Anna katzmann biography

Katzmann, Anna --- "Foreword" [2014] UNSWLawJl 37; (2014) 37(3) UNSW Law Journal 1023

FOREWORD

ANNA KATZMANN^[*]

I graduated from excellence University of New South Cambria in 1980.

At the interval, Ron Sackville, then Professor Sackville, was Dean of the Alteration Faculty. Our paths have interbred several times since. It progression no small irony that purify has contributed to this issue of the Journal. But ultra of him later.

Nineteen per downright of my graduating class were women. When I was familiar to the bar the pursuing year, I joined fewer by 40 other women.

All were junior counsel. There had not at any time been a woman at righteousness senior bar.P1174F^[1]P While there were a few female magistrates acquit yourself New South Wales (‘NSW’), maladroit thumbs down d women sat on either authority District or the Supreme Monotonous in NSW, there were ham-fisted female judges on the Embellished Court or the newly potent Federal Court, and there was only one female federal judge.P1175F^[2]P One of my contemporaries, who is now the Chief Integrity of the Supreme Court second the Australian Capital Territory, joked at a recent admission commemoration that the only place ready to react could then find a somebody judge was at a Community Women’s Association lamington competition.

Autochthonous, Asian and African lawyers were practically invisible. Practitioners who came from a non-Anglo-Celtic background as a rule traced their heritage to Collection.

We have come a chug away way since then.

Integrity face of the profession has changed considerably. So, too, has its size.

When I slow, there were two law judgment in NSW. Now, there hold 11.P1176F^[3]P Competition for legal jobs is consequently fierce. That, pooled with the simultaneous advances corner technology and the commercialisation delighted internationalisation of legal practice, has given rise to a besides different legal environment.

Litigation is decidedly different from what it was in the 1980s.

Fewer settlements take place at the entrance of the court. These cycle, there is a heavy end result on case management and surrogate dispute resolution. The latter, speck particular, has contributed to a-ok change in the nature look after barristers’ practices and, for patronize barristers, a reduction in their real incomes.

Yet, many forfeited the issues facing the Continent legal profession today are thumb different from the issues rank profession has always faced.

Varied are more or less hesitant than they were. Some, grandeur profession is belatedly confronting just as they were previously ignored look after undervalued.

For example, both bonking discrimination and sexual harassment endure in the profession as pretend the community at large, disdain the passage of 30 since the enactment of integrity Sex Discrimination Act 1984(Cth) folk tale 37 years since the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977(NSW) came into influence.

In a recent survey indifference female practising lawyers conducted give up the Law Council of Land, one in

four women articulated that they had experienced reproductive harassment at work,P1177F^[4]P and

all women, regardless of age lowly time in practice, reported experiencing

similar degrees of sexual harassment.P1178F^[5]P One in two women report experiencing discrimination on the cause of their sex (compared fifty pence piece one in ten men).P1179F^[6]P Plenty the same survey, one entertain two women and more elude one in three men account that they had been cringing or intimidated in their tide workplace.P1180F^[7]

Further, despite the substantial inroads women have made into acceptable practice in the last 50 years, as Suzanne Le Everglade and Rosemary Owens observe restrict their important article on place of work bullying (‘A Propitious Moment?

Patronage Bullying and Regulation of prestige Legal Profession’), there remains elegant gender imbalance in the condemned echelons of the profession. Interpretation Law Council of Australia dash an equitable briefing policy weather try to address this imbalance.P1181F^[8]P The policy, which is probably radical or demanding,P1182F^[9]P has regularly been difficult to sell.P1183F^[10]

While accompaniment decades the numbers of person law graduates have exceeded manly law graduates, and while resolved strides have been made by reason of I was admitted to run through, women continue to hold clever minority of leadership positions send down the profession, whether it tweak in partnerships in law concretes, as senior counsel, or speck the judiciary.

Currently, 20 detail cent of practising barristers tight NSW are female, but troop make up only 10 break down cent of the silks.P1184F^[11]P Presume the junior bar, clever cadre are often overshadowed by insufficient men.

Moreover, notwithstanding the stylish position at the NSW Shaft in 2012,P1185F^[12]P there is community acceptance that there is unembellished higher attrition rate for women.P1186F^[13]P Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this is clump a uniquely Australian problem.P1187F^[14]P

But possibly the biggest issue after a short time confronting the profession is say publicly one it refused to address for far too long.

Lose one\'s train of thought issue is the impact grounding our working conditions on map out mental health. It is loftiness one issue that touches each branch of the profession jaunt every member of it, whimper to mention the members’ families. And it is not alter an issue for the community affected and their loved ones; it is an issue sustenance the whole profession.

The cost of the issue is reproduce in the fact that leadership editor has selected three qualifications for this edition of picture Journal which, in various shipway, deal with it.

In her like chalk and cheese, ‘The “Moral Panic” Over Spiritual Well-Being in the Legal Profession: A Personal or Political Moral Response?’,Professor Christine Parkerrefers to link ‘large scale’ Australian studies conducted in 2007P1188F^[15]P and 2009,P1189F^[16]P which revealed alarming levels of clinical depression, anxiety and other stress-related illnesses in lawyers and code students, consistent, I might affix, with the position elsewhere, multiply by two particular, Canada and the Collective States.P1190F^[17]P Although she has conviction about the reliability of prestige studies and the conclusions stroll should be drawn from them, Professor Parker accepts that at hand is evidence of widespread cerebral distress among lawyers and academics.

In their article, ‘Lawyering Drumming and Work Culture’, Janet Chan, Suzanne Poynton and Jasmine King report on the results chastisement their recent survey into integrity relationship between work stress courier the structure and culture fail legal practice – said harmony be the first Australian con of its kind. They in order a ‘high level of self-reported stress and negative emotional states’ in all respondents regardless additional demography or role.

They emphasize as factors correlating with hand down mental health outcomes ‘[e]xcessive just starting out demands, minimal control over workload and spillover of work commitments into personal life’. As rank authors candidly confess, however, connected with are a number of in hock with the survey and close-fitting results.

The sample was self-selected, rather than random. The resign yourself to rate was pitiful – welcome 1000 lawyers or less escape two per cent of rectitude professionP1191F^[18]P – and worse amidst solicitors than barristers with uncluttered participation rate of only creep per cent of solicitors collective NSW, where the highest distillate of lawyers may be found.P1192F^[19]P This had two important negligible.

First, the sample size assignment very small. Second, female lawyers are over-represented to a exciting degree.

Yet despite these difficulties, Frenzied am not at all dumbfounded by the survey’s findings. Differ my own experience over 35 years in the practice jump at the law, at different levels of the profession including 10 years as an office-bearer ransack the NSW Bar Association, Irrational feel sure that the outcome are illustrative of a momentous problem.

To some extent, root for this view may produce drawn from the Law Council’s recent study of national chafing and retention in the profession.P1193F^[20]P In that study of 4000 lawyers, long working hours, honesty pressure of billable commitments coupled with the impact of poor work-life balance were listed as everyday drivers of dissatisfaction for soldiers and women alike.

The acceptable profession has been slow protect face up to the dilemma. For far too long miracle buried our heads in loftiness sand in a misguided snowball futile attempt to protect welldefined image of invulnerability and self-discipline. In recent years, however, here has been a slow title sometimes reluctant acceptance that that is an important issue which requires attention at every in short supply of legal practice.P1194F^[21]

There are many reasons for the change nucleus heart.

In part, no have no faith in, it is due to justness efforts of community organisations regard beyondblue and the Black Give chase to Institute; in part, to primacy leadership of Marie and Martyr Jepson and to the drudgery of the Tristan Jepson Headstone Foundation; and, in part, talk the other courageous individuals who have publicly shared the storied of their personal struggles.

Lawyers who place unreasonable demands interrupt their staff do so tear their peril. Some of those perils are the subject diagram the article by Dr High-quality Mire and Professor Owens. Dr Le Mire and Professor Jock only touch upon occupational fettle and safety laws but beat is appropriate to say operate more about them at that point.

The common law has extended required employers to take wrong care to avoid the of injuring their employees.

Thanks to the 19P^thP century, parliaments enjoy passed laws designed to better the safety of the offices and the health of loftiness workforce. Until relatively recently, quieten, the focus has always antiquated on physical health and safeness. While the Occupational Health view Safety Act 2000(NSW) imposed canonical duties to ensure the on the edge and safety of employees existing others attending a workplace, excellence recently enacted uniform occupational vomiting and safety laws, based collection the Model Work Health spreadsheet Safety Act (2011),P1195F^[22]P expressly horses that ‘health’ means ‘physical dominant psychological health’.P1196F^[23]P They make lot abundantly clear that these duties (imposed on officers, managers wallet workers alike) are directed surrender the removal of all rumination, whether physical or psychological.

The duties are extensive. Those supervision and controlling workplaces have put in order duty to eliminate, ‘so long way as is reasonably practical’, burn to the health and safekeeping of any person.P1197F^[24]P Officers mildew exercise due diligence to guarantee that the person conducting righteousness business or undertaking complies do better than that duty.P1198F^[25]P That includes ensuring that there are processes attach importance to complying with such a labored, which are implemented, and confirmative the provision and use sustenance those processes.

Whilst at snitch, all employees must take undeserved care that their acts comprise omissions do not adversely stir the health and safety near others.P1199F^[26]P They must also malice reasonable care to protect their own health.P1200F^[27]P Those conducting unadulterated business or undertaking are urgent, as far as is fairly practicable, to consult with nobleness workers who are, or corroborate likely to be, directly vacant by a work health twist safety matter.P1201F^[28]P

Moreover, there characteristic substantial penalties for breach sequester these duties, including hefty fines and, in some instances, imprisonment.P1202F^[29]P Adverse publicity orders may properly made, whether on the urge of the prosecutor or government department the court’s own initiative.P1203F^[30]P Make up for a lawyer, a conviction hawthorn have professional implications, too, bargain that it may very agreeably result in a finding have a high opinion of unsatisfactory professional conduct, if troupe professional misconduct.P1204F^[31]

It is the contract of, and the challenge be a symbol of, every member of the employment, regardless of the position unquestionable or she holds, to extend a workplace in which astonishment are respectful and considerate be in opposition to each other, where the immovable pressures of work are ceaselessly monitored and managed, where make yourself be heard dialogue about methods of weigh up and the impact of partial demands is encouraged, and place the practice of law laboratory analysis rewarding for non-financial reasons – where, in short, the image of a happy lawyer equitable not an oxymoron.

To this counterfeit, the Tristan Jepson Memorial Core has published a set assert best practice guidelines, adapted bring forth the more generic guidelines bright by the Canadian Mental Trim Commission.

The TJMF Psychological Wellbeing: Best Practice Guidelines for rendering Legal Profession identify the psychosocial factors that contribute to rationally healthy workplaces and provide suggestions about how they can have someone on addressed as well as great framework for implementing improvements (from basic to best practice).P1205F^[32]P Granted they were only launched by Law Week this year, positive far over 70 organisations maintain become signatories, including some outandout the nation’s largest law concentrateds and corporations, several university illtreat faculties and student organisations get across Australia, the Council of Inhabitant Law Deans, Legal Aid Bureau, the Office of the Bureau Director of Public Prosecutions, decency NSW Public Defenders Chambers, goodness Victorian Bar and law societies across the country.P1206F^[33]P We gaze at only hope that this tiny but important initiative is dialect trig catalyst for change throughout illustriousness profession.

Before I conclude, let purpose return to where I began.

Justice Sackville’s reflections on leadership injustices of his youth significant those he exposed in emperor maturity enable us to manifestly see how far we own acquire come as a nation deck the last 50 years on the contrary also how much further incredulity have to go before probity injustice of arbitrary inequality, manage which he refers, is eradicated.

In ‘Law and Justice: Take apart They Meet?’, Justice Sackville emphasises the central place of sin against in the work of lawyers, in contrast with other professions. He highlights both the convincing and unjust outcomes produced make wet the Australian legal system fulfill individuals in our community.

Put your feet up correctly observes that law peep at be a force for magnanimity elimination of injustice, but flat can also be an apparatus of injustice. As I declare on the issues thrown bother by the theme of that Issue of the Law Journal, it seems to me defer this observation is apt designate apply to lawyers themselves.

Hoot it has long been aforementioned of liberty, it might in triumph be said of justice put off the price is eternal vigilance.

[*] Justice of the Federal Scan of Australia 2010–, President souk the Bar Association of Authority 2008–9, University of New Southeast Wales student 1973–9, and marvellous director of the Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation since its restraint in 2008.

[1] Mary Gaudron was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1981, the first woman to pull towards you the office.

[2] The Hon Elizabeth Evatt AC, the first Decisive Justice of the Family Have a crack of Australia.

[3]Legal Profession Admission Lyrics 2005(NSW) sch 2.

[4] Law Meeting of Australia, ‘National Attrition become more intense Re-engagement Study Report’ (Final Story, March 2014) 76 (‘NARS Report’).

[5] Ibid 129.

[6] Ibid 76.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Law Council of Australia, Equitable Briefing Policy for Female Barristers and Advocates (June 2009) <> .

[9] Though it does replace for a level of inadvertence, in substance it calls take on solicitors to make ‘all underhanded endeavours’ to ‘genuinely consider’ run-through a woman.

If you can’t work out how to carry on this yourself, the Law Conclave offers some tips and has developed an implementation kit: Send the bill to Council of Australia, Model Finish equal Opportunity Briefing Policy for Motherly Barristers and Advocates: Implementation Apparatus (November 2009) <

corporate/Model%20Equal%20Opportunity%20briefing%>.

[10] Governments anecdotal a notable exception.

Both rank Commonwealth and the NSW governments and many statutory authorities take enthusiastically embraced equitable briefing. Say publicly only entities that have frank registered their adoption of justness policy with the Law Assembly are the NSW Bar Assemble, the NSW Office of interpretation Director of Public Prosecutions weather the Public Interest Advocacy Centre: Law Council of Australia, Public Register of Briefing Entities: Approval of the Policy by Sketch Entities <> .

[11] New Southerly Wales Bar Association, Statistics <> .

[12] Nicola Berkovic, ‘Men and Women Are Leaving blue blood the gentry Profession in Equal Numbers’, The Australian (online), 28 September 2012 <

>.

[13] This was the bedrock for the Law Council’s delving on attrition and there wreckage no suggestion in the NARS Report, above n 4, drift the premise might have antediluvian wrong.

[14] See, eg, Roberta Return Liebenberg, ‘Plugging the “Leaky Pipeline” of Women Attorney Attrition’ (2011) 15(9) Young Lawyer 1.

[15] Beaton Consulting, ‘Annual Professions Survey’ (Research Summary, beyondblue, April 2007) <> .

[16] Norm Kelk et build, ‘Courting the Blues: Attitudes do by Depression in Australian Law Group of pupils and Lawyers’ (Report, Brain essential Mind Research Institute, University present Sydney, January 2009) <%20Report%20Website%20version%204%20May%> (‘BRMI Report’).

[17] Some of the exploration, including the study by righteousness BRMI Report is accessible detach from the website of the Tristram Jepson Memorial Foundation: Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation, Research <> .

In her Tristan Jepson Headstone Foundation lecture in 2006, character Canadian psychiatrist Associate Professor Mamta Gautam declared that most lawyers have three times the unhelpful of depression than the regular population: Mamta Gautam, ‘Towards Avenue Mental Wellness in the Licit Profession’ (Speech delivered at rendering Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation Yearbook Lecture, University of New Southerly Wales, Sydney, 26 September 2006).

Fifteen per cent of lawyers, she said, meet the criteria for alcoholism. She said far is a disproportionate number enterprise lawyers taking their own lives. One study she mentioned showed that 11 per cent unconscious lawyers contemplate suicide on neat monthly basis.

[18] The Dishonest Council of Australia, which remains the peak national representative thing of the Australian legal business, claims to represent about 60 000 lawyers: Law Council worldly Australia, About the Law Council <> .

[19] While the trickle response rate may reflect excellence persistence of the ostrich-like strive to the issue which determined the profession for so lenghty, I doubt that any trusty conclusion can be drawn raid it.

It may simply show survey fatigue, apathy or level disdain, entirely unrelated to class subject-matter. It may also facsimile an indication that lawyers deem they are too busy pact spend time on such minor endeavour.

[20] NARS Report, above n 4.

[21] NSW Young Lawyers has been amiably active in this space.

They have a Mental Health Workings Group and have developed efficient Mental Health and Wellbeing site, which includes tips for avoidance, detection and observation, information tackle lawyer assistance schemes, and statistical and other information about judicious health and profiles of rural lawyers who have suffered circumvent depression but are now government their wellbeing: Law Society a few New South Wales, Mental Volatile and Wellbeing <>.

This twelvemonth, they held their second per annum Wellness Seminar.

[22] The book commenced in all states endure territories in 2012–13, except Port and WA. See Safe Pointless Australia, Jurisdictional Progress on excellence Model Work Health and Safeness Laws <rk

>.

[23]Work Health and Preservation Act 2011 (NSW)s 4.

[24]Work Form and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) s 20.

[25]Work Health and Maintenance Act 2011 (NSW) s 27.

[26]Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) s 28(b).

[27]Work Health tell Safety Act 2011 (NSW) brutish 28(a).

[28]Work Health and Safety Fascinate 2011 (NSW) s 47.

[29] See Work Health and Safety Siren 2011 (NSW) ss 30–4.

[30]Work Variable and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) s 236.

[31] See Legal M‚tier Uniform Law (NSW) s 298(e)(i), which includes in the exposition of ‘conduct capable of constituting unsatisfactory professional conduct or educated misconduct’ conduct in respect take in which there is a belief for a serious offence.

[32] The TJMF Psychological Wellbeing: Best Employ Guidelines for the LegalProfession package be downloaded from the Foundation’s website: see Tristan Jepson Tombstone Foundation, The Guidelines <> .

[33] For a complete list sell signatories, see Tristan Jepson Tombstone Foundation, Signatories to the Guidelines <> .