Neighbourhood Justice
Luke is the managing partner of Salvos Legal, a not-for-profit legal practice launched by The Salvation Army in Australia last December. It evolved out of a voluntary service called ‘Courtyard Legal’ that he established in 2005.
Luke is the youngest of five children. His mum joked that he ‘had to be a barrister’ because he had ‘a big mouth’. Her son was more interested in journalism, but his school marks were high enough for law and he was persuaded to give it a go.
His first year at university was a tough one. Luke’s mother passed away and he wasn’t convinced that he was suited to the legal profession. He was ready to drop out of law when he opened a fortune cookie and read: You’d make an excellent lawyer, for no detail escapes your attention. ‘So I gave it one more semester—and I haven’t looked back.’ He laughs at how God got his attention.
Luke went on to work at a leading Australian law firm, specialising in building and construction industry litigation, as well as working in trusts and general commercial litigation.
Now 30, he says that until recently, his career aspiration was ‘to be a partner in a commercial law firm and set myself up for life. But then the opportunity [to establish Salvos Legal] came up and I thought, “If you blink, you’ll miss it.” ’
Fighting for justice
Luke grew up in a Catholic household. He was a regular churchgoer, but says his faith was more about ritual than anything personally impacting. There was certainly no sense of mission or purpose.
That changed in 2003 when two school friends of a flatmate came around for dinner. They were from The Salvation Army Auburn Corps (church), which is located in one of metropolitan Sydney’s poorest areas. The pair pressed Luke on the legal needs of a grandmother from their church.
The woman’s three grandchildren had been placed in her care as their mother was a heroin addict and their father was a violent alcoholic. Some years on, an accusation had been made that the grandmother was no longer able to care for the children, so efforts were being made to place them in foster care.
‘They were bold,’ Luke says, remembering his initial encounter with the two Salvation Army workers. ‘As with most Salvationists, they see something wrong and they want to fix it.’ He agreed to get involved.
Four specific concerns were raised that, if proven, may have given authorities grounds for removing the children from their grandmother’s care: that the grandmother was homeless, a drug addict, a cancer patient and had reportedly taken the children from their home dressed in just shorts and t-shirts in the middle of winter.
These concerns turned out to be false and Luke was able to disprove each accusation in court. The woman’s landlord confirmed she was a model tenant, her GP confirmed she’d never been a drug user, her oncologist confirmed she’d been cancer-free for over a decade, and the Bureau of Meteorology confirmed that the day in question was one of the warmest on record.
Luke was invited to attend a Salvation Army church service so that his work to obtain justice for the grandmother could be acknowledged. As he went to leave, he was presented with a second case. When he returned to be thanked again, a third case was waiting.
‘I realised that this was a significant need,’ he says. ‘I realised too that The Salvation Army was a place where I could apply my faith and find purpose.’ He made The Salvation Army his spiritual home.
Courtyard Legal
In August 2005, Luke established Courtyard Legal out of Auburn Corps. An initial team of 15 volunteer solicitors, migration agents, law graduates, legal secretaries and assistants advised clients on criminal law, family law and child custody, welfare, debt, housing, immigration and refugee issues.
Courtyard Legal’s aim was to provide a free legal service for those in need and support people for long-term change by connecting them with other services—many of them Salvation Army ones. This included drug and alcohol rehabilitation, budgeting, employment, welfare and crisis accommodation, along with counselling and spiritual care.
One of Luke’s early clients at Courtyard Legal was Beverley*, a young woman with a criminal and drug history who was six months out of jail and on parole for armed robbery. Beverley had come off drugs and was intent on making a better life for herself. She’d even been made ‘cash room supervisor’ at work. But her dreams of a better life were put under threat when she was charged with theft of seven dollars’ of underwear from a department store.
Her case was simple. Beverley told Luke she’d paid for other items at the cash register but because the underwear was under her arm (she was helping her 80-year-old grandmother walk and had no free hand to carry anything else), she’d forgotten to pay. Beverley had receipts for around $60 of other items purchased immediately before she left the store.
In court, all was going well until Luke sat down after asking his final question. Beverley seized the moment to exclaim: ‘I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t steal. I’m not a thief!’ Her outburst gave the prosecution leave to introduce Beverley’s extensive criminal record. Her credibility was shot, says Luke, and she was found guilty. The proceedings were adjourned for later sentencing.
‘I had such high hopes for Beverley,’ he says. ‘I remember the train ride back from Parramatta Court to my office that day. It was one of the most frustrating moments of my life—I knew that Beverley was innocent, but there was nothing I could do about it. She had broken the cardinal rule (which she had been warned about), not to talk about her own character in the witness box. I was certain her parole would be revoked and that she would return to jail, get back on drugs and ruin her life.’
Luke was determined that he wouldn’t let Beverley fall back into her previous life. ‘I worked hard and when the day of sentence came—through the grace of God—Beverley obtained an excellent result and avoided her parole being revoked.’
Courtyard Legal’s positive impact in the community was recognised in 2010 when Luke received the Anzac of the Year award, which honours individuals who have ‘given service to their fellow Australians and to the community in a positive, selfless and compassionate manner’.
Salvos Legal
What started as a ‘hobby’ has become Luke’s full-time job. Last year, within days of achieving his ‘career dream’ of becoming a partner in the law firm where he was employed, Salvation Army leaders approached him with a job offer to grow Courtyard Legal as a large-scale Salvation Army project across its Australia Eastern Territory.
The plan was to start with Sydney, then move into Brisbane and Canberra, establishing legal advice centres in Salvation divisions and local corps. ‘It was a complex decision in terms of subject matter,’ Luke explains, ‘but I came to my answer quickly.’
‘How will we pay for this?’ was one of the first questions Luke set his mind to. He wanted to find a way to expand the Army’s humanitarian legal work without draining funds away from its social service work. But neither did he want to be at the whim of government funding. The business model he and the Salvos Legal Board eventually settled on was one with two distinct operations: a commercial arm and a humanitarian arm.
In the five years that Courtyard Legal operated, it provided free legal advice in over 1500 cases. In just two months of operation, the Salvos Legal team has worked on more than 500 humanitarian cases already. It’s now commonplace for court documents to refer to ‘The Salvation Army as solicitors for the plaintiff or defendant’. Without The Salvation Army’s intervention, many of these individuals would not have been able to fight for their legal rights in court.
There are the equivalent of seven full-time lawyers in the Salvos Legal humanitarian team (13 lawyers each doing part-time shifts), with one full-time lawyer and one licensed conveyancer in its commercial team.
Luke urges people to discover what their talents are—and then find out what part of their community needs those talents. ‘I would never have expected to end up doing this,’ he says. ‘In fact, some years ago a good friend [suggested it] and I made lots of excuses. But God has provided for me and he’s given me a lot of responsibility, so in my work I try to honour that.
‘The rewards are two-fold: seeing clients who know we’re working with them—they might win or lose the case at the end of the day, but at least whatever happens they know someone’s fighting for them, believing in them and uplifting them. And seeing young lawyers gain confidence and have good outcomes for our clients—mentoring them is rewarding too.
‘I think it is a calling,’ he concludes. ‘I’m certainly dedicated to the cause that I fight for, and I’m thoroughly convinced it’s for good’
By Major Christina Tyson (Adapted for web from War Cry magazine)
* names have been changed
More information
For more information on Salvos Legal, go to salvoslegal.com.au