The NSW Young Lawyers Human Rights Committee, a branch under the NSW Young Lawyers segment of the Law Society of NSW, has been named a joint winner of the 2020 Australian Young Lawyer Organisation Award.
The NSW Young Lawyers committee received the award from the Law Council of Australia for its program “Addressing Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces”, which included awareness events and active bystander training throughout 2020, teaching young lawyers to identify and intervene to address sexual harassment in the workplace.
“NSW Young Lawyers and the Human Rights Committee hopes to continue raising awareness and training the profession to remove sexual harassment from legal workplaces and create a culture in legal workplaces where sexual harassment is not tolerated, and complainants are supported to come forward and report,” the committee told the Law Council of Australia after accepting the award. “We look forward to running active bystander training again next year [2021].”
Fellow joint-winner, the Law Institute of Victoria’s Young Lawyers, was chosen for its program “Physically Distant, Professionally Close: How to thrive in a virtual world”, launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.