Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders at Ashurst
Lawyers at the firm helped to establish an Aboriginal Legal Service in Redfern. The Aboriginal Legal Service, NSW (ALS), was the first free legal service in Australia.
“For Ashurst, First Nations work has been at the core of the social justice focus in Australia since the 1970's. When I was approached to become the First Nations Lead at Ashurst, I was thrilled to bring my lived experience as a First Nations person and lawyer – the role was a global first in the legal profession and I've been pleased to see the social justice sector assigning value to lived experience.”
Trent Wallace, First Nations Lead. Trent is a Wongaibon person who was raised on Darkinjung country and now resides in Meanjin (Brisbane)
Key themes across our First Nations work:
- Economic participation and prosperity
- Prioritising community ("grassroots")
- Policy and Advocacy
- Learning and healing
- Cultural safety
- Looking forward: doing better and doing more
"I work alongside my colleagues at Ashurst to deliver culturally coherent, effective, and durable pro bono legal advice to First Nations clients. To me, impact means empowering our clients to pursue social and economic equity. It's a great privilege to have the opportunity to support my community in my legal career."
Ruby Langton-Batty (of Bidjara and Iman descent), First Nations Pro Bono Lawyer
Underpinning this vision are key principles guiding our approach:
- Work needs to be First Nations-led
- Relationships are critical and need to be placed at the centre of all we do
- Work needs to be culturally safe
- First Nations people should not be expected to do the "heavy lifting" to achieve change
- We need to take a "business as usual" approach every day in all we do, right across our business. This means that we practice reconciliation as a matter of course across our day-to-day business functions
- We need to approach the work we do with humility and candour and always start from a position of listening to affected individuals and communities
- Our responses to community needs should always be informed by the community affected
- We need to be honest about our learnings and failings as we go about this work; and constantly work to improve our policies, strategies and approaches
- Reconciliation is a process each of us undertakes every day, and is dependent on actions, our work is underpinned by commitments made within our Reconciliation Action Plans, which we've had in place for several years