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John Longworth (BCom ’83, LLB ’84)
So much so that he was awarded the Combined Community Legal Centres Group New South Wales Award in the last round of Justice Awards for his volunteer work in KLC and other organisations. Along with colleague Sue Mordaunt, John (BCom’83, LLB’84) has the longest continuous service record at the Faculty’s community legal centre, Kingsford Legal Centre, 19 years in all. It takes a lot of inspiration and commitment to achieve a feat like that. “Once I became a regular volunteer. I realised that the staff lawyers were not simply selfless but, to this day, some of the brightest lawyers I have met,” John said. “This, combined with their dedication to providing a truly quality service - and on some of the slimmest resources you could imagine - inspired me.” And in the student volunteers, John admires their desire to help. “The fact that their exposure to this raw need still attracts rather than repels them, gives me hope.” The clients, who can get this help nowhere else, who have no resources, and have been oppressed and marginalised, are also a source of inspiration, he said. But to some extent, it’s perhaps the other volunteers themselves that give John the most drive to keep donating his time, knowledge and skills to community legal work. “People who don’t have to make the contribution they do provide a selfless example to us all,” he said. John is the proprietor of Dettmann and Dettmann in Chatswood, where he specialises in family law. He also finds the time to volunteer elsewhere as well – at the Chatswood Legal Advice Service, the Lower North Shore Domestic Violence Court Support Scheme, the Family Court of Australia and the College of Law. The Kingsford Legal Centre (KLC) nominated John for the award because of his long service at the Centre and his commitment to its dual aims: quality teaching of law students and service to the community, said the KLC’s Anna Cody. “John is patient, thorough and dedicated in his provision of legal advice, and clients get an excellent service when they are advised by him” she said. November 2003
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