- Published:
- Thursday, 29 May 2025 at 10:03 am
‘We feel seen.’ – client feedback captured in an interview with a Lotjpa lawyer
An external report has found the Lotjpa Independent Legal Service successfully delivered culturally safe and responsive services for First Peoples wanting to share their stories with the Yoorrook Justice Commission.
Over two years, Lotjpa lawyers – working in the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) and Victoria Legal Aid (VLA) – assisted in hundreds of submissions being made to Yoorrook.
‘Lotjpa played an integral role in assisting community members tell their story as part of Yoorrook’s truth-telling process,’ said Principal Managing Lawyer Siobhan Doyle, from VALS’ Civil Law and Human Rights Practice.
‘Their stories will forever form part of Victoria's history and VALS is very proud to have assisted community members engage in this landmark process.
‘We were also able to provide additional legal assistance as needed, which speaks to the holistic, trauma informed and culturally safe legal assistance that VALS provides.’
Yoorrook is the first formal truth-telling process into historical and ongoing injustices experienced by First Peoples in Victoria.
It has heard from thousands of First Nations people since commencing in 2021, many supported by Yoorrook’s Truth Receivers.
The following year, Lotjpa was created to provide independent support and legal advice for First Peoples wanting to share their truths.
One of Lotjpa’s key strengths was the strong collaboration between partners, VALS and VLA.
‘The success of this service is a testament to the power of community and collaboration, its lasting, positive impact is a credit to all involved,’ said Executive Director Ashley Morris, from VLA’s First Nations Services team.
‘What we’ve gained and learned will help us shape even better, more responsive legal services in the future.’
While there was no formal mechanism to capture client satisfaction, VALS, Yoorrook and VLA representatives agreed that most clients were satisfied with their experience of Lotjpa and were grateful for the opportunity to have legal advice.
Some clients provided strong feedback that Lotjpa had far exceeded their expectations, particularly where they received help with other legal matters. Lotjpa’s priorities were to support truth-tellers to:
- make informed decisions about providing their truth
- advocate for their truth to be included, including where there was legal risk involved
- understand legal protections that existed for them (or didn’t exist)
- help them find a way to tell their truth within the confines of the royal commission process.
Safe spaces to speak
‘From my experience, our clients were always front and centre.’ – Lotjpa lawyer
First Nations consulting practice, yamagigu, completed a five-week reflection of Lotjpa in March and made seven key findings:
- Lotjpa achieved its primary objective to provide free, confidential and culturally safe legal information, advice and casework. Stakeholders had also emphasised that the service often supported truth tellers with a range of ancillary supports beyond its primary objective.
- The partners, as well as Yoorrook, agreed that service was of a high-quality, which effectively balanced the needs of clients to tell their truths, within the constraints of the Western, royal-commission process.
- The majority of work to support submissions to Yoorrook occurred in a climate of tension between truth-telling processes and the requirements of a royal commission.
- There was no clear determination of how many clients were supported due to data limitations and an inability to collate data between agencies.
- Effective cooperation between the Lotjpa partners ensured the service’s objectives were met despite the challenges of workforce turnover, data systems and client disengagement.
- There was strong interagency collaboration, supported through structured communication channels (regular meetings and quarterly reporting) and a shared commitment.
- Cultural safety was effectively delivered through the employment of First Nations lawyers and lawyers with in-depth experience working with First Peoples communities.
Prioritising clients first
First Nations Access Manager Isabella Unwin said the report will provide important guidance on future First Nations programs.
‘Lotjpa has been critical in supporting truth-telling in a way that upholds the rights and experience of First Peoples,’ she said.
‘We will build on the insights and lessons from Lotjpa as we co-design Victoria Legal Aid’s First Nations Helpline with Aboriginal legal services, set to launch in the coming months.’
The report made five recommendations:
- To more effectively embed data, monitoring and evaluation into the service design phase so that meaningful evaluation and analysis can take place. At a minimum this should include tracking of unique clients.
- To build processing systems that are fit for purpose, for instance, a case management filing and reporting system would have most benefited Lotjpa.
- To spend more time fully identifying parameters of key legal issues. For example, many submissions related to child protection had to be redacted based on mandatory legal restrictions that limit self-identification. This could be re-traumatising and upsetting to clients.
- To embed legal support earlier on in the truth-telling process so lawyers can identify any legal risks and help make submissions that are more concise and impactful.
- To identify and implement workforce retention strategies to combat turnover, such as job-sharing arrangements, especially for one-off services that are only intended to run for fixed periods.
Lotjpa lawyers also noted challenges around the tight time frames for submissions which generally created stress and unclear guidance around reimbursements.
The submission process itself was described as emotionally and psychologically challenging and in some cases reinforced feelings of oppression and systemic control.
What Lotjpa lawyers had to say about the service
‘The way that Lotjpa was able to capture people's stories meant submissions could be a lot more vulnerable.’
‘Whenever we made referrals, I was conscious of not leaving our clients in the dark.’
‘We needed to take a flexible approach when engaging with Mob. That means making sure Lotjpa lawyers were provided with support. For example, transport and accommodation.’
‘There was always a very open and collaborative relationships between all agencies.’
‘Everyone was in it together, trying to set something up that had never been established.’
‘Our all-hands-on-deck approach was beneficial towards the end of the service.’
The Yoorrook Justice Commission is due to deliver its final reform report to the First Peoples’ Assembly and the Victorian Governor by June 2025.
More information
Learn more about the Yoorrook Justice Commission
Read our Aboriginal Services Strategy 2020–25
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