Skip to main content
  • 00:00

    Good evening everyone and welcome  to tonight's Brennan Justice talk  

    00:05

    focusing on the issue of sexual harassment in  the legal profession. My name is Renata Grossi  

    00:11

    I'm one of the co-directors of the Brennan  Justice and Leadership Program so tonight  

    00:17

    I'm joined here by one of my fellow co-directors  from the Uts Law Students' Society Georgina Hedge,  

    00:25

    Crystal McLaughlin our Brennan administrator  and most importantly our special guest and  

    00:31

    presenter for this evening Prominent Senior  Council of the New South Wales Bar Kate Eastman  

    00:37

    now I'll say a little more about our speaker in  a moment but first, I would like to hand over to  

    00:43

    our first nation student Keira Sloane to do the  acknowledgement of country Keira hi everyone my  

    00:52

    name's Keira and I'm a proud Wiradjuri woman and  I decided to do a quick acknowledgement of country  

    00:59

    I'd like to acknowledge the traditional  custodians of the Gadigal people of the Eora  

    01:03

    Nation whose land I'm zooming in from today. I  would further like to acknowledge the traditional  

    01:08

    custodians of the various traditional  lands you were all attending from today  

    01:13

    I'd like to pay my respects to the elders past  present and emerging and extend that respect to  

    01:18

    other indigenous people who are present and if  you haven't already please pop in the chat which  

    01:23

    traditional lands you're zooming in from and I  now pass back to Renata for the rest of the event

    01:32

    thank you Keira it's really good to be  reminded of one of the biggest social  

    01:38

    justice issues that we face in this country that  we are in fact on stolen land and i would also  

    01:46

    like to add my very own acknowledgement  of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation  

    01:53

    upon whose ancestral lands this city campus now  stands and also to pay my respects to the elders  

    02:00

    both past and present and acknowledge them  as the traditional custodians of knowledge  

    02:06

    of this land okay uh let me take a moment  to just quickly lay out some housekeeping  

    02:14

    this zoom event is being recorded for  teaching learning and event purposes um only  

    02:20

    the speakers and those that ask questions in the  discussion time will come up in the zoom recording  

    02:27

    now you all have the ability to hide and  show your camera as well as to mute and  

    02:33

    unmute your microphones when you are not  speaking please put your microphone on mute  

    02:39

    and we also appreciate that there are many reasons  for not having cameras on we do welcome seeing  

    02:46

    faces and especially when asking a question but  we completely understand if you do not do so  

    02:53

    now in relation to questions and comments  please feel free to post on the chat  

    02:58

    we will be monitoring it throughout the talk  and we'll put all the relevant comments and  

    03:03

    questions to our speaker during the discussion  time and finally for our brennan students in  

    03:11

    order to claim your five roj points if you could  please list your full name now in the chat box  

    03:17

    as it appears on the uts systems and our brennan  team here will award you your points after this  

    03:23

    event okay that's all the housekeeping so let's  get to the very important part of the evening um  

    03:34

    which is the to for me to introduce to you our  very special guest and speaker kate eastman  

    03:41

    who is going to be speaking on the issue of  sexual harassment in the legal profession  

    03:47

    kate eastwood is senior counsel at the new south  wales bar she has 30 years experience in dispute  

    03:54

    resolution and advocacy in a wide range of legal  areas including employment discrimination and  

    04:01

    human rights law kate eastman has extensive  experience in rural commissions and inquiries  

    04:08

    preparing submissions and advice for human  rights ngos and community legal centres  

    04:14

    she also regularly participates in mediation and  conciliation of complex and multi-party disputes  

    04:22

    now in addition to her experience in practice  kate eastman is also a senior fellow in the  

    04:27

    faculty of law at monash university where she  teaches a range of postgraduate international  

    04:33

    and australian human rights law courses her  commitment to human rights work is evident  

    04:38

    in her extensive pro bono work which has included  just to name some of it uh representing a cd women  

    04:47

    trafficked into syria david hicks during his  time in guantanamo bay asylum seekers women  

    04:55

    experiencing sexual violence sexual harassment  and discrimination children with disabilities  

    05:02

    seeking access to education and in war crime  investigations this work was recognised when  

    05:10

    kate eastman was awarded a new south wales law  foundation award for her services to pro bono work  

    05:16

    and in the 2021 queen's birthday honors  list when she was appointed as a member  

    05:21

    of the order of australia we are indeed honored  to have such a prominent speaker here tonight  

    05:28

    so welcome kate and i look forward to your talk  on a topic which is very prominent in the news  

    05:34

    this week with the federal government's national  summit on women's safety so tonight kate smith  

    05:40

    will talk to us about sexual harassment  in the legal profession over to you kate

    05:47

    well Renata thank you very much uh for that very  uh warm welcome I'm absolutely delighted to join  

    05:56

    you it's a shame we can't do this in person but  um it is a great honour to participate so thank  

    06:04

    you for the kind words so I also acknowledge the  traditional owners on the lands on which we're all  

    06:10

    meeting today and pay my respects to their elders  past present and emerging and I also acknowledge  

    06:19

    our women the women lawyers who've come before  us who blaze the trails and who've opened  

    06:26

    up opportunities for us so I certainly  acknowledge and respect our elder women  

    06:33

    I also acknowledge the members of the faculty  who are with us this evening thank you very much  

    06:39

    and also to all the students participating  this afternoon warm welcome so I've got some  

    06:46

    slides and I'm going to speak to them so fingers  crossed that this will work let's see how we go

    06:54

    so the topic I'm going to talk about  today is pretty grim I don't have a lot of  

    06:58

    good news for you but I hope that I'll be able to  identify where we can make progress I always find  

    07:06

    when I talk about this topic that it can have an  impact and I'm very alive to the impact of trauma  

    07:13

    so if any time you feel uncomfortable I don't  mind if you turn me on moot and just take a  

    07:19

    moment but I've also given you some contact  numbers there as we talk through the issues

    07:27

    well I want to start with something quite  alarming on the 22nd of June last year at  

    07:34

    around 4 30 in the afternoon I can  honestly say my email box exploded  

    07:42

    it was around this time that uh the high court  made public the fact that it had undertaken  

    07:50

    an investigation into the conduct of a former  judge of the high court that was mr dyson hayden

    08:02

    the court acknowledged that as a result of the  investigation that the complaints concerning six  

    08:11

    associates of the court in relation to mr hayden's  conduct towards them had been substantiated

    08:20

    the chief justice issued a press release and  i've given you a little bit of an extract on  

    08:26

    the screen there the chief justice said there is  no place for sexual harassment in any workplace  

    08:35

    we are ashamed this could have happened at the  high court of australia we've made a sincere  

    08:41

    apology to the six women whose complaints were  born out we know it would have been difficult  

    08:50

    for them to come forward and in that  statement the chief justice said  

    08:56

    that the court believes the women now mr hayden  has not spoken publicly about these allegations  

    09:04

    but shortly after the release from the high court  through his lawyers he issued a press release  

    09:12

    denying the allegations and denying  that he had done any wrongdoing

    09:19

    i think it's fair to say that the news of  dyson hayden's conduct shook us it took us  

    09:28

    in the sense of how could this happen at  the highest levels of the legal profession  

    09:35

    and what did this mean for us as a  profession so the reaction was extraordinary  

    09:43

    and it's really caused a lot of deep  thinking in the legal profession  

    09:48

    earlier this year at the opening of the law  term the new south wales chief justice chief  

    09:54

    justice baptist said the following as i've got  on the screen openly acknowledged that the legal  

    10:01

    profession has had a significant problem with  sexual harassment but he also acknowledged that  

    10:08

    the profession had become acutely aware of the  problem and the need to endeavor to eliminate it  

    10:15

    so this is what i want to talk about this evening  i want to start by looking at sexual harassment  

    10:22

    in the legal profession we're all about rules  in the legal profession so what are the rules  

    10:30

    a good place to start is the  definition of sexual harassment  

    10:34

    and that's contained in the commonwealth sex  discrimination act in section 28a there has  

    10:40

    been an amendment to it last week but i'll go  with the version when i prepared the slides  

    10:46

    essentially this is the definition of sexual  harassment it's quite a legal definition and  

    10:51

    you can see that there's lots of words in  that and as you know with any statute the  

    10:57

    task is to work out what are the meaning  of these words and how does the law apply  

    11:04

    so i think it's always good to boil these legal  concepts down to sort of some key factors so these  

    11:11

    are the elements of sexual harassment first of all  you have to identify conduct of a sexual nature  

    11:19

    that's an objective test the second  limb is is that conduct unwelcome  

    11:27

    so not all uh conduct of a sexual nature would  be unwelcome but where it's unwelcome to the  

    11:34

    woman for the most part who's on the receiving  end of it that will depend on how the particular  

    11:40

    woman responds it's not a one-size-fits-all  and it's not a test of the reasonable woman  

    11:47

    but the way in which our law currently operates  is it's not enough for the conduct to simply be  

    11:52

    unwelcome there's an overlay of a test and  that is what a reasonable person looking at  

    12:00

    all those circumstances have anticipated that the  unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature would offend  

    12:09

    intimidate or humiliate the person concerned so  this is the reasonableness overlay and that's got  

    12:17

    both a mixed subjective and objective test  so it's sort of quite a clunky definition  

    12:24

    but in terms of what will be conduct of a sexual  nature that's very broad it can be at the most  

    12:31

    serious end sexual assault or sexual violence  and perhaps at the other end of the spectrum  

    12:37

    although there's always degrees in this it can  be inappropriate sexually loaded comments jokes  

    12:47

    innuendo and it can be things that build up over  time where somebody may be groomed over a period  

    12:55

    of time so it's quite an array of conduct that's  occurred in my practice over 30 years i've sort  

    13:02

    of kept a list of the weird and wonderful things  and i had one case in which flicking rubber bands  

    13:09

    at somebody's legs in a provocative way was an act  of sexual harassment so it's it's wide and varied  

    13:16

    now that's the civil test that applies to all  of us including lawyers but for lawyers we  

    13:23

    also have a set of professional conduct rules  so in australia depending on whether you're  

    13:28

    practicing as a solicitor or a barista there  are rules that apply to our professional conduct  

    13:36

    and so the legal profession uniform laws and i've  put the solicitor's rules here but it's the same  

    13:42

    for the baristas too is that a solicitor  must not engage in the course of practice  

    13:49

    conduct that constitutes discrimination  sexual harassment or workplace bullying  

    13:55

    and that definition of sexual harassment  for the solicitors and baristas rules  

    13:59

    is the same definition as the sex discrimination  act so that's unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature  

    14:07

    so that gives you a little bit of an idea  about the rules so now i want to say what do  

    14:12

    we actually know about sexual harassment in the  legal profession i sort of want to start with  

    14:18

    it's nothing new so when we look at how the  profession has responded to sexual harassment i  

    14:26

    think it's probably fair to say that there wasn't  much attention to this issue until the mid-1990s  

    14:34

    there was an important report prepared in new  south wales called the keys young report and that  

    14:39

    looked at gender bias in the legal profession  at that time and if i just take barristers  

    14:45

    60 of barristers women barristers in new south  wales reported experiencing sexual harassment  

    14:54

    it's quite a high number then where there was  another groundbreaking report in 1998 in relation  

    15:02

    to victoria and the victorian bar around this  time new south wales introduced the uh a legal  

    15:10

    profession regulation called regulation 69b and  that introduced that professional conduct rule  

    15:18

    but it also introduced a mandatory requirement for  legal practitioners to have to undergo training  

    15:24

    in discrimination harassment equal opportunity  and work health and safety every three years  

    15:32

    so we had hoped by the late 1990s that  you'd start to see this change in culture  

    15:38

    but sadly that hasn't been the case and so what  we see is a series of reports that followed  

    15:45

    into the new century and probably one of the more  significant reports is in 2014 which is the law  

    15:53

    council of australia it released its report on the  national attrition and re-engagement survey report  

    16:01

    so that big study and that had some very alarming  statistics so if the women who had responded to  

    16:10

    the survey for what's called the nas report 55 of  women had experienced sexual harassment in their  

    16:17

    professional life 80 percent of women embarrassed  barristers experienced bullying or intimidation  

    16:25

    and 84 of barristers had experienced gender  discrimination the nas report told us that the  

    16:33

    bar was probably the worst place for women while  in firms or in-house or in government practice  

    16:41

    things were a little bit better we did a survey in  new south wales and in response to our practicing  

    16:48

    certificate applications and we found that 12  of those responding had been sexually harassed  

    16:56

    the startling thing about all of this  for me was that in 1995 with keys young  

    17:03

    of the women who reported experiencing  sexual harassment no one made a complaint  

    17:11

    when the nars report was released in 2014 and  the survey participants were asked whether they  

    17:18

    had made a formal complaint no one had made  a formal complaint but they had raised issues  

    17:26

    perhaps with their immediate supervisor or with  a trusted colleague or friend so we have really  

    17:34

    at this stage a culture of silence in the legal  profession where clearly sexual harassment was  

    17:39

    an issue but women kept their silence there was a  reluctance to come forward or to make a complaint

    17:49

    so what's then happened well i think um you might  recall in october 2017 the metoo movement really  

    17:57

    burst onto the scene that really arose out of  some revelations involving harvey weinstein in  

    18:04

    the united states but it started to snowball and  this had an impact in australia in this sense  

    18:11

    is that the legal profession said well it might  be us too and there was some very significant  

    18:17

    work done by the international bar association  that looked at the profession across the world  

    18:24

    and i just got up on the slide there's some of  the results of the us ii report conducted by  

    18:29

    the international bar association so the numbers  were still very high in terms of the experience  

    18:36

    of women being bullied in connection with their  work in the law or experiencing sexual harassment  

    18:44

    so while this was happening in terms of the  international bar association and i will say  

    18:50

    talking to those involved in that there's a very  significant number of australians who participated  

    18:56

    in this survey work there was also the reference  made by the australian government to ask our sex  

    19:05

    discrimination commissioner kate jenkins to  conduct an investigation into the experience  

    19:12

    of sexual harassment in australian workplaces  so that now resulted in the respect work report  

    19:19

    which was released on the 5th of march last year  and you'll see that the findings were that there  

    19:26

    was about 30 of women who had experienced  sexual harassment in the past five years  

    19:33

    but significantly for almost 20 percent they've  been a negative impact on health and this was  

    19:39

    across all industries and you can also see i  think some interesting findings about the cost  

    19:46

    so while of all this was happening we  said right can we as the legal profession  

    19:53

    look at the respective work report and find out  what can we do perhaps in the legal profession  

    20:00

    so this was important in terms of the  findings from the respective work report  

    20:05

    it was low awareness of what type of  conduct constituted sexual harassment  

    20:10

    there was gaps in incomplete coverage in the  sex discrimination act and that was particularly  

    20:16

    important because for the most part barristers  were not covered by the sex discrimination act  

    20:23

    because they are not employees and they may be  covered when they provide services but for the  

    20:30

    way in which barristers or sole practitioners  operated the sex discrimination act didn't apply  

    20:36

    now that's changed it changed last week with  the amendments to the sex discrimination act  

    20:41

    and you also saw those key findings that  people were reluctant to make complaints  

    20:47

    and the systems for making complaints were  difficult uh the outcomes if one makes a complaint  

    20:53

    of sexual harassment were not good the damages  aren't particularly high and they're expensive to  

    20:58

    run cases and often non-disclosure agreements of  confidentiality agreements are a real feature and  

    21:06

    we saw this in terms of the impact in the legal  profession so since me too what's happened well  

    21:14

    we were doing a lot of work in the legal  profession among women lawyers following  

    21:19

    the respect of work report and women lawyers  have been very involved and really had made some  

    21:24

    some fantastic contributions to the work of  respect at work lots of submissions made by  

    21:32

    the lawyers association by women worse personally  and various legal bodies but it really took the  

    21:39

    22nd of june to almost shape the legal profession  into action so the law council of australia  

    21:47

    immediately responded and we held a big round  table we pulled everybody together and we said  

    21:52

    we need a national action plan we need to make  sure my light's going that the law is clear that  

    22:00

    there's comprehensive coverage across the legal  profession and there's a consistency of approach  

    22:07

    we talked about the need to support women who are  victims and survivors of sexual violence at work  

    22:14

    and we needed to find pathways that if women wish  to make a complaint they would not be the ones  

    22:20

    with the burden but the institution should take  responsibility and around this time it was almost  

    22:26

    like that there was a wake up in the courts it's  an important case in the full court of the federal  

    22:31

    court involving a solicitor in northern new south  wales and his persistent attempts and his lawyer  

    22:37

    said he just wanted to be like mr darcy from pride  and prejudice was just not on in the profession  

    22:44

    then over the course of the last year there's been  a lot of work done within the legal profession  

    22:50

    and we've seen other cases there was a prosecution  for professional misconduct of one of the members  

    22:58

    of the new south wales bar who've been involved  in a fairly lewd act at a social function  

    23:05

    the bar council of new south wales had referred  that matter to the tribunal and the tribunal made  

    23:10

    a finding that his conduct was unsatisfactory  professional conduct there was also the release  

    23:16

    of two significant reports one in victoria which  looked at the experience of sexual harassment  

    23:23

    in victoria courts and tribunals and a big  review of the south australian legal profession  

    23:29

    this has really culminated also in bringing  the respective work recommendations together  

    23:35

    the government announced a national  roadmap to respond to respective work  

    23:40

    and that has uh resulted in some  amendments to the sex discrimination act  

    23:45

    that were introduced in june but passed last  september but we've also seen that this continues  

    23:54

    to be poor behaviour of members of the judiciary  and there was an announcement in march sorry  

    24:01

    in july this year about the conduct of one of the  federal circuit court judges who has retired now  

    24:10

    so it's a grim picture and i suppose i  want to leave you with these questions  

    24:16

    is is change possible and why is there  something about the legal profession  

    24:22

    so the factors that really underpin why sexual  harassment might occur in the legal profession are  

    24:29

    the following factors we are a very hierarchical  patriarchal male-dominated culture in the legal  

    24:36

    profession this is surprising because for the  last over 30 years almost 60 of law graduates  

    24:44

    have been women but notwithstanding this  large number of women are studying more  

    24:50

    and many entering the profession it's still a  very heavily male dominated profession so if  

    24:56

    i give you an example in the new south wales bar  there's about two and a half thousand barristans  

    25:02

    almost one third of the entire bath that's  all barristers in new south wales are men  

    25:09

    over the age of 60. almost half of the whole  bar are men over the age of 50. there's about  

    25:18

    50 women senior council and we comprise  maybe about three percent of the entire bar  

    25:27

    um when we look at the profession  it continues to be male dominant  

    25:32

    we have entrenched gender bias in the way  in which the profession is structured and it  

    25:38

    works it's a very competitive and adversarial  setting there is a lack of cultural diversity  

    25:45

    and there is a culture of silence  that culture of silence protects men  

    25:52

    and it also contributes to fear among women fear  that they will be shamed fear that they will  

    26:00

    lose their careers and fear that they will  be blamed for allowing misconduct to occur  

    26:06

    so these issues are particularly troubling  but i think that the profession is finally  

    26:12

    facing the issues and will do something about  it is change possible i think the answer is yes  

    26:21

    um the honourable justice kenneth hayne who served  on the high court at the same time as dyson hayden  

    26:27

    has been extremely outspoken on these issues and  his view is this shouldn't be a complex matter  

    26:36

    that men should understand when their behavior is  inappropriate and he says simply just stop doing  

    26:42

    it how hard can it be he says just but i do think  sometimes in changing cultures and understanding  

    26:51

    hierarchical environments that really are founded  on patriarchal systems it takes sometimes a little  

    26:58

    bit more than simply stopping we need to think  about how many women there are in the profession  

    27:04

    but importantly to think about  where women are in the profession  

    27:09

    it's not just enough to have more than 50 of  solicitors now being women but we need women  

    27:16

    in senior leadership roles and we need women to be  visible in those leadership roles we need to talk  

    27:23

    about cultural change and as women we need to talk  about what type of profession we want to work in  

    27:30

    and how we would like our profession to  serve us and for us to serve our profession  

    27:37

    we need to address shame and one of the most  startling experiences i had in listening to the  

    27:44

    stories of women who came forward and talked about  what happened to them following the revelations  

    27:51

    of dyson hayden was a colleague of mine who i  worked with when i first started as a lawyer  

    27:57

    about 30 years ago she was a few years ahead  of me and she had experienced sexual harassment  

    28:05

    i never knew about that at the time  she hadn't told people at the time

    28:12

    but 30 years later it still stuck with her  she still felt shame but now she was angry  

    28:22

    and she looked at her professional life  and she asked herself this question  

    28:27

    what type of woman could i have been if i was not  sexually arrest and what type of lawyer could i  

    28:35

    have been what choices might i've made in my  life had i not experienced sexual harassment  

    28:43

    and so that reflection uh about the impact  of sexual harassment yes it's acute when it  

    28:50

    occurs but the shame and the stigma can stay with  women and that's not acceptable i don't think in  

    28:57

    modern work life and nor is it acceptable that  somebody carries that shame and distress with them  

    29:05

    so i think we need to change the culture by  not imposing the obligations on women who  

    29:10

    experience sexual harassment to also have the  burden of doing something about it or fixing it  

    29:16

    we need to shift to institutional responsibilities  which is what the chief justice has talked about  

    29:23

    and we need to think about our role as bystanders  and awareness how far do we tolerate everyday  

    29:30

    sexism how far do we participate in it because you  know we've got to get on with everybody and feel  

    29:37

    that we too want to belong the legal  profession is one of wanting to belong  

    29:45

    but belonging should not come at the price of  treating women unequally or allowing sexual  

    29:51

    harassment to occur so you can probably  gather i'm very strong about these issues  

    29:58

    and uh the topics i've talked about are quite  strong so i'm giving you the reminder of the  

    30:04

    respective work as a respected work report but  the 1 800 respect number now from here on i'd  

    30:11

    love to have a discussion with you and we can open  up some questions and discussion so georgina over  

    30:17

    to you yeah thank you so much kate that was just  absolutely such an insightful presentation and i'm  

    30:23

    sure will only become more insightful through  the questions so i would encourage everyone  

    30:28

    if you would like to please use the raise hand  function if you would like to ask a live question  

    30:33

    we'd love to hear your voices but also understand  that if you would prefer to just use the chat  

    30:38

    um feel free to pop your questions in there um but  if anyone has any questions we'd love to kick off  

    30:48

    i think that oh we've got a raised hand um maxine  would you like to kick us off with the first  

    30:53

    question thank you so much georgina and thank  you so much kate that was just so comprehensive  

    30:59

    and thought provoking so as you know kate i  work in the faculty of lauren have taught for  

    31:05

    several years and was also in practice and i  frame this question not by way of an excuse for  

    31:12

    conduct and behavior that is unlawful but in  terms of the law itself the practice of law  

    31:21

    the laws that are based on very much winner  loser the competitive adversarial nature of law  

    31:28

    and do you think that has any impact on behavior  in the profession and you know i think also in  

    31:36

    the sporting world where we know um harassment  and uh is right and treatment of women is is um  

    31:46

    is a major challenge and inquiries that have  been in the um in sport as well that that also  

    31:52

    has that kind of competitiveness about it that  there's got to be a winner in every case and um  

    31:58

    do you think yeah does that have any impact on um  on how the profession conducts itself thanks kate  

    32:05

    thanks maxine that's an excellent question i  think the answer to that is yes uh because that  

    32:11

    adversarial setting is very much about winning  or losing and that very much is a patriarchal  

    32:19

    structure in terms of dispute resolution and  it's a very different way of thinking when  

    32:24

    you've got one winner and one loser and you're  not really looking at a solution that suits both  

    32:30

    whereas women for the most part i'm generalizing  look at more systems-based thinking in terms of  

    32:36

    the way in which they might solve problems and  not just in a sense convert the old-fashioned  

    32:42

    form of dueling into verbal julie in a court but i  think at another level it's this is that when you  

    32:51

    work in an adversarial setting and you've got the  responsibility of representing your client and the  

    32:58

    clients paying you to advocate for them and to win  the case there's a lot of showmanship when i use  

    33:05

    that word deliberately in terms of the theater  of law whether it be in a meeting or whether it  

    33:11

    be in court and so you have to be confident and  we learn our confidence based on looking at how  

    33:19

    other people conduct themselves and our models for  that really come from men rather than from women  

    33:26

    so i'm very i talk very much to the junior  readers and new barristers about the importance  

    33:34

    of vulnerability and the courage and vulnerability  i'm very sort of taken with brene brown's work on  

    33:41

    this the courage comes from vulnerability and  it's very hard to be confident all the time  

    33:47

    when you're in an adversarial setting  because you're constantly surrounded by  

    33:51

    critics they're the judges they're the clients  they're your opponents they're your bosses and  

    33:57

    i think we get into this culture of confidence to  mask our vulnerability and we forget that there's  

    34:05

    courage in expressing vulnerability or uncertainty  and that doesn't sit very easily for lawyers  

    34:13

    so our natural inclination is not to be vulnerable  but to armor ourselves up over and over again  

    34:19

    and i think that really contributes to  behaviours in terms of how words interact  

    34:26

    which almost make any opportunity to get an  advantage over somebody else or to show that  

    34:33

    you're stronger than someone else that sexual  harassment can be a result because sex and  

    34:40

    power over women are a way of showing dominance  and force so it's a bit of a long-winded way of  

    34:47

    answering the question but i agree with you  but i see it at a number of different levels  

    34:53

    thanks so much kate yeah thank you kate that was  an amazing answer so we have a question from the  

    34:59

    chat from mac and his question is is do you think  that adding a clause within the legal profession  

    35:06

    uniform laws would help to create cultural change  within the legal profession and ensure that there  

    35:11

    are greater consequences for sexual harassment  within the profession and he provides an example  

    35:16

    um suspension or removal from the bar so with  that rule uh for both solicitors and barristers  

    35:24

    that if there's an allegation that somebody's  breached that law or acted or that rule or  

    35:30

    acted inconsistently then a person can make a  complaint to the legal services commissioner  

    35:36

    and that complaint will then be investigated  and if the complaint is sufficiently serious to  

    35:44

    warrant it being referred to the tribunal for  disciplinary action and the tribunal makes a  

    35:50

    finding of professional misconduct then  the legal practitioner can be struck off  

    35:57

    if the tribunal makes a finding that it's  unsatisfactory professional conduct so slightly  

    36:02

    less serious than the professional conduct  then the legal practitioner can be reprimanded  

    36:08

    given cautions be required to pay a fine in  some cases to undergo education or training  

    36:17

    to be assigned a mentor to issue an apology so  there's a range of remedies that are available  

    36:23

    but those remedies really are a remedy for the  profession to sanction the legal practitioner  

    36:30

    there's very limited remedies for victims  of sexual harassment through that process  

    36:36

    so the idea of having professional conduct rules  is one of the functions is to create deterrence  

    36:45

    and to say to other legal practitioners if you  behave like this then you too may be subject to  

    36:51

    sanction and lose your opportunity to practice as  a legal practitioner so deterrence is important  

    36:58

    but probably deterrence is not of itself enough  to achieve cultural change so i think it would  

    37:04

    be very difficult to put in professional conduct  rules a requirement to change your cultures that's  

    37:11

    really got to come from the profession itself and  the profession rather than just the individuals  

    37:17

    in terms of changing culture so it's a good  suggestion but i think it needs something more  

    37:23

    we used to have a compulsory every three years  training and i've done a lot of those training  

    37:30

    courses for lawyers over the time and i've had  reactions from male lawyers sitting in the front  

    37:36

    row saying for example i'd love to be sexually  arrest or immediately picking up the newspaper  

    37:43

    and starting to read the newspaper when i started  to speak about the issues so i think there's an  

    37:48

    element to how far can you force people to uh be  responsive to it and you have to be very creative  

    37:56

    in how you work on cultural change rather  than just imposing rules on people but it's  

    38:02

    a great question yeah i agree i think that's so  interesting um we've got a live question from  

    38:08

    eliza so thanks eliza um hi kate thanks for the  thanks for the talk i think um yeah maybe looking  

    38:16

    to that cultural shift again do you think it's  something that can be brought about by new lawyers  

    38:21

    entering the workforce or do we need to have  sort of that top-down approach for it to sort of  

    38:27

    solidify great question eliza thank you and it's  probably a mixture of things you definitely need  

    38:35

    top down so the statements from the chief justice  of the high court and the chief justice of the  

    38:42

    supreme court and other courts is really important  but i think it also comes from new lawyers coming  

    38:50

    in now and that reminds me like a few years ago  probably about four years ago i was on a panel  

    38:56

    which was actually at the uts old law school  so maybe that might be more than four years ago  

    39:02

    and it was an intervarsity um session for women  law students and we were talking about sexual  

    39:10

    harassment and on the panel we said to each  other do you think we should sort of like  

    39:14

    tell them the real news what it's really like  and so we decided to start okay i'm just going  

    39:20

    to start by asking a question so probably about 60  people in the room and my question was before we  

    39:26

    start this panel i want to ask you this how many  of you feel that in the first five years of legal  

    39:33

    practice you might experience sexual harassment  and much to my surprise and perhaps sadness  

    39:41

    maybe about 50 of people in the room put their  hands up but not the three men who were there  

    39:48

    they were okay and then i asked the question in  the first five years of legal practice how many  

    39:55

    of you think you will know someone who experiences  sexual harassment and pretty much 90 of the whole  

    40:02

    room put their hands up now the difference  is when i was a law student in the 1980s  

    40:09

    if you if someone had asked me that question i  would not have put my hand up for either of those  

    40:14

    because i it was unimaginable for me as a law  student that when i finished my law degree  

    40:21

    and i worked really hard and i was going to go  into work it just was not even in my thinking  

    40:26

    that i would experience sexual harassment  or i don't even know anybody who would do  

    40:30

    that and i was sort of disappointed on  one level that this was the response of  

    40:38

    prospective women lawyers but at the same time  i'm sort of pleased because you're going into it  

    40:46

    knowing this could happen to you and i hope that  will give you more tools to call it out to do  

    40:52

    something about it and not be fearful that because  you are the recipient of misconduct therefore  

    40:58

    the shame has to stay with you or you can't  do anything about it so i really think there's  

    41:04

    a great opportunity for people coming to the  profession to really stab their foot down about  

    41:10

    what's acceptable and what's not but we still need  those you know the senior leaders to be able to  

    41:15

    speak out and not condone that type of behaviour  so it's a really good question thanks eliza  

    41:22

    thanks kate and eliza um and i think the next  question from madeline really leads really nicely  

    41:27

    from that and her question is that although every  profession would benefit from increased education  

    41:33

    regarding sexual harassment in the workplace she  asks whether you think there is a place um for  

    41:38

    additional training starting from the university  level particularly in law schools to institute  

    41:43

    a more long-term structural cultural change yeah  i think i think that's a great question actually  

    41:50

    because um training and awareness is really  important and it's not that you do it once  

    41:57

    but it's got to be ongoing and it has and then  the the outcome of training has to be reinforced  

    42:05

    we've looked a lot over the last few years  about what type of training actually works  

    42:09

    and just sort of giving a lecture about what  the law says is not good enough and so often  

    42:15

    the best training in this area comes from people  having to be put in the shoes of somebody else  

    42:22

    to uh have an appreciation of what it feels  like or what you would do in those circumstances  

    42:28

    and i think you in the context of law  students and university life we know that  

    42:34

    sexual harassment occurs on campus and kate  jenkins has also done a very detailed report  

    42:40

    there but i think being prepared for  professional life whereas at law school  

    42:45

    for the most part all of your colleagues  are this around about the same age  

    42:49

    but once you move into the bar or law firm  perhaps less so in in-house or in community legal  

    42:57

    sectors or government but in the sort of more  old-fashioned area of law people that you work  

    43:04

    with will be the same age as your grandparents or  your parents and i think knowing how to deal with  

    43:13

    relationships with much older and more powerful  people and being able to know what are appropriate  

    43:20

    boundaries is probably a good thing because at law  school you're looking at a much flatter structure  

    43:26

    but really go into the hierarchy when you start to  get into professional practice so i think that's a  

    43:32

    good idea in terms of saying how do you prepare  for professional practice and professional life  

    43:38

    and what might be the issues that you have to  confront both from an ethical and personal basis  

    43:44

    yeah great thank you kate so everyone we've got  about 10 minutes left of discussion so if anyone  

    43:48

    has any more questions please pop them in the  chat but our next question is from monica and  

    43:53

    she asks whether you think that quotas within the  legal profession may have a positive or negative  

    44:00

    impact on the profession in terms of changing  the culture that we've been discussing tonight  

    44:05

    uh the answer is yes i do uh and i think a lot of  us have been a bit sort of nervous about putting  

    44:12

    quotas in but there's quotas in this quotas and i  think part of it is being really targeted on the  

    44:18

    way in which quotas might work so i'll give you  an example where i think it's worked very well  

    44:24

    is again and you know i'm focusing a lot on the  bar but that's where the sort of you know some  

    44:28

    of the hard stuff happens is uh we have at the  present time about 23 percent of all barristers  

    44:36

    are women and we've found over time that of  the 23 of women barristers they do not get 23  

    44:45

    of the work and they certainly do not get 23 of  the value of the labor work coming to the bar  

    44:52

    so the law council of australia has had in  place what's called an equitable briefing  

    44:57

    policy and what that essentially does is uh  for law firms or governments or individuals  

    45:04

    or corporations who believe in diversity they  can sign up to the inevitable briefing policy  

    45:11

    and that means that when decisions are made about  briefing barristers that they consider up women  

    45:18

    our barristers and that they work to ensure that  

    45:25

    20 of all of the priests go to senior embarrassers  so that's women over 10 years practice  

    45:31

    and 30 go to junior women barristers and so  we've deliberately made them stretch targets  

    45:38

    we'll call them quotas and that the value  of the briefs also have to be comparable  

    45:44

    so don't just save all your prolono briefs up  for women but make sure that women will also be  

    45:52

    paid for the work that they do and this policy  has been in place for three years now and  

    45:59

    we've really seen a change because everybody  has to report to the policy so we're up to  

    46:06

    uh 30 percent of briefing for junior barristers  we're not quite there for the senior barristers  

    46:12

    but that's changed the culture in this sense that  it's forced firms to think about women barristers  

    46:20

    and not just say we'd love to breathe a woman  embarrassed well we just don't know where she is  

    46:24

    or we don't know if there's anyone good enough but  it's really sort of forced uh briefing entities  

    46:31

    to look at the talent and what it's actually done  is increase the overall talent and the experience  

    46:37

    for barristers because it now means it's a real  focus on who's best for the job rather now he's  

    46:43

    just the old maid of a friend of a friend and he's  my friend it's really brought excellence i think  

    46:50

    in terms of briefing practices across the board  so targeted targets and quotas i think can work  

    46:56

    quite well and i would like to see there to  be perhaps some targets in terms of judicial  

    47:04

    appointments both not only for women but also  from people from culturally diverse backgrounds  

    47:10

    and people with disability is really shake  up work where we have diversity in judiciary  

    47:20

    great thank you kate and um so  our next question is from georgie  

    47:24

    and she asks uh whether you think that perhaps  leveling out those hierarchical structures in  

    47:30

    private practices and other traditional legal  formats to an extent would be a worthwhile step  

    47:36

    to take in order to address these inappropriate  power dynamics within the industry  

    47:41

    yeah that's a good ques that's a really good  question and you know my easy answer to it is yes  

    47:48

    but when i think about it it's it's tricky  because law is one of these professions where  

    47:56

    you just don't learn at once and you know  everything law is continuous learning and  

    48:01

    continuous education and it's not only keeping up  to date with new law but there's a lot that goes  

    48:08

    into learning the practice of law to understand  the rules procedures to get the experience  

    48:15

    in terms of negotiation experience working  with clients and that really comes over time  

    48:22

    and so a lot of the structures really reflect uh  the long learning and the lifetime learning and  

    48:30

    development of legal skills so it's you know it's  tricky to sort of say you'd immediately flatten it  

    48:36

    but what you can do is look at the way in which  work is organized in law firms or at the bar  

    48:43

    to try to give people a fairer go and  to look at ways of creating equality  

    48:50

    and so that's quite a complex process because  you have to look very carefully at what the  

    48:55

    particular environment is so for example coming  back to the bar the chief justice of the federal  

    49:00

    court encourages senior barristers like me if i'm  in court and i've got a junior barrister with me  

    49:07

    to allow that junior barrister to  have a speaking role at court in court  

    49:11

    and that then increases opportunities there so in  that way that helps to flatten out the hierarchy  

    49:17

    but we really sort of have to pick the  particular area as to how we might do that  

    49:23

    yeah great thank you kay um i'm not sure if anyone  has any more questions in the chat but while we  

    49:27

    wait if anyone has any other questions i have a  question that i could ask oh jokes tian has asked  

    49:32

    a question so we can use her question instead  of mine we'll save mine for later if we need it  

    49:36

    um so sato so tian asks um that she's read a lot  of your work firstly and it feels very privileged  

    49:42

    to be listening to your insight so that's really  lovely so she asks how can we assure ensure more  

    49:47

    women reach leadership positions because where  this occurs women's issues are being are better  

    49:52

    reflected in those workplace particularly as so  many things still weigh unequally against women  

    49:58

    such as primary care taking maternity leave etc  essentially stopping women from climbing up the  

    50:03

    ladder and then not to mention the sexual  harassment issues that we've been talking  

    50:07

    about today that have that forced women out of  the legal profession so a couple of things you've  

    50:12

    got to be brave and strong the law is a wonderful  career and a wonderful profession for women to go  

    50:19

    into and there's lots of opportunities there but  you have to be brave and you have to be persistent  

    50:26

    and uh you have to be prepared to overcome  hurdles but my big message to all of you is  

    50:33

    that when we talk about the issues or the problems  for women in the profession i do not want women  

    50:39

    lose to be seen as downtrodden you know hapless  ladies who need help we're very strong in our  

    50:47

    profession there's a lot of very strong women  in the legal profession and i don't want you  

    50:52

    to just think everything is about overcoming  hurdles there's wonderful opportunities for  

    50:58

    women in the profession and part of it is being  very strategic in how you plan your career so  

    51:05

    first of all yes you can be very concerned about  are women disadvantaged because they may still  

    51:11

    have the primary caring role and what does this  mean well let me put this in perspective for you  

    51:17

    for you uh who young women who will be starting  your legal careers in the near future you are  

    51:24

    going to be working for 45 years so it does not  matter whether you have a year off here or there  

    51:34

    and so women can take perspective in a way  perhaps that some of our male colleagues see  

    51:41

    rising in ambition as a bit of a race you don't  have to do everything in the first five years  

    51:49

    and the skills that women acquire in understanding  systems and organization managing families and  

    51:56

    relationships are the very skills that make  you a good lawyer to be able to understand the  

    52:03

    experience of clients both commercial personal  in their lives their disputes really important  

    52:11

    so as women um developing their own lives those  skills can be very important to being a lawyer  

    52:20

    so being a lawyer is not a race you're not going  to be the chief justice in the first 10 years you  

    52:27

    may not only be the chief justice in the 20 years  but you're able to take your time so for women  

    52:34

    i think it's about setting your own race in your  own speed and see that going in and out of the law  

    52:42

    at different points in time can be a real benefit  and so i would like you to sort of think about it  

    52:48

    as a very sort of positive way forward rather than  what do i have to achieve as quickly as possible  

    52:55

    you know and if you've got to be working for 45  years you need to be able to continually learn  

    53:01

    continually challenge continually enjoy  not just be worn down by it and so  

    53:09

    really think about being flexible in how you want  to be a lawyer and what you might do in the law  

    53:16

    amazing thanks kate so if anyone has any extra  questions they would like to they please pop  

    53:22

    them in the chat we're about to we've probably  got enough time for another one more question  

    53:25

    if anyone has one otherwise i can ask mine um so  maybe i'll ask my question if no one has any other  

    53:34

    ones so i was going to ask you kate um obviously  this year i feel like we've seen a lot of  

    53:40

    um issues to do with sexual harassment and sexual  assault emerging from parliament in particular in  

    53:45

    light of britney higgins and particularly  that christian porter claim which obviously  

    53:49

    has quite a big link to the legal industry i was  wondering what you thought about how much policy  

    53:55

    considerations and the way that the government  approaches sexual harassment and sexual assault  

    54:01

    impacts professions in general but particularly  the legal industry and whether that has any effect  

    54:06

    and the way the government approaches these  issues has any effect on how certain professions  

    54:12

    might respond in their proactive approach to  the issue um that's a really tricky question  

    54:19

    thanks for that one i think that i think  the answer is how governments respond  

    54:26

    on all issues are really critical in setting the  tone for the community and setting expectations  

    54:33

    for the community and particularly our politicians  and lawmakers or our senior members of the  

    54:39

    judiciary or in the legal profession we look to  them as role models so when we sort of see our  

    54:47

    leaders falling short or seeming to be insensitive  on issues around gender or the way in which women  

    54:54

    are treated that has a flow-on effect in terms  of the type of behavior that the rest of the  

    55:00

    community think is acceptable or not acceptable  and i i really sort of get this sense that  

    55:08

    um and this is the 730 lee sales did a series  on this last week women are really angry and the  

    55:15

    anger is when you're not listened to and you're  not treated with respect that makes you angry  

    55:22

    in the past women just probably suck that up  and just said we've just got to get on with it  

    55:28

    but i think now because there are women  politicians and women senior judges and senior  

    55:33

    women in the legal profession is that you've  got a combination of the women who are prepared  

    55:38

    to step up and say this is not right really  countering back against some of the behaviour  

    55:45

    and the everyday sexism and really looking  at bringing back a values-based approach  

    55:51

    to the way in which we want our society to be and  the respect that we wish to have for each other  

    55:58

    so i do think there is that tension there  that sometimes the politicians can show us  

    56:04

    the worst of behaviour and we see that  and say we don't want to be like that  

    56:08

    but we also need to look at when politicians and  particularly our women politicians are really  

    56:15

    really trying very hard to affect change and  know that they are often up against it as well  

    56:23

    and i think shining the light on what's happened  in parliament house has really given a sense that  

    56:28

    it's a pretty hard environment for women to  be in but if we did not have those women there  

    56:34

    it would be much worse so we need to support  those women while they're in the parliament  

    56:40

    to be able to make the change and i think the  same in the judiciary and the same in the senior  

    56:45

    branches of the legal profession um and this is um  this is an ongoing thing i mean some of you might  

    56:53

    have watched this week we've had the national  summit on women's safety and violence and it's  

    56:59

    been a very sort of interesting exercise and a lot  of criticism amongst the politicians are it's not  

    57:05

    going far enough and we're not doing that i think  it's fair enough to be critical but it's also  

    57:10

    important to support the politicians that are  trying to affect change and um and to know that  

    57:18

    they do represent us and that we should  have trust and confidence in them as well  

    57:23

    that's a hard thing to say because you know some  politicians like them but i think we really have  

    57:28

    to think about uh supporting those women who can  change the law and make a real difference for us  

    57:35

    thank you so much for answering that kate  and thank you to everyone who contributed  

    57:38

    your questions to the discussion that wraps  up our discussion portion of tonight so um to  

    57:45

    kind of conclude the event on behalf of the uts  faculty of law the uts law student society and  

    57:51

    all the students here tonight i would like to  thank you kate for coming here tonight to share  

    57:55

    your knowledge and comments with us um in light  of much of the current discussion surrounding  

    58:00

    sexual harassment consent education and the way  workplaces can address this issue it has been so  

    58:06

    fantastic to hear your insights tonight as future  lawyers i'm sure i can speak for all the attendees  

    58:11

    here that your presentation tonight has educated  us all on the areas where change has but and also  

    58:17

    still needs to occur as well as instilling in all  of us present here tonight a desire to contribute  

    58:23

    to meaningful change as we enter the profession  thank you for all you have done in spearheading  

    58:28

    these changes as well as taking your time to  share your knowledge with us tonight thank  

    58:32

    you again thank you also to crystal mac renata  elise erica and the entire brennan and social  

    58:38

    justice team for helping to administrate the event  tonight thank you to as well to our dean leslie  

    58:43

    hitchens and the other members of the faculty  of law for joining us here tonight a reminder  

    58:48

    to all participants that they will receive  five roj for attending this evening's event  

    58:53

    we also encourage all of you here today to engage  with this topic through further reading which you  

    58:58

    can reflect upon for roj points by submitting 350  words to career hub um i'd also like to remind you  

    59:05

    all to keep your eyes peeled for our final justice  talk for the year which will be held on the 6th  

    59:10

    of october and will cover pursuing a career in  social justice so thank you again to kate and to  

    59:16

    everyone for attending today and i will quickly  pass back to renata to make some final comments  

    59:22

    thank you georgina for such great sharing i would  also like to add my very sincere thanks to kate  

    59:29

    eastman we really appreciate you taking the  time out of your busy schedule to talk to us  

    59:35

    about this very important topic it's really um  a wonderful thing to be able to get a view from  

    59:41

    the inside of the profession in listening to  your talk tonight i'm very much thinking about  

    59:47

    the structures of the legal profession that you  have highlighted as significant to the problem  

    59:52

    and thinking about how much they're  really reflected in other institutions  

    59:57

    including the university i'm also struck by the  fact as you stated that one of the key findings of  

    60:04

    the respected work study was that there is a low  awareness of what constitutes sexual harassment  

    60:11

    this would also point to the need for our lawyers  our future lawyers to have a broader education  

    60:18

    i think these are the very things that we're  addressing here at uts and via this very program  

    60:25

    now i'm sure that everybody is thinking about  different aspects of what you have spoken about  

    60:30

    tonight but that's a reflection of how rich your  presentation has been so my thanks i also would  

    60:40

    like to thank a few other people uh thanks to the  co-directors georgina and mack um and also our  

    60:49

    tireless administrator crystal mclaughlin without  whom these events will truly not be possible  

    60:55

    um a really big thanks to all the members of the  faculty who are here tonight for their support of  

    61:01

    both the program and the topic and finally thanks  to everybody in the audience for your active  

    61:08

    involvement in this very important discussion and  crystal if you could just put up that final slide

    61:16

    um i just want to say that if anything  we have discussed here tonight has raised  

    61:25

    any issues for you on this slide you will  see reference to a number of resources  

    61:31

    that may be of help there both inside and  outside of uts so good night everyone stay safe  

    61:41

    and we look forward to seeing  you at our very next event

    English

    AllFrom University of Technology SydneyRecently uploaded

     

  • Kate is a UTS Law alumna, who shared her insights with UTS Law students on the systemic nature and extent of sexual harassment in the legal profession. Discussing the impact of the #UsToo Report from the International Bar Association and the 2020 Respect@Work Report on the legal profession, Kate suggested strategies for the empowerment of victims of sexual harassment within legal settings, and mechanisms that can be implemented within legal organisations to reduce its occurrence.

    Kate Eastman AM SC has 30 years’ experience in dispute resolution and advocacy in a wide range of legal areas, including employment, discrimination and human rights law. Kate has been involved in sexual harassment law, policy and practice for many years, starting with her work with Dame Quentin Bryce AD the then Sex Discrimination Commissioner on a campaign to educate women about their rights at work in 1989.