By Floyd Alexander Hunt -
Forgot to buy Christmas presents for your family this year? Rather than doing a last-minute dash to Myer, LSJ has just the solution for you. The festive season is all about being with your nearest and dearest, and what’s more dear (to your clients) than billable hours? This Christmas, LSJ recommends doing free legal work for your family.
Christmas day brings a host of dormant issues – from poisoning your guests with bad seafood, all the way to civil procedure (who gets to serve themselves first). To celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, here are 12 pro bono matters you can gift your family members on Christmas:
1. Nuisance: Help members of your extended family bring a nuisance suit against that one cousin who insists on pulling out the guitar and singing Mariah Carey, out of tune. “All I want for Christmas is … Tony to shut up”.
2. Negligence: Empower your siblings to sue your parents for negligence on two counts. First, for the gifts they forgot to buy you. Second, for the door they forgot to lock when you all walked in on them naked in 2003.
3. False imprisonment: Represent your partner when they become trapped in a conversation with your aunty, hearing about her “essential oils business”, against their will.
4. International arbitration: Act as an arbitrator when your relatives from different time zones try to get on the same WhatsApp call.
5. Tort: Set up your timers, because your first duty to your family (clients) is to check the drinks for snails … by drinking literally all the drinks. This may seem tenuous, but your mother-in-law did mention a live ‘SCOBY’ living in her Kombucha, so you owe the duty of care to all present.
6. Conflict resolution: Provide complimentary mediation between your two cousins over who spoiled the ending to White Lotus Season 2. Reach an agreement that the creators actually spoiled it.
7. Defamation: Advise your nephew of his rights in defamation law after his sister said that he was on the ‘naughty’ list this year.
8. Misleading and deceptive conduct: Clock up five 6-minute increments by addressing the misleading and deceptive conduct you undertook when you told your partner you’d only “stay at your family Christmas for two hours”. It’s been seven hours, and your mum is wearing the Santa beard as a hat now.
9 .Privacy: When your sister inevitably reveals the identity of Secret Santa, contemplate bringing a family class action in the lounge. While there is no absolute right to privacy in Australia there are protections in common law and under the Privacy Act. Your actions have consequences Lisa!
10. Intellectual property: Take on the large Christmas corporations for the unoriginal and recycled jokes in the Christmas crackers. Similarly, you’ve seen these hat designs before. Help your uncle sue Hallmark and Woolworths. Then take on Aldi for the batch of Chrissmass CreckersTM for breach of intellectual property. Any settlement should include free reign over the limited-edition Aldi catalogue items.
11. Administrative Law: Seek judicial review over the decision to collectively watch Love Actually for the seventh time. Contemplate substituting the decision for Elf or Die Hard 2.
12. Fraud: Finally, take on a suit for the little guy. Parents have been committing fraud for decades. Pretending to be Santa Claus, just so they could eat his cookies and Rudolph’s carrots? Sounds like a clear instance of fraud to me. Justice for Santa!
