Pro Bono

We are involved in a range of community activities in Australia and overseas.

The firm has funded the establishment of kindergartens in poor areas of Indonesia, a speech pathology program at Plunkett Street Public School and we were the major supporter of Chilout a not for profit organisation working to end the detention of children in Australian immigration detention facilities.

The firm’s other pro bono activities include:

  • Child Unlimited

  • Bangarra Dance Theatre Australia

  • Bravery Trust (Australian Defence Force Assistance Trust)

  • Cento Amici

  • Cancer Council Australia

  • David Clarke Memorial Scholarship

  • Performance Space 122, New York

  • Riseforruby.com

  • Sydney Theatre Company

  • The Surfing Heritage Foundation

Behrouz Boochani is now one of Australia’s most awarded writers. In August, 2019 the Kurdish-Iranian journalist’s book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison won the  $25,000 National Biography Award, the nation’s richest prize for biographical writing, from the State Library of NSW.

“The judges praised Boochani’s No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (Picador Australia) for its poetic and epic writing, calling the book “profoundly important, an astonishing act of witness and testament to the lifesaving power of writing as resistance. No Friend But the Mountains describes life on Manus Island where Kurdish refugee Behrouz Boochani has been held for more than six years, recounting the shocking tiny details of cruelty, degradation, humiliation and constant surveillance.’

The book has also won the Victorian Premier’s Literary award, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary award and the Australian Book Industry’s non-fiction book of the year.

As Myriam Robin wrote in The Australian Financial Review Manus Island  “ the fact is that it nearly didn't get published. Quite aside from the difficulties of producing such a work in such an environment, when Boochani finally completed it, further funds were needed to translate the thing from the original Kurdish. Pan Macmillan publisher Geordie Williamson agreed to go halves with a private donor, allowing University of Sydney academic Dr Omid Tofighian to take leave from his day job to get it done. Who was this donor? Spinner (and Australian motoring columnist) John Connolly.