7

Nell

High-Profile Law Firm to Trial Free Justice For All

Media Release

For immediate release

9 May 2016

High-profile law firm Williams & Williams will trial a pro bono legal venture allowing community legal centres access to the firm’s experienced legal team. A pilot case will be the first of what is expected to be a successful and productive partnership between one of the country’s top-tier law firms and the state’s network of community legal centres. Managing Partner Arthur Williams AO said the firm was delighted to be able to make its lawyers available in a time when community legal centres are overwhelmed and often unable to respond to demand.

‘By its very nature, the strength of the legal system lies in the ability of every member of society to access it equally and without discrimination or disadvantage, whether that be based on income, geography or other barriers,’ Mr Williams said.

In its trial period the program will focus on supporting community legal centres to manage the increased caseload of family violence victims with a view to broadening its scope in the future should this prove successful. Associate Benjamin Arnolds said that with more than one woman a week dying at the hands of her current or former partner, family violence was a scourge on the nation.

‘The shocking fact is that in Australia women are most likely to experience physical and sexual violence in their home at the hands of a male current or ex-partner. Williams & Williams has a role to play in helping victims to live free from violence,’ Mr Arnolds said. ‘Everyone deserves their day in court and Williams & Williams are here to make sure that fantasy becomes a reality.’

The program will be opt-in for interested Williams & Williams lawyers whose participation in the program will be in addition to regular caseloads. The initiative will commence with a pilot case to test the feasibility and sustainability of the program.

ENDS

All media enquiries are directed to the Communications team at Williams & Williams.

Nell scrolled back to the top of the media release and read through it again. They’d kept most of what she’d drafted, including the bit about equal access to the law, and she was happy they’d attributed this part to Mr Williams instead of DB. DB had got some good lines too, despite the earful she’d copped after he found out she’d gone straight to Mr Williams, but Nell didn’t care. She was excited. This was exciting. This was real lawyering. She put her mobile on the table and looked around the busy restaurant. Seymour was making his way back from the bathroom where he had gone to wash the sleep from his eyes, having stumbled out of bed moments before they’d had to leave, as he did every year. It was, after all, a day of traditions.

Every Mothers’ Day they met at the same Southbank restaurant at the same brunch-friendly hour for invariably the same meal every year. This altered occasionally depending on whatever food intolerance was currently in vogue for Seymour, but for the most part it was a day long steeped in tradition. They wrangled over the complimentary bread, complained about the funky river smell and each took turns bemoaning the fact they’d not brought sunglasses, every single year. Wait staff came and went, but the Swanseas remained, with the subtle irony that none of the family were particularly enamoured of the restaurant. But no one could quite remember when – or why – the tradition had started, and thus did not have the confidence to break with it.

In keeping with tradition, today their mother was fashionably late, sending her tardy apology through a series of hastily typed text messages that the siblings combined to decipher. The messages were equal parts jovial and shouty due to their mother’s comfort in interrobangs. Unimpressed with lacklustre book sales, she had taken to agreeing to every media request that came her way in a frenzied effort to improve figures, and it seemed that a last-minute interview had held her up today. Out of Focus was not the game changer she had hoped it would be, and their mother – who had based her whole research career on looking for women where history had ignored them – now found herself being left out of writers’ festival line-ups or, increasingly, replaced by higher-profile academics, often, invariably, Prudence.

‘Mimosa?’ Seymour suggested, and they sat in comfortable familial silence as they awaited their mother’s eventual arrival. Olivia Newton-John was singing her hopeless devotions through the sound system.

‘Mother would not approve of this song,’ Seymour said with mock severity.

‘Mother would not approve of that entire movie,’ Nell agreed. ‘The Rise and Victory of the Male Gaze as Told Through Sandy’s Black Leather Doo-Wop Onesie: A Thesis in Twenty Parts with Appendices.’

The gentle mockery of their mother was another family tradition that caused them equal parts merriment and self-reproach. Hers was an endearing, earnest feminism that exhausted others with its fervour and left them all feeling lacking. This made her easy to taunt, though deep down both siblings would, if demanded, admit to being proud of her, even though she sometimes ruined perfectly good architecture and historical monuments by insisting they represented phalli. Seymour rooted around in his satchel, a deviant grin on his face.

‘Look!’

He stuck his hand into the small gift bag he’d retrieved and pulled out a credit card-sized rectangle of paper. Nell peered at it. It was purple and green with their mother’s name and the simple credential Feminist underneath.

‘Card-carrying feminist,’ Seymour announced proudly. ‘Did it in Publisher. It’s laminated and everything. I made us all one.’

He handed them over. Nell took hers. She had forgotten yet again to get their mother a gift, another Swansea tradition.

‘Yours says Baby Feminist because you are just starting out. Mine says Male Feminist for reasons that should be apparent.’

Their mother arrived around the same time their meals did and, as predicted, she crowed for a full minute on receiving Seymour’s gift.

‘Oh, you wonderful children!’ she beamed, stretching to accommodate them both in a hug. ‘Apologies for being late. I was on my way then I had this phone call from a radio show wanting to grab a quick interview. Couldn’t say no, could I, what with it being Mother’s Day and all that commercial rot? They’re niche. Internet radio. Is that a podcast?’

She reached for her wineglass.

‘Anyway, how are you all? How’s Patrick?’

Seymour ignored the question, instead launching into a description of the new exhibition he was curating.

‘There’s this artist called Vince – Vince Pemblebrook, like a Dickens character, which is probably why he just goes by Vince like Madonna or a Brazilian soccer player – and anyway, he does this thing where he takes Australian history and folklore and reimagines it in a modern multicultural context. Poems and paintings and stories and things. Wog on a Tuckerbox? You may have seen that piece. It won a bunch of awards but caused all this controversy because what doesn’t these days? Anyway, so his thing is “reimagining the dominant discourse and narratives of Forgetful Australia”, which is what he calls the past because it seems to forget that there was anyone but straight white men wandering about the place. And we’ve finally got him doing a show, only he got very into the idea of all the gallery staff contributing their own pieces too because of some kind of artistic socialism or creative redistribution thing he is going through. So it’s meant to be reclaiming our own stories through reimagining the stories of others.’

Nell nodded, waiting patiently until it was her turn to speak.

‘You’ll be recontextualising gender, I imagine?’ their mother asked, causing Seymour to guffaw at the very suggestion that he might not.

‘Obviously! Currently the working title is Australians All Let Us ReVoice. Either that or The Mystery of History: Australia as it Wasn’t. What do you think?’

Their mother tilted her head to one side, fingers steepled.

‘Casually oppressive. I love it.’

Nell looked from one to the other. This had long been a habit of theirs, falling into a secret humanities code whose expansive and flourishing language Nell’s law degree had not equipped her for.

‘Casually oppressive?’ Nell scoffed. ‘What’s that even supposed to mean?’

Seymour sighed. ‘You’d know it if you experienced it, Nell.’

He and their mother exchanged a bemused look, causing Nell’s cheeks to flash an irritated mauve. Sometimes the two of them spiralled down a path that suggested possession of a higher knowledge Nell would never obtain from the pithy confines of legalese.

‘Anyway,’ Seymour continued. ‘This is really important. It has the potential to be my legacy show. My seminal controversy. My The Field at the NGV, if you will. One of our staff members has an uncle who owns a souvlaki store somewhere in the outer suburbs and we may get him to cater – you know, the whole Wog on the Tuckerbox thing – but I’m not sure if that’s edgy or naff . . . or racist?’

He fell into the silent perpetual quandary of the small-L liberal.

‘Well, I’ve some news too,’ Nell announced, raising her mimosa ceremoniously as if preparing to toast the future happiness and wellbeing of a recently married couple.

Her mother and Seymour looked over expectantly, only to be interrupted by the buzz of a mobile skittering into the water carafe. Their mother glanced at the screen.

‘It’s one of the regional stations. They must have heard the other interview. Sorry, kids.’

She gave them a powerless shrug, her elation clear, then answered the call. As she chatted, Nell and Seymour continued to eat in exaggerated silence, great pantomimic delicacy required so as not to scrape cutlery on porcelain.

‘Why, speaking of that, you’ll never guess what my children gave me just today,’ their mother laughed into the phone. ‘My son Seymour – he runs a gallery with his life partner Patrick – just this morning he gave me a little card with Feminist on it, so now I’m officially a card-carrying fe – yes, feminist! . . . I know! . . . Isn’t it just!?’

Nell exchanged a bemused look with her brother. In any public discussion Nell’s law degree and Seymour’s sexuality were not far from hand. They both knew this display of liberalism brought their mother great and unabating joy. Indeed, among her circle of progressive left-wing academics, their mother felt Seymour’s homosexuality practically a personal achievement and she was campaigning hard for marriage equality. Prudence, for instance, would kill to have a feminist, artist or queer activist in the family, but had to instead contend with an accountant and a Latin tutor, neither of whom were particularly engaged in politics of either the personal or political. ‘I mean, Latin!’ their mother was wont to crow at poor Prudence’s expense after a few glasses of pinot. ‘Keep waiting on that time machine so you can actually use it!’ And she would laugh, heartily, like the villain in an action movie just before they are thwarted by the hero. Presently, she had adopted a serious tone, her voice creeping tentatively through the mobile.

‘Of course, it hasn’t always been easy. It’s been a hard slog . . . That’s right, a single mother for most of that time . . . Oh yes, tremendously difficult, but it’s the passion that drives the work.’

Seymour locked eyes with Nell.

‘You just manage,’ he mouthed, brow stern.

‘You just manage,’ their mother continued. ‘As women so often have throughout history. Which brings me back to the book, because there’s been this idea of women as representing the archetypal mother – of building the nation – though of course, its sovereignty was never ceded – but this idea of building the nation through birthing its citizens, while not really being in and of themselves a part of it . . . Well obviously, but women have done a damn lot more than open our legs for the nation . . . I know this is live . . .’

Eventually the interview finished. As she ended the call, their mother seized her wineglass, looking around expectantly.

‘I told them about the card, kids! They loved it. Great material.’

Her face fell suddenly.

‘Bugger. I forgot to mention the biography class.’

Seymour looked confused.

‘What biography class?’

‘The one I’m teaching,’ their mother replied. ‘A women’s biography class. Everyone is doing them these days. Writing courses, I mean, not women’s biography. But that’s why I’m doing the class. It starts this Friday.’

The siblings exchanged a look. Their mother was one of those academics who got by teaching a minimum of subjects due to her otherwise prolific output and lack of natural disposition to instruction.

‘And you’re the one running it?’

‘Obviously I’m the one running it, Nelly. It’s not a skill I need any further work in, is it? Anyway, enough about me. What were we talking about?’

‘I said I had news,’ Nell reminded her, and told them about the pro bono scheme. ‘It was my idea. Well, kind of. And I’m working on the first case. DB and I. Our initial focus will be on family violence. Isn’t that great, Mum? Representing family violence victims.’

Their mother gazed into her wineglass, collecting the contents in a careful centrifuge. Seymour, too, was silent.

‘What?’ Nell asked.

Their mother didn’t say anything, reversing the direction of her wine.

‘What?’ Nell demanded.

‘Nothing,’ their mother replied. ‘Nothing, that sounds wonderful, Nelly. It’s nothing . . . Just . . . “represent”.’

She looked like she’d tasted something bitter and clove-like. ‘Represent. Such a vile word. So . . . loaded.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Nell said. ‘That’s what lawyers do. We represent people.’

‘Well, it’s semantics, isn’t it, really?’ their mother continued, eyes focused on her pinot gris. ‘People should represent themselves, really, but that’s neither here nor there, I guess.’

Nell exhaled patiently. She was embarrassed she hadn’t thought of this.

‘Forget I said anything,’ their mother said, hands raised as if caught up in a bank robbery. ‘Far be it from me to rain on your parade, only . . .’

It was an infuriating pause with no intention of remaining final.

‘Only what? You’re mid-downpour anyway, so only what?’

The wineglass stopped suddenly, liquid surging over the rim.

‘Well, for a start, don’t call them victims. These women – and overwhelmingly they will be women – are more than just victims. They’re survivors, for one thing, and people for another. And the law, it has this habit of reducing them to nothing more than a testimony, or some poor vulnerable creature in need of saving with no consideration of their complexity and humanity. I mean, what has the legal system done for them in the past? What does it do for them now? Demand evidence that is impossible to produce? Ask them to prove themselves? Make them tick a little checklist for how a victim should look and behave and act? “It’s just a domestic.” “A bit of a misunderstanding.” “Two to tango,” and all that nonsense.’

‘That was the past, Mum. Things are different now. You should be happy about this. This is a chance to really do some good.’

Their mother gave her a look as if she – their mother – was wearied by a personal sagacity garnered from far too much living, and that her daughter would one day understand all this, but not yet.

‘The past is a hard thing to leave behind, my darling. It doesn’t like to be forgotten. And “good” isn’t the easiest thing to do, either.’

Seymour caught Nell’s glare and rapped his knuckle on the table, pulling attention.

‘Moving on,’ he announced, glass aloft. ‘Happy Mother’s Day!’

Nell sucked her teeth, avoiding their eyes.

‘Happy Mother’s Day,’ she muttered, brushing her glass against the others with the enthusiasm of an inmate.

‘Anyway, enough of that,’ their mother said, flicking the topic away with one hand. ‘Before I forget, I brought you both some bookmarks. For the book. I had them made up. Publicity and the like, see?’

She pulled a wad of vibrant bookmarks from her bag, halved them, and held a bundle out to Nell and Seymour. Nell glanced at the bookmark on top, its letters crisp and bold.

‘I’m still not completely wedded to that font, but anyway. Go put them places,’ their mother instructed, hands thrown forward like she was instigating a drag race.

‘What kind of places?’ Seymour asked.

‘All kinds of places. The gallery, your office, Nell, wherever you buy lunch. Just, just leave them everywhere you can think of. You know, places where women go.’

‘So you mean everywhere?’ Seymour clarified. ‘Because it’s 2016?’

‘Except men’s toilets,’ Nell added, putting aside her hurt feelings to join the gentle familial jest.

‘Well, no,’ Seymour agreed. ‘Not even men brave those. So we leave them everywhere but men’s toilets, right, Mum?’

Their mother nodded cautiously, not entirely sure whether she was once more the butt of their joke.

‘Anywhere you think. Here’s some for Patrick too.’

This shut Seymour up and he pretended to be suddenly taken by the detail of the bookmark. Nell looked down at the pile in her own hands, their mother’s face beaming from the corner. Where are all the womyn? the bookmark asked. She shoved them into her bag, and promptly forgot about them.

*

They met with the client early on Monday morning. Rani had emailed through information, though it only arrived moments before their meeting because the server had been acting up at Rani’s office again. Nell printed it off and hurried after DB.

Hi Nell,

Thanks for picking this up for us. Very excited about the new program! Lots of publicity already! This should be a simple enough case to start with. We said we’d do it but it’s a cross-application and we’re down a staff member and someone else is on personal leave so we just can’t make it to court on the day, and you know how quick the turn-around is on IVOs. Legal Aid can’t help out because the client doesn’t pass the means test. Her only other option is to self-represent but she’s likely not to turn up, given that scenario, and you know how busy the duty lawyers are at court, plus she’d get a different one each time she shows up, etc etc. Ex is a lawyer himself, very charismatic, lots of connections, you know the story. We’ve lodged her paperwork already, basically just need you to show up on the day/hold her hand/explain what’s happening, etc. Details attached. Really appreciate you doing this. Give me a buzz if anything comes up!

Talk soon,

Rani

Nell watched as DB turned the page and scanned the attachment. As his eyes roamed the paper, she stole a glance at the client. The woman sat straight-backed in the consulting room chair, her hands clasped together on her lap as if posed for a school photo. Blow-waved bob, subtle makeup, neat simple clothes that would have come with an impressive price tag. Her knuckles, Nell noticed, were mottled white, in stark contrast to the manicured nails. The woman cleared her throat as DB read through the document, a crisp high-pitched sound that reminded Nell of someone about to commence a lengthy monologue, only nothing followed. Apart from a polite hello when she’d first arrived, the client was yet to say anything. DB, on the other hand, was murmuring to himself as he worked through the document, a gentle indecipherable susurration reminiscent of a children’s television character. Every so often he nodded his head, ticking things off as he found them, his voice rising in an audible swoop. DB paused at the end of the document then laid it before him on the table. He had, Nell noted, adopted a strange swagger, as if modelling himself on the kind of shoot-from-the-hip devil-may-care lawyers one encountered in the unrealistic courtrooms of the silver screen. He triangulated his fingers, touching them to his lips, then proceeded.

‘Okay, Madeline, let’s walk through what we’ve got here,’ DB said.

The client, Madeline, unlocked her hands, drinking from the water glass in front of her before hooking them back together. She nodded once, eyes on DB.

‘The police attended an incident at your family home a fortnight ago and found the kitchen in a state of disarray. Broken plates, glassware shattered, things like that. Your husband had some obvious physical injuries, cuts and the like, and you yourself were, to quote their words, in a bit of a state. The police have reported you were difficult to calm, possibly intoxicated, and they’ve taken you to the station to settle down as your two young children were about and they were a bit worried about them seeing you like that. Husband’s gone off in an ambulance to get some stitches, mother-in-law’s come round to watch the kids, and you spent the night asleep on a bench at the station. By the time you’ve woken up your bruises have come through and the police can’t work out who started it so no charges are pressed. Says here you weren’t very cooperative, telling them it was all a bit of a misunderstanding and refusing to say much more. Meanwhile, your husband has popped down to court to get himself an interim intervention order and you’ve come home to find new locks on the doors and been served with an order telling you not to approach or contact your husband or the children. How does that sound so far?’

‘He also changed the banking passwords,’ Madeline said, unblinking.

‘Rani tells us that you want to contest the order against you and you’ve also filed a cross-application to get an IVO against him?’

He referred to the document.

‘Yep, okay. You’ve not submitted anything to the Family Court for parenting or property matters, I take it?’

Madeline shook her head.

‘And you’ve said there’s been a history of violence? Nothing reported, though?’

Madeline nodded once. Nell watched her, her poise at odds with the topic being discussed.

‘And you’ve given us some more information here, including more details about the altercation last month.’

DB checked the documents in front of him again. They’d had very little time to prepare for this meeting, what with the hoops that needed to be cleared to get the program happening in the first place, then finding a time in both their already packed schedules when they could meet with the client. The first mention was the following Monday and they were running almost entirely off the information Rani had gathered in her one and only appointment with the client. It was rushed and uncomfortable, the paperwork hastily completed, and not in keeping with Williams & Williams’ normal work approach, but as Rani had assured them, all fairly straightforward. Holding her hand, as Rani said, and waiting for the judge to switch the orders.

‘Is there anything in particular you want to know about next week?’ DB asked, motioning to Nell to refill his water glass.

She ignored him, focusing on Madeline instead. Madeline re-laced her fingers, swapping the dominant hand, then pressed her lips together.

‘Will I be able to see the kids after Monday?’

She reminded Nell of the women who used to congregate at the gates of her high school at three-fifteen, perched high in the seats of their hand-washed four-wheel drives. Slipping easily out of the diesel-beasts to chat airily among themselves as their progeny spilled from the school buildings, funnelling into two channels headed towards either their beaming parents or to loiter with delinquent idleness around the bus pick-up area. She saw it in this woman – the ease with which a certain lifestyle allowed one to carry oneself – and knew from the way he reclined confidently in his chair that DB saw it too. DB gave Madeline a generous smile.

‘If all goes to plan we should have you walking away with the intervention order in your name ready to go home to your kids. I can see we’re asking for your husband to be excluded from the family home, and there’s always the opportunity to ask the magistrate to include the kids on the order if you think he’s a threat to them.’

Madeline nodded once more, then cleared her throat. ‘And I don’t have to say anything? He won’t be able to ask me questions?’

‘Not at this stage. We’ll do all the speaking on your behalf.’

She sat back from the table. ‘Then I have no more questions.’

Nell showed her out then returned to DB. His face was pulled into an excited little smirk, his fingers drumming against the printouts.

‘Walk in the park,’ he said with a grin. ‘Simple mix-up. Interim order issued to the wrong person – it happens. We’ll be back to the office by lunch. Home run for our first test case. Old Man Williams will be pretty chuffed. Might even buy us lunch if we’re lucky. Dumplings at the good place. Or that Korean joint if we’ve got the time. Love me some kimchi!’

He sat back, pondering the many possible options for their future culinary reward. Nell bit the inside of her lip, not entirely comfortable. A gut feeling. The one lawyers were meant to listen to.

‘She didn’t say much, though. Do we even have enough information? It doesn’t feel . . .’

DB’s focus was elsewhere, his gut preoccupied with fantasy meals accompanied by a liberal side order of praise.

‘Here in the paperwork. Gave your pal Rani some good details about the incident. He started the fight, she was defending herself, got all het up because they’d had a glass or two over dinner, etc etc. Kids were shaken up because they’ve never seen Mum like that. Refers to a couple of other incidents in the past as well. Not a lot of detail but not unusual given the timeframe.’

Nell didn’t respond. Open and shut. There you go. They’d have things sorted by lunch. Only it felt wrong . . . Madeline’s calmness felt wrong. DB turned to leave, then paused.

‘My parents used to do this stuff,’ he mused. ‘Criminal, family law and whatnot. I’m fifth generation lawyer. My great-great-great-granddaddy was Ned Kelly’s lawyer, or something like that.’

He set off with a merry whistle, bothering everyone in the open-plan office. For the rest of the day, all Nell could think of was the woman’s silence. She read and re-read the paltry handful of pages Rani had sent through, memorising them back to front. There was the intervention order application but most of that was personal details and administrative stuff, just a couple of boxes to detail the actual incident and anything that had happened before. DB would be doing all the speaking, of course, but she wanted to be prepared just in case. She owed it to the woman to be prepared. Her mother’s words drifted into her head but she pushed them to one side. Open and shut. Kimchi.

Later she found herself curled into the corner seat of a tram that smelt like fast food and urine. She hugged herself against the cold, thinking over Madeline’s calmness. It unsettled her still. Distracted, she once more overshot her stop. By how far she couldn’t tell, night-time gathering swiftly around her. Nell stumbled out at the next stop, crossing the street in search of the nearest return point. She waited a while, stamping her feet in the chill, before she decided to walk instead. She marched briskly, her breath tumbling out in waves. She didn’t know this part of the north, farther from the city than she usually roamed. She passed a store, a vibrant red-green-white flag plastered across the window alongside its Australian equivalent. Persian Grocers, the sign announced cautiously, as if worried its conspicuousness might attract a brick. She thought about Madeline as she walked, her stoicism set against those knuckles wrought white with tension. The rest of her body controlled as if all her worry was banished into the small spaces between each taut finger. Nell’s mind drifted back to her university days, when she’d supported other lawyers doing similar work. Mostly secretarial duties, but occasionally they’d let her sit in as they gathered material for affidavits. It was startling, all the different ways that anger could play out; in utter silence, in rambled disbelief. In abuse hurled at anyone who would listen. But Madeline was different. Had seemed so controlled. Soon Nell came across a small crowd spilling out across the pavement of a little suburban mall. A young man stood busking in the streetlight, the familiar chords of Adele tumbling from his piano accordion. Seymour’s song, one of the ones he listened to on repeat when he was mopey and nostalgic and thought no one could hear. When the young man finished, he held out his hat, upturned for change.

‘Help me continue to make a living doing what I love,’ he said, gesturing to the crowd.

Nell watched him, his crooked smile full of hope. She pulled out her wallet, rooting around for something gold. There was only shrapnel, five and ten cent pieces that were more an insult than encouragement. She slunk away, embarrassed, then stood in the shadows a moment listening to him play.