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A lawyer is a per­son who can help peo­ple with legal prob­lems. Lawyers can explain the law to peo­ple, and talk for peo­ple in Court.

A client is the per­son who is get­ting help from a lawyer. A client can tell the lawyer what they want the lawyer to do. This is called​‘giv­ing instructions’.

KWILS lawyers have a duty of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. This means that the infor­ma­tion you share with us remains pri­vate unless you give us per­mis­sion to share it or we have to share it by law.

A con­flict of inter­est is when a law prac­tice, like KWILS, can­not rep­re­sent dif­fer­ent peo­ple in a court case. This is because we owe a duty of loy­al­ty to clients to act in their best inter­ests. KWILS can­not do this if we have rep­re­sent­ed anoth­er per­son involved in your legal prob­lem. For exam­ple, if we have rep­re­sent­ed your aun­ty in apply­ing for a Domes­tic Vio­lence Order (DVO) against your­self, we can­not then rep­re­sent you in apply­ing for a DVO against your aun­ty. We already have rep­re­sent­ed your aun­ty, and there­fore can­not rep­re­sent you.

When you come to KWILS and ask for help, one of the first things we do is to check for a​‘con­flict of inter­est’. This means check­ing your name in the com­put­er sys­tem, and if we rep­re­sent some­body you have had con­flict with.

An oath and affir­ma­tion is a promise to tell the truth. When a wit­ness tells a sto­ry in court, they must promise to tell the truth. An oath is when the wit­ness makes this promise to God by putting their hand on a bible. An affir­ma­tion is when the per­son says the promise to the Judge.

A wit­ness is a per­son who sees or hears some­thing that will help the Court decide the facts of a case. The police will some­times ask for a wit­ness statement.

A wit­ness state­ment is a sto­ry that tells a wit­ness’ sto­ry about what they saw or heard. The wit­ness will write out and sign the paper. By sign­ing the paper, they are promis­ing that the wit­ness state­ment is true. 

A vic­tim impact state­ment is a sto­ry writ­ten on paper by a vic­tim for the Court to read about a crime that some­body has com­mit­ted to them. The vic­tim impact state­ment is the vic­tim’s sto­ry and explains how the crime has hurt the vic­tim, how it made them feel and what has hap­pened since the crime occurred.

The vic­tim will often have the help of police, wit­ness assis­tance, or a lawyer to help write out this story. 

An affi­davit a sto­ry that is writ­ten down on paper by a wit­ness for the Judge to read. When the wit­ness signs the paper, this means that the wit­ness is promis­ing the court that the sto­ry is true. 

A Bailiff is a per­son who has the legal pow­er to​give, or​‘serve’, legal doc­u­ments, war­rants, and arrests to people.

A court men­tion is a date for all the peo­ple involved in the legal issue to go to court to talk with the Judge what is hap­pen­ing with the court case.

If a court case is adjourned, the Judge has not yet made a final deci­sion, and the court case is put off to a lat­er date.

If an order is var­ied, it means that the rules of the order have been changed. 

If an order is revoked, it means the order is tak­en back or stopped. 

A breach is when some­one does not fol­low the rules of an order. A per­son who breach­es an order may be pun­ished in court.