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Leaders in law cannot ‘play small targets’ with sex harassment
Any person charged with a leadership role in Australia’s legal profession must be “restless and concerned” with ensuring that rates of sexual harassment decline, and then help change the culture, argues the CEO of the Law Society of New South Wales.
Jerome Doraisamy
In conversation with Lawyers Weekly, NSW Law Society CEO Michael Tidball said the leadership of the profession must “step up to the plate and not play small targets”.
“Two things about that: we need to not be complacent about our initiatives, and secondly, have an open conversation and not playing small targets.”
Those leaders must help make sure that the strategies put in place to eliminate such misconduct and change the culture are compatible with the enormity of the inherent challenges.
Part of this, Mr Tidball noted, will involve promoting the idea of safety for those who wish to disclose.
“Part of it is about making sure people won’t suffer deleterious consequences when they do report. It can be a very lonely place to have been a victim and to not feel safe to talk,” he mused.
“Clearly, the knowledge and journey towards there being complete equality and access to not only employment but promotion and opportunity is a critical part of this, and that framework [involves] knowing that there will not be discrimination, there will not be disadvantage.”
The NSW Law Society continues to try to enact initiatives to ensure equal opportunity and experience for those across the board in the profession, he said.
“I think, fundamentally, everyone working in the profession needs to have equal power and access. When you have equal empowerment — all of the international research and knowledge suggests — that is the foundation for inroads.”
On this front, Mr Tidball is “in lockstep with John McKenzie”, the commissioner for the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, who recently said he wants to be a “real instigator” for meaningful, cultural change in the profession.
In NSW, for example, lawyers are now able to make disclosures via OLSC’s new telephone service, through which persons can make informal disclosures (anonymous, if desired) to trained professionals about conduct issues in legal workplaces.
“Advice we’ve got from some good psychologists and employment specialists is that some people feel comfortable with [disclosing by telephone], and others are going to prefer to simply be able to send a confidential email and open contact that way. And that’s why, we later in the year, [we] will also be launching the online notification where people can, from the privacy of their own home or just computer, or even their mobile device, which is more to the point for the younger generation of lawyers,” Mr McKenzie said.
“One of the problems, of course, is that people are not going to be wanting to be overheard on the phone at work or using the work computer to do any of that stuff. So, it’s very important for people to be able to control the environment in which they might feel comfortable to either have a conversation or to launch the type of initial information that they might want to lodge in their own time and space.”
Mr Tidball is fully backing such new approaches, saying that disclosure is most likely to happen when “they feel comfortable to do so, and the only way to achieve that is by having a very open conversation”.
“We still have a problem, and we need to, therefore, be continually looking at what we do.”
Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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