General News
19 July, 2023
Sense of justice inspires family law focus
A SENSE of justice and equity has kept Mortlake lawyer Margaret Donoghue grounded throughout her 35 years working with people while at their lowest point.
A SENSE of justice and equity has kept Mortlake lawyer Margaret Donoghue grounded throughout her 35 years working with people while at their lowest point.
Ms Donoghue started off in Melbourne with ambitions of becoming a barrister, but made a sea change after receiving advice to cut her teeth in regional Victoria.
“I was told the best way to get experience was to move to the country; two or three years as a country solicitor would get me in court every week, whereas staying in Melbourne you’ll be sitting in a library doing research and in your third year you might be allowed loose on the occasional client,” she said.
The advice saw her make the move to Kyneton, an hour north of Melbourne, before making the move to Camperdown.
Shortly afterwards she was poached by a Colac-based firm, but the 1990 collapse of the Pyramid Building Society, which led to a nationwide financial crisis, saw her quickly retrenched.
“It was terrible,” she said.
“People from Geelong heard I had been retrenched and offered to give me a job, but five times I was told at the interview I had secured a job only to be told in the days after they couldn’t afford to put anyone on.”
Ms Donoghue made the decision to establish her own practice in the Colac area before moving to the Warrnambool area, strictly working in family law.
She entered in to a partnership in 2008, however the impacts of the global financial crisis made the venture untenable.
Long hours helped her to bounce back from the economic turmoil experienced worldwide and in late 2012 she made the decision to move to Mortlake.
“It’s a lot easier to be a lawyer in Mortlake these days because of technology,” Ms Donoghue said.
“I can remember when law firms had great big libraries.
“Now we can access the information we need online, and without that I wouldn’t be able to practice the way I practice.”
Ms Donoghue is among those who found working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic to be a beneficial process.
The option has furthered the possibilities for careers to be practiced remotely, which could assist in addressing the issue of people having to leave their rural community in search of career opportunities.
“I really like working from home,” Ms Donoghue said.
“I always knew I could focus a lot better when I was working from home, so even when I was an employee years ago I worked from home or, if I had a big case to do, I’d take some files in a suitcase home.
“In those days it wasn’t electronic, whereas now it’s a lot easier to work from a little country town.
“You’re not really disadvantaged.”
Mortlake also serves as a middle ground between Warrnambool, Colac and Geelong, and Ballarat, giving Ms Donoghue a sizeable region to draw cases from and maintain a focus on the area of law she finds captivating; family law.
“It’s something I have been interested in as long as I can remember,” she said.
“My mother was a devout Christian who had a strong belief in justice and fairness.
“I started off with criminal law but I found that too confronting, I don’t have the right sort of brain for that, but with family law you’re trying to help people through a mess.”
Ms Donoghue said in practicing family law she found an opportunity to help those who often came to her at one of the lowest points of their life while the nature of practice gave her an opportunity to truly help.
“The law has a structure of what relevant factors need to be taken in to account, and the family law act is one of the earliest pieces of Legislation that really tried to do justice between people,” she said.
“The family law act actually mandates the court in property cases to consider whether the orders it’s going to make are “just and equitable” as between the parties.
“It appeals to all the romantic notions we have about justice.
“It’s balancing; it’s bringing structure, cohesion and reasonableness to the chaos of a family breakdown.”
While family law can present its own challenges, Ms Donoghue said she has seen changes made to draconian laws which were failing to protect victims but saw corrective progress.
The adaptive nature of family law is one she believes helps to create an evolving system to provide people the best outcomes.
“Because it deals with families, it’s really dynamic and changes,” she said.
“At the moment there has been a lot of discussion surrounding the issue of coercive control, which has now made its way in to the culture within the court.
“It’s always changing but at the centre of it you always have family, and you’re trying to guide your client through the structure which essentially holds things together.
“Now there is a bigger emphasis on trying to get people to reach agreement, and I love that, because it means you’re negotiating; while it can mean there’s a lot more work before you can go near the court, in the long term it saves people a lot of stress and a lot of anxiety.”
