Beyond lawyer-client interactions, we don’t often see or put much thought into other ways lawyers use their legal skills in the wider community. Or when we do, it’s about them being greedy. Together, Canon Australia’s chief legal counsel, David Field, and author of ‘The Wellness Doctrines for Law Students and Young Lawyers’, Jerome Doraisamy, are setting out to change that, teaming up to create online photographic blog project, Lifetimes in Law.
Lifetimes in Law combines photographic portraits with “word portraits” of their subjects to explore how they have used the law to serve the community. The blog will feature law school deans, managing partners, barristers and judges and their varied contributions to the community.
Combining Field’s photographic skills and Doraisamy’s written skills, the project aims to illuminate the people in the legal world who interact with the law through public service, education, social justice and advocacy for those who are vulnerable and underprivileged. Field says they are going into the project “with an open mind as to where it might take us” but he hopes that as the project progresses, it will feature legal practitioners in ways different to what they original envisaged.
The website launched on 5 December, featuring Professor Jill McKeough, the former dean of UTS Law School and former copyright commissioner for the Australian law Reform Commission. Professor McKeough speaks about her rewarding and meaningful career in higher education, revamping the curriculum as one of her first tasks as dean and her passions outside the law.
The portraits reflect the themes of the subject’s career and in this case, Professor McKeough was photographed in a student learning space at UTS. In her ‘word portrait’, Professor McKeough says she’s always felt her job was “invaluable because I was helping other people to get educated and get themselves a career.”
Beyond exploring what it means to use the law as a tool to serve the community, Doraisamy says that the blog is also a way to “acknowledge and celebrate the important work being done by our friends, colleagues or even competitors.”
Check out the website here.
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