By Henry Ea -
Gambling harm rarely announces itself in a solicitor's office. It doesn't present as an issue – it hides within a family law dispute, a mounting debt situation, or an unexplained depletion of assets in an estate matter.
According to Alison Parkinson, Director of the Office of Responsible Gambling (ORG), that’s exactly why the legal profession has become one of the organisation’s key partners in tackling gambling harm across New South Wales.
“One in five people in New South Wales experience gambling harm,” Parkinson says, whether from their own gambling or that of someone close to them. “And if you look at people who are experiencing the kind of challenges that lawyers see every day, that’s going to be even higher.”
It’s a statistic that sits at the heart of a new CPD webinar running in partnership with the Law Society of NSW on 14 July, exploring how gambling harm intersects with legal practice, and what solicitors can do when they suspect it’s in the room.
A hidden factor in everyday legal work
Gambling harm, Parkinson explains, tends to surface as a “driver” rather than a disclosed issue. Someone seeking advice for relationship breakdown, insolvency, or a brush with the justice system may never mention gambling as the underlying cause, not because it isn’t relevant, but because shame keeps it hidden.
“There’s a lot of shame and stigma that goes with gambling,” Parkinson says. “People see it as a personal failing … they’re going to be reluctant to say why that is, or talk about what’s going on.”
That silence has real consequences. Missing gambling as an underlying factor, Parkinson says, means missing part of the picture.
“You’re missing a part of the case that could otherwise be building for your client,” she says. “You’re not potentially giving the best advice or helping someone have the best arrangements they could have in place financially … you’re not understanding the full picture or the full person.”
Not just the pokies
There’s one misconception Parkinson is keen to correct: gambling harm doesn’t only look like a trip to the casino. While poker machines remain the leading source of gambling harm in NSW, online betting is growing fast and is far less visible.
“It’s on their phone, it’s in their pocket,” she says. “It’s not very visible to the people around them, and it’s easy to lose a lot of money really quickly.”
That invisibility is part of why the legal sector matters so much to ORG’s strategy. Solicitors are often among the first professionals to see the downstream effects of gambling harm, including relationship breakdown, debt, and family conflict, without necessarily recognising the cause.
The purpose of the webinar
When asked about the purpose of the upcoming webinar, Parkinson is quick to clarify that the aim isn’t to turn solicitors into counsellors. “No one’s expecting a solicitor to suddenly become a counsellor or a therapist,” she says. Instead, the goal is confidence and capability: recognising the signs, feeling comfortable raising the topic, and being aware of ways to get people the support they might need.
“Knowing how to refer someone to the right service frees them up to carry on being an effective professional solicitor,” Parkinson says, while also improving the legal outcome itself, once the underlying issue is properly understood.
This webinar follows a series of similar partnerships ORG has built with members of other professions who regularly encounter clients experiencing gambling harm without realising it, including GPs and psychologists. The legal sector, Parkinson says, is a natural next step, given how often gambling-related stress shows up in family law, criminal law, insolvency and elder abuse matters.
The ripple effect on families
Gambling harm rarely stays contained to one person. Parkinson describes the flow-on effects of gambling harm typically seen among affected individuals and their loved ones: financial strain, secrecy, borrowing, and the erosion of trust.
“They might be experiencing all that stress and worry and feeling depressed about it, but not talking about it, because they might be hiding the gambling,” she says. The result can be debt, reduced savings, and a “whole layer of complexity and stress” in relationships, sometimes extending to a person’s ability to hold down a job.
Looking ahead, Parkinson has a clear picture of what a shift in the legal profession’s awareness would look like: solicitors reaching out to GambleAware’s (ORG’s public face and community-facing brand) free, confidential financial and gambling counselling services on behalf of clients, and clients who feel safe enough to disclose their gambling harm to their lawyer in the first place.
“We would hear from people experiencing gambling harm telling us that they got legal advice from a solicitor that understood … and was able to work with them and support them,” she says. “And [we’d hear] from solicitors telling us how they’ve been able to achieve better outcomes … because they’ve understood that the person they’re assisting … was being impacted by gambling.”
Why it matters for every practice area
Parkinson’s message to solicitors who might think this doesn’t apply to them is direct: the odds say otherwise.
“Whether they’re working in criminal law, family law, looking at elder abuse cases, doing financial matters, there’s a high probability every day, that person across their desk … is experiencing gambling harm,” she says.
“If they’re committed to achieving the best outcomes for their clients … they can’t do that without knowing when gambling harm’s occurring and knowing what to do about it.”
The Law Society of NSW webinar ‘Professional responsibilities for solicitors in matters involving gambling harm’ will be held on 14 July, featuring a discussion between Linden Barnes, Senior Ethics Solicitor, and Liz Wilson, GambleAware Financial Counsellor. Register here.
