem that had allowed the situation to occur. While legal advocacy is important, it can only operate within the confines of the law – where a legal practitioner sees entrenched inequality, they can separately advocate for a change to the law itself.