Referral
If you are involved in a Victorian not-for-profit community organisation, and your organisation has a legal issue, PilchConnect may be able to provide assistance, via its legal referral service.
What is legal assistance ?
Legal assistance is where we provide your community organisation with help to resolve a legal issue you may have. This means a lawyer will help your organisation through the legal issue, which may include the lawyer reading documents, drafting legal documents, helping to lodge forms or applications, providing legal advice and in some cases, assisting with mediations or representing your organisation at a tribunal or in court.
PilchConnect coordinates a free legal assistance scheme for eligible community organisations.
How does PilchConnect's legal referral service work?
PilchConnect operates out of PILCH. PILCH is a not-for-profit organisation which has many law firm members who are willing to provide free legal assistance to disadvantaged individuals and to not-for-profit organisations that provide services in the public interest.
PilchConnect’s legal referral service acts as a broker between your organisation and our member law firms to arrange pro bono legal assistance. If a law firm is able to take the matter on, they will provide you with a lawyer who can assist your community organisation with the legal issue.
Where we are able to arrange assistance, a lawyer from the firm will help your organisation through its legal issue. This may include the lawyer reviewing legal documents, assisting with the lodging of forms or applications, and providing legal advice.
Which not-for-profit organisations can PilchConnect help?
With over 120,000 community organisations in Victoria alone, our ability to refer legal work is limited by the capacity of our member firms to take on new matters. As pro bono legal resources are limited, not all community organisations will be eligible for referral. Generally speaking, whether we are able to refer a particular organisation will depend upon an assessment of:
- the public interest aims and objectives of the organisation;
- the type of legal issue for which advice is sought; and
- the organisation's ability to pay for or otherwise access legal advice.
These principles are designed to assist PilchConnect in prioritising competing demands for pro bono resources, as well as providing not-for-profit organisations with a transparent view of how our referral decisions are made. While we will consider each request for assistance on a case-by-case basis, we maintain a particular focus on assisting public-serving groups that are confronted with legal issues which:
- raise matters of broad public concern; or
- impact on disadvantaged or marginalised groups.
Would our organisation be eligible for a referral for legal assistance?
The broad principles set out above will give you an idea of the kinds of organisations we assist. But there are more detailed guidelines used by PilchConnect when considering requests for legal assistance. We will always consider each request on a case-by-case basis, but these guidelines provide more detail about how each application is assessed.
Our ability to refer legal issues to member law firms will vary depending on the status of your organisation. Therefore, the guidelines differ depending on whether your organisation is still in the planning stages, or already in existence. Please refer to the section within these guidelines that best represents your specific circumstances.
Guidelines for existing not-for-profit organisations
Guidelines for proposed or newly-forming not-for-profit organisations
How do we apply for a referral?
To find out whether your community organisation may be eligible for a legal assistance referral, please contact PILCH on 03 8636 4444 and we will take your inquiry over the phone.
We will ask you a series of questions. These are to help us:
- clarify the nature of your problem (eg. whether it is a legal issue);
- consider whether a referral can be made; and
- in the event a referral cannot be made, where possible, identify any other referral options.
If we think you are eligible for assistance, we will send your community organisation an Application Form to complete and return to us. When we receive the completed form our in-house lawyers will assess if your organisation (and the legal matter) is within the guidelines of the legal assistance scheme. If it is, we will invite one of our member law firms to take up your case.