Not Seen Not Heard No Healing

RU OK?

Is it harder to stay upright in a legal career?

And if you fall over do you become invisible, irrelevant? Simply not up to it. So easy to blame the individual rather than look at the systemic issues. Bullying, gendered violence, intersectionality issues and "the boys club" to name some.

Do any of your colleagues turn around and notice you have fallen over. And help you up? And believe in you? Or is your failure too confronting? Too close to home?

There are extremely high profile incidents regarding a high court judge that we all know about. But where is the Healing Movement - where is the understanding within the profession that we need to heal ourselves, our beliefs, attitudes and behaviours?

To assure the next generation of women and men graduates that this will not happen again. Where is the introspection?

People drop off our radar. Happens to most of us as we forge our professional identity. But is it particularly difficult for people who choose a legal career, whether it is in private practice or otherwise?

At an age when most people who have been invisible and not heard for as long as I have would give up and retire. I am just beginning. My only challenge is that I have been stripped of my credibility, my standing. My voice. Because I did not "make it".

Despite this very serious impediment I choose to stand up. Claim my voice and find a way for the thousands of lawyers like me, women and men whose profession turned its back on them. To finally be heard.

We are moving into a new era where even legal organisations are required to comply with occupational health and safety laws, including preventing bullying and gendered violence, and to provide a safe workplace. Just in case, you did not know, legal organisations in Victoria have the highest rate of gendered violence of any industry.And so clearly there is healing to do.

Now is the time to listen to the thousands of lawyers who faced into unsafe workplaces. Historically. And survived them. Maybe. And give them the respect finally, of listening to them and learning from them. Yes I am talking about historical incidents. I am proposing a truth telling by lawyers about their own profession, their own practices, beliefs, behaviours.

To understand the promise of Legal Working Culture and improve ourselves we must acknowledge our history and past practices.

The legal profession needs healing. It is no longer sufficient for the successful among us to tell their war stories of career survival. It is time to listen to the people who fell over, got up and found that their career choices were forever changed. And whose membership of the profession remained tenuous.

Yes I am one of these people. I am making a call out to others, asking them to come forward and tell their story.

Until the legal profession and the Big 3 Legal Education Sectors start to listen and learn from the experiences, insights and yes failures of legal profession members we condem our next generation of law graduates to more of the same. I for one am not going to stand for it.

Dr Deborah Hann