Reimagining Justice

In today’s episode no. 29 I had the pleasure of speaking with Carolyn Devries, CEO and founder of Australia’s first non profit law firm New Way Lawyers for today’s episode. When Carolyn experienced a disconnect between how law is practised and what she learned in law school, and wanted to find a way to express her core values through her work, she developed the idea of and founded new way lawyers 10 years ago. Carolyn has strong views and advocates at every opportunity as to why legal services that involve strong emotions for the clients, such as family law and estate law, should be delivered through a non profit model. She sees family law as a community service with strong public policy implications, and I tend to agree. Provision of legal services, or someone’s inability to access legal services can lead to a greater demand on other social services. Carolyn shared her personal story about the early days of new way law, the fun and not so fun parts, especially being challenged by other members of the profess