Monique Hitter on 25 years at Legal Aid NSW

The first time Monique Hitter worked at Legal Aid, it was a maternity leave cover at their Coffs Harbour office. It was 1989, and Hitter worked at the Australian Human Rights Commission in Sydney, but Legal Aid was always a goal she had in mind. “Legal Aid was always the place that you want to work as a social justice lawyer,” she tells LSJ Online. “[It] was the place I had always aspired to try to get a job at.” So, when the opportunity arose, Hitter knew she couldn’t let it pass, even if it meant moving to a different city for 12 months. 

Hitter’s career has always been ingrained in social justice. “Because of my family’s history, there was a sense of the need for there to be social justice in the world, and the need for the world to be fair, for everybody to live a life,” she says. The daughter of a migrant and a refugee, she grew up listening to their stories, particularly her father’s, and the injustices he and his family had to endure from a young age, which instilled in her a sensitivity towards. “This sense of fairness and justice somehow got inside me, and I felt … that I wanted to work in a … way that [somehow] contributed to fairness in the world.” Hitter had earlier been a social worker but quickly realised that the tools given to her to effect systemic change were very limited. With the law, “you can redress the injustice that happened to [a] person by using the law as either a sword or a shield,” she explains. “I was really attracted to the very practical application of law and the more concrete nature of it.” 

Hitter was drawn to the policy and law reform aspects of working in social justice, and Legal Aid was where all these elements converged. “The law reform and policy work that we do here is absolutely exceptional,” she proudly shares. “We take the stories and experiences of our clients and our frontline lawyers, and we put it into law reform and policy submissions.” 

Her career had found a goal. After the brief stint in Coffs Harbour, Hitter returned to Sydney and even worked in a private law firm as a pro-bono lawyer, until another chance to join Legal Aid came up. She’s been there ever since. A career spanning a quarter of a century, where Hitter climbed through the ranks until 2022, when she replaced Brendan Thomas as the Chief Executive Officer.  

In these 25 years, Hitter has seen how much the organisation has changed. She warns that demand for its services has never been this high, requiring constant reassessment of priorities. “We’ve targeted our services to those who are most in need of them, across all three areas of law,” she explains. “So, we’ve worked on the way in which we target and triage requests for assistance, and we’re just really careful on how we allocate resources.” 

Cost-of-living pressures have affected everything from housing to income and refugee support. But Hitter has also noticed increased demand in other areas. “In the care and protection jurisdiction and in criminal law, the increase in volume of people going through the courts has been massive,” she says. “Whenever there is a change in one part of the justice system, it inevitably impacts downstream. 

“It’s important to see the justice system as an ecosystem. You change one part, it’s going to impact on another, and we are seeing those downstream impacts across all three areas of law.” 

Hitter explains how Legal Aid acts as a safety net. Every person dealing with the justice system who has no other recourse can rely on the support of Legal Aid’s lawyers and private practitioners who help the organisation (Hitter reveals that’s nearly 2000 law practices in NSW). “We’re so grateful for the work [private practitioners] do for Legal Aid,” she says. “Because we understand the challenges that they face with the amount of fees that we can offer them to do the work, but they do it. 

“Without the private practitioners, we cannot cover the entire state the way we do.” 

Hitter describes the solicitors at Legal Aid as “the best in the business doing this work across all areas of law”, along with the other practitioners who offer their time to support the organisation. But the increase in demand can put extra strain on its tight ecosystem. And yet, Hitter doesn’t think this is a Sisyphean task. “Purpose has no finish line”, she explains. “We just keep working towards our purpose, which is to provide legal services to the most disadvantaged so they can access fair and just outcomes. 

“That’s our purpose. I don’t think that you ever achieve that purpose, you just keep moving towards it more and more.” 

Resources fluctuate depending on necessities and the state of the economy. Hitter explains how this is cyclical, sometimes resources and funding are plentiful, sometimes they’re not, but they adapt to the circumstances by supporting staff and being methodical in assigning their assets. 

One area where Hitter believes targeted reform would be beneficial is family and domestic violence. Legal Aid is present at many levels, from representing defendants to supporting victims and aiding children. 80 per cent of Legal Aid’s family law work involves domestic and family violence. “We have a family system that is really buckling and breaking, and at the end of the day, we have to try to find a way of operating so that domestic and family violence isn’t something that happens to people,” she explains. “This is an era where we’ve all got to put our shoulder to the wheel and push that ball up the hill.”

“I love this place,” Hitter remarks. “It’s going to be hard to leave when the time comes.” She doesn’t know when that will be, but after 25 years it has made an impact on her. “It’s been family and it’s been home. 

“I don’t think of it so much as an accomplishment [but] as being part of an incredible journey and part of a team that has been amazing. So, it’ll be hard to hang the boots up when the time comes.” But that’s a chapter for another day.