Every day across the country, lawyers at every level dedicate their time and efforts to charities, community centres or those at the margins of society, often for very little compensation. Michael Andrew chats to a few pro-bono advocates to find out why they make time in their busy schedules to offer their services outside their jobs.
Former lawyer Deborah Manning recalls the exact moment she wanted to be involved in a charity. It was 2011, and she was reading the Otago Daily Times and on the same page as a story about dumpster diving in Dunedin was another about child poverty and food insecurity in New Zealand.
She immediately saw a glaring paradox – and a call to step away from her barrister day job and into something else.
That something else became KiwiHarvest, a thriving not-for-profit in which she initially used her own car to collect unwanted food in Dunedin and redistribute it through social service agencies and food banks. Today, KiwiHarvest operates five branches across the country, having rescued over 13.8 million kilograms of food since inception.
While KiwiHarvest flourished, Manning recognised that the food rescue sector was missing an efficient solution for getting large volumes of surplus food from food businesses into vulnerable communities. Her answer was the New Zealand Food Network, launched in 2020.
The network created a national food distribution system with more than 65 hubs, providing food assistance to more than 650,000 people each month.
Manning’s is a rare example of a lawyer leaving practice to do much greater things as part of a charity. But it also provides a good example of the close link between lawyers and charitable work – perhaps stronger than any other profession.
Every day across the country, lawyers at every level dedicate their time and efforts to charities, community centres or those at the margins of society, often for very little compensation.
Many of these lawyers have the expert skills to ensure these charities or community projects can function well in an administration-heavy environment, while others have a commitment to offer pro bono work to those who can’t afford it.
But the question is, in such a demanding profession that plays such a vital role in society, what do these lawyers get out of offering their services outside of their jobs?
LawNews spoke with several lawyers to find out.
Sabrina Muck
Sabrina Muck was involved with charitable causes outside her paid work throughout her early career. During her time as a solicitor at Chapman Tripp, she was a governance member for the Auckland Women’s Centre and another charity supporting women who were survivors of domestic violence, working mostly in the evenings.
However, when she eventually realised that charitable work could be a big part of her day job, she left firm life to take up a role as supervisor of the Waitematā Community Law Centre.
“It was just putting time into the causes that mattered to me, such as women’s rights, women’s safety, human rights. And I thought, well, I’m actually well placed to contribute time and skills in this way,” Muck says.
“Rather than just worrying about things and feeling like I couldn’t change anything, I thought: ‘Well, what if I got involved directly?'”
She is now the director of Te Ara Ture – a national pro bono legal referral service connecting disadvantaged New Zealanders with volunteer lawyers, operating under Community Law Centres Aotearoa. In that role, she is able to draw on both her private practice experience and her work in community law to understand the different pressures that face both sides of the equation and how a bridge might be formed between the two.
“It’s obvious when people walk into community law centres how pressing the need is for accessible legal services,” she says.
“A lot of people come in with a feeling that something’s not right, but can’t quite articulate the next step. They’re trying to understand their rights and how a lawyer can help them. That was central to the work, mainly focused on tenancy, family, employment and some public law matters.”
Although not every lawyer makes the leap from firm or private practice to community law, she believes most lawyers care deeply about the work and how it can be used for the benefit of society. The many lawyers giving their time and energy to Te Ara Ture is evidence of that, she says.
Mark Kelly
Barrister Mark Kelly has spent much of his career offering pro bono work beyond his normal practice. He says it started in the early 1990s, when he was working at Russell McVeagh and mentored by his superiors.
“I was very lucky that the bosses that I worked for when I started my career were supportive of pro bono work and wanted to give us young lawyers an opportunity to do it,” Kelly says.
“Russell McVeagh had a long-standing commitment to the Māngere Law Centre. I was involved with that just about the whole of the five years I was at the firm.”
Now one of New Zealand’s leading commercial mediators, Kelly still does a variety of pro bono legal work including rostered legal assistance at the Ōtara Citizens’ Advice Bureau. He has served as a school board trustee in East Tāmaki, and fundraised through marathon events for charities such as Catwalk (supporting health and welfare causes). He also provides mediation services without charge and engages in initiatives linking dispute resolution to wider community benefit.
He says that providing these services that benefit marginalised people and communities is one of the most satisfying “privileges” of being a lawyer.
“To be able to understand and work within the legal system is a special skill, and that enables you to help people. It is lovely to be able to share that and to help people out.”
“I think you get a real sense of personal satisfaction. Some of the most satisfying things that I’ve been involved in have been pro bono work – sometimes over not even very much money, but it’s been work that’s been important to the people that you’re serving.”
A memorable case involved helping a man get his ute back from a “rapacious mechanic”, while another involved helping out a decile 1 school.
He feels that the general perception of the law does not do justice to the countless acts of unsung pro bono work happening every day in the legal sector, which is just part of the job.
“If you ask them the right questions, you’ll discover that there are many lawyers doing things in the community. I think that’s part of the culture of the law.
“It’s important, and I think it’s worth it because it’s the right thing to do in and of itself.”
Sue Barker
While most lawyers engage in charity or pro bono work in addition to their regular practice area, there are those for whom it is their main practice area.
Sue Barker is the founder of Sue Barker Charities Law, a boutique firm in Wellington that specialises in charities law and public tax law.
Her journey began during her first few years. Unable to afford university, she secured an Inland Revenue bursary that paid her way through her degree in exchange for years of service at the IRD afterward. It was there, working through the technical machinery of the tax system, that she first encountered the concept of charitable purpose – and something clicked.
“It was at IRD that I discovered the concept of charitable purpose and the tax privileges for charities,” she recalls.
As the years passed and she moved through different roles, a pattern emerged. Wherever she went, people sought her out with questions about charities law. It wasn’t coincidence – it was, she came to believe, the universe nudging her in a direction. In 2012, she listened, founding her own firm dedicated exclusively to charities law and public tax law.
Her approach to the discipline is distinctive. She describes charities law as fundamentally rooted in trust law, an equitable concept stretching back centuries, and likens it to alkali in a world of legal acid.
“Tax law, corporate law, transactional law, regulatory law, they’re all quite rules-based areas of law, and I conceptualise them as acid.
“There’s a real tension between actually protecting what makes a charity special, and all these people wanting to impose all these black-letter rules on it, which, at the end of the day, risks creating an environment for charities that is too acidic.”
That tension between protection and prescription plays out in her casework. She helped the National Council of Women fight back after a controversial de-registration, winning a judgment that affirmed the Charities Act should facilitate charitable work, not frustrate it.
“It’s devastating for a charity to lose its registered charitable status, particularly if you’re doing work that you’re actually funded by the government to do.
“Justice Dobson said in the judgment that the Charities Act is to be interpreted to facilitate, not frustrate, charitable work.”
She says working for charities provides her with the Japanese concept of ikigai: “The sweet spot where you do work that you love to do, that is useful and that people are prepared to pay for.”
“I really do feel very privileged. I found work that I love to do, that I do think is useful, and that I feel like we are helping charities achieve their charitable purposes.”
Tina Hwang
As the director of Queen City Law and convenor of the TLANZ Property Law Committee, Tina Hwang has plenty of work on her plate, but that hasn’t stopped her being involved with a charity that aims to connect school children with inspiring role models.
Called Our Children, Our Community (OCOC), the project was started by Tina’s husband as a university project, and she loved it so much that she joined him. It involves holding regular events where members of certain professions, such as the police or firefighters, come to share about their jobs with vulnerable school-aged children.
“It brings me so much joy to do. I love doing it and the feedback we get from the children who come and are just wowed at having some good, positive role models come and talk about what they do.”
“It really energises me, because I feel connected to the community. I feel that I’m giving back and just interacting with these children.”
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