The National Pro Bono Resource Centre encourages each lawyer to provide at least 35 hours of pro bono legal advice every year. I signed up to this aspirational target and, in the very first year of the scheme, met my non-billing budget. But my contribution wasn’t noted in the centre’s annual report – I forgot to submit my first pro bono timesheet.
This year, the centre announced a competition for short films about pro bono legal advice. Pro bono for prizes, indeed, cash prizes! This was more like it. This year, I decided, not only would I meet my pro bono target, I would record it on film. And take home a tasty cash prize!
At 8 am on a Saturday morning, I arrived at the Glebe markets dressed in my suit and with a foldup gazebo under my arm.
“You must be the chap from legal aid,” said the woman in charge.
“Yes … well, not quite ‘legal aid’ … but, yes, that’s me.”
“Well, I’ve got you down here as legal aid,” she said tapping her clipboard. “You’re in stall 182. That’ll be $65.”
No such thing as a free stall. Not even for ‘legal aid’.
I found my allocated spot – between a second-hand bookseller and a Chinese masseuse – and I set to work setting up my gazebo.
“I’m not very good at this sort of thing,” I confided in the bookseller.
“I used to have one like that,” she said. “It’s easy once you know how.”
“Read the instructions,” said the masseuse. “Very clear!”
When my friends arrived with video cameras to record the day, they found me sitting on my briefcase, under a half-finished gazebo, forlornly fingering my ‘free legal advice’ sign.
“I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” I said to my film crew.
“Do you know how heavy this stuff is?” came the reply, with a thud. “You’re doing it.”
And they fixed my gazebo.
I set up, hung my practising certificate on the tarpaulin wall and sat down feeling rather silly. The vacant chair, sitting opposite me, did its best to look inviting. It seemed to shuffle nervously, as if moving from one leg to another (and another and another), beneath the glare of the video cameras.
A woman stormed in.
“Free legal advice?”
“That’s right…”
“Cameras? Cameras! No way!”
And she was off.
It went on like this for a while until, at last, a young woman in sunglasses agreed to be filmed. She set out her complicated contractual dispute with issues in directors’ duties and conflicts of interest. I felt great relief. Not family law.
The next enquiry was about a minor debt and I really started to warm up. Then came a car accident, and next a criminal matter – a birthday bash that ended in a birthday brawl. “Wonderful,” I thought, “this is all in my league.”
I had four good interviews that day. And one strange interview with a pair of young women who told me that they had just married each other, but one of them was already married to the other one’s father, and the three of them were in dispute over a hovercraft.
It was a fun day. I felt wanted. I felt useful and able.
With enough footage captured, my film crew and I decided we had done our bit. They left. I started packing up my gazebo. (All by myself!)
A t-shirt purveyor came over.
“How did you go today?”
“Pretty well, actually,” I said. “And you?”
“Not so good. My sales were down.”
“Sorry to hear that. I enjoyed myself today. I might even come back again.”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said. “You’ve taken my regular spot.”
We made our peace. I took home my gazebo, a new t-shirt and my video footage. My short film, once submitted, proved to be a pro bono film after all. No tasty cash prize, just a good day at the markets and a healthy dent in this year’s 35-hour target.
Now, if only I could find that timesheet…