A coffee van is parked outside a school in Mernda, in Melbourne’s North.
“Free Coffee and Free Legal Advice,” reads the blackboard on the van.
“Can I please have a soy latte and by the way, what do you mean by free legal advice?,” asks a woman in her 30s.
Expresso Legal is an initiative of the not-for-profit Whittlesea Community Connections and funded by the Victoria Law Foundation. It is a coffee van with a twist.
The van’s coffee-makers are actually community lawyers, with some barista training. They visit new developments and isolated communities on the fringes of the City of Whittlesea where there are few free community services.
“About 3,057 incidents of family violence were reported to police over April 2016 to March 2017 and 38 per cent had children present,” Chris Howse, Principal Solicitor for the Whittlesea Community Legal Service told SBS Greek.
“Whittlesea has one of the highest rates of family violence incidents in Melbourne’s North Western Metro. The situation is grave and it demands help.”
The City of Whittlesea is one of the fastest growing and most multicultural council zones in Australia, with 44 per cent of residents speaking a language other than English at home.
Residents come from a wide range of backgrounds with a high percentage born in other countries, particularly India, Macedonia, Greece, Italy. The municipality also has the fourth largest Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population in Victoria.
Howse says that the legal system can be daunting when someone in a vulnerable position is in need of legal help or advice. He hopes that services such as this van can make the legal experience easier for those who need it.
“Our common law system is more than one thousand years old. Henry II came up with the idea to bring the law to the people. I know no-one who has combined legal help with coffee,” said Howse, who is also a legal historian.
Expresso Legal makes sure it’s accessible to the community not just through the free service itself, but by where it turns up. The van can often be seen at markets, schools, libraries and other common congregation spots in the area.
“Since Expresso Legal was launched people from a variety of backgrounds have approached us,” said Howse. “Mostly women from the Middle East who have recently settled in the area as well as women from well-established communities like Greek, Macedonian and Italian.”
Moses Florendo, a Whittlesea Legal Service community lawyer and a Filipino migrant himself, says it’s important for new migrants to know their rights.
“They are the ones who are at risk of being more easily manipulated or abused due to the fact that often, they are not aware of their rights and responsibilities,” says Florendo.
