29 Sep Coronavirus Pandemic – Changes To Our Services

With the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) affecting all areas of life, we have made some important changes to the way we deliver our services to ensure the wellbeing of our clients, partner organisations and staff.

Importantly, we will continue to provide all of our legal services, some in a modified format – i.e. by phone or video-conferencing rather than in person.

Duty Lawyer Services
Women’s Legal lawyers will provide clients at our three duty lawyer services with advice and support via phone or video-conferencing only. We will not be providing face-to-face services. This applies to our duty lawyer services at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, the Moorabbin Justice Centre (Children’s Court) and Federal Circuit Court (FLSS/FASS).

Legal Casework
We will continue to support existing clients through their legal matters and take on new casework via our regular referral partners. However, court attendances, client appointments, other communications and meetings will be managed via telephone or video-conferencing.

Legal Advice Line
Our legal advice line for women will continue to operate, but with reduced capacity.

It will run on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 5.30pm to 7.30pm.

Please call:
Melbourne: 8622 0600
Regional: 1800 133 302

On-Call Advice Line
Our on-call advice line will be running as usual.

This service is available to support practitioners only and provides preliminary advice and referrals for clients in the areas of family law, family violence law, child protection and victims of crime assistance (VOCAT).

Please call 8622 0600 during business hours and our lawyer will return your call within 1-2 days.

Link and Link Community
Partner agencies in our Link and Link Community programs have received a separate communication confirming that these programs will continue to operate with some minor changes.

Legal Education
All our face-to-face legal education training sessions have been postponed until at least the end of April. Our team are exploring e-learning options so they can continue to deliver our highly-regarded professional development
programs to support practitioners and lawyers around Victoria. Keep an eye on our Twitter feed or website for updates.

Contacting our staff
From Wednesday 25 March, all Women’s Legal staff will be working from home. You can still get in touch with them via email, or leave a message on their direct office line and they will return your call as soon as possible.

Our reception will be managed remotely during business hours, from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Tel: 03 8622 0600
Toll Free: 1800 133 302
[email protected]