Author: Derrick Tobias

If you get around town through the power of your own two feet, you might think you are safe from any type of traffic violations and subsequent crimes.

When there you are tasked with crossing an empty street, you might think that you are free to cross with not a care in the world, but the truth is quite different.

Even when no vehicles are on the road, if you are caught crossing the street at an undesignated area, you can find yourself on the receiving end of a nasty fine.

In recent years, police crackdowns on jaywalking in high-risk areas have seen thousands of Australian pedestrians receive fines up to $70 on the spot. The majority of fines have taken place in Sydney and Melbourne and the aim of the increased fines has been to try to reduce the occurrences of pedestrian deaths and injuries.

So what is and what is not considered a jaywalking pedestrian offense in Australia? Keep reading to find out.

Pedestrian deaths in Australia

If you think a fine is a bit drastic, you might want to learn a bit about the statistics related to pedestrian deaths in Australia.

Based on a study by the Government of South Australia, 1 in 7 road deaths from 2012 to 2016 involved a pedestrian.

In addition to fatalities during that span of time, there is an average of 68 pedestrians who are seriously injured and 241 pedestrians who received minor injures on South Australian roads.

In the following two years, pedestrian deaths increased all over the continent.

10 pedestrian deaths in 2017 in Victoria increased to 12 in 2018. 6 deaths in Queensland nearly doubled to 11. 17 deaths in 2017 in New South Wales grew to 29 in 2018.

From these numbers alone it is clear that increased regulations could certainly help to reduce the risk of pedestrian death and injury due to careless jaywalking.

The laws of jaywalking

In truth, there is not a specific jaywalking offence in Australian law. Instead, it is simply the most common term to describe a pedestrian offence that takes place when a pedestrian crosses a road illegally.

Pedestrian laws and related fines vary depending on the state or territory in which an offense takes place. Related fines also vary by council area.

Much like other jaywalking laws wherever they exist, the rules are typically not strictly enforced. That is especially true when compared to other traffic violations such as speeding fines and red light cameras.

More often than not, for a pedestrian to receive a traffic infraction, they will have to be seen clearly disregarding traffic laws and road rules as well as recklessly putting themselves or nearby drivers in danger.

What behavior can earn you a fine?

If you are regularly crossing the streets on your way to work, you may be wondering what type of behavior could earn you a costly fine.

Here are some of the most common causes:

• You cross the road by ignoring red or “stop” pedestrian lights
• Your cross the road diagonally where you are not permitted to do so by the traffic laws
• You cross the road on a green light
• You don’t use the striped crossing within 20 metres of your location
• You walk in the middle of a breakdown lane

If there are no pedestrian signs, lights, crossings, or signals where you are, it is your duty as a pedestrian to take the shortest and safest route to cross the road.

One thing to keep in mind is that it is actually not a legal offence to cross the road while using your phone, listening to music, or text on your phone when you are crossing the road unless it is possible for police to prove that you caused an accident or traffic hazard by doing so.

One nice thing if you do decide to take the risk and jaywalk is that there is no legal penalty for jaywalking.

In conclusion

In the end, it is important to remember that these rules are not only enforced to keep you safe, but to keep the drivers on the road safe as well.

It’s all about public safety and it’s important to remember that the next time you consider putting yourself or other drivers in danger by crossing the street.

So, the next time you are thinking about outrunning traffic and making a fast dash across the road, think about what your actions could cause to your own safety and you bank account!

If you are looking for love, whether or not a lawyer is the right match for you might depend on your preferences. The truth is, while all lawyers are different, they do tend to share some pretty strong characteristics that can either rub your the right or very wrong way.

Lawyers have to be smart, determined, and if they’re a trial lawyer they’ll also have to be silver-tongued to boot.

Sure, there are differences, but on the whole, here are some pros and cons to be aware of if you’re thinking about dating a lawyer.

The Pros

They’re determined and devoted

One of the great things about attorneys is that they are typically quite steadfast and quite loyal. Their profession requires them to be upfront and honest. They’re not known for sugarcoating things and they’re not known for playing games. They’re reliable partners.

They can be great at giving advice

Because lawyers are essentially trained to give legal advice, they can extend the same kind of analytical thinking to their private life. They’re able to pick up on minute details and can help you come to answers that you might otherwise not be aware of.

They have incredible wardrobes

This is a bit shallow, but hey everyone can be shallow everyone now and then. The truth is, attorneys have to drive to the nines when they are on the job and also have to present themselves well when in public. Thanks to that (and thanks to the nice paycheck that comes with a lot of legal professions), you can expect your lawyerly partner to always be dressed with the best.

The know how to compromise

A lot of times, a job of a lawyer is not to win outright in the court room, but to come to some kind of agreement of settlement before a case goes to court. They can use that skill set in their personal life as well, managing to come to a compromise in their personal relationships just like they do in their work.

They’re great at communicating

Part of the job is making speeches in front of large group – sometimes very powerful – people. They have to be able to argue points of views with people’s lives and money on the line.

That kind of skill could help pay huge dividends when you and your partner are working to come to a conclusion in your private lives.

They work hard

Simply to get accepted into law school requires years of incredibly hard work. After that, it’s no cake walk to be a successful, practicing lawyer either. It all takes work, and if you are with a lawyer, it won’t take long for you to learn just how hard they work.

They’re smart

This fact goes hand-in-hand with how hard lawyers work. If you find intelligence a total turn on, a lawyer is a great person to seek out. Members of the bar are some of the smartest people in the workforce.

They make a lot of money

Again, this one might seem a little shallow, but hey – money is important! No matter what you’re income is, if you end up with a lawyer, you can rest assured that they’ll be bringing home the bacon.

The Cons

No matter how great lawyers can be, it’s not all butterflies and rainbows. There are some definite cons of dating a lawyer as well. Here are some of the major negatives you’ll want to consider if you’re serious about shacking up with an attorney.

You’re going to need to match them when it comes to intelligence

Lawyers typically need to be matched when it comes to intelligence and wit when choosing partners. They want to be engaged and feel challenged at work and at home. In a romantic partnership, they can get bored of people who are unable to hold an intellectual or logical conversation.

They log incredibly long hours

Young aspiring partners in a law firm work mornings, days, evenings, nights, weekends, and everything in between. Once they’ve made partner, things tends to calm down a bit in terms of day-to-day tasks but they’re also expected to take on more of a leadership role and have more responsibility.

That means that they’ll be logging serious hours in the office. Even when they’re home, they often have to work before and after dinner to get their job done. To be successful, they will need your support and understanding to deliver the results that are expected of them and continue to deliver their clients the kind of high quality work that is expected of them.

They’re human lie detectors

Hopefully this isn’t an issue for you, but lawyers can see right through you and any lie they try to tell you. Knowing when a person is telling a lie is an industry skill and if you lie even once, you could risk breaking trust with your lawyer lover forever.

They may be overly analytical and risk averse

If you’re looking for a partner who will go sky diving with you or join in on swimming with sharks, you may want to look for a partner who is not an attorney. They ten to heavily analyze and dissect things. That might make them apprehensive to take risk or get involved in something that they aren’t able to full understand before taking part in.

They may take time to trust you

Lawyers tend to always be wary of a new person of their intents at first. In order to fully trust someone, they need sufficient grounds to be able to trust them. When getting involved in a lawyer, it is always wise to match them when it comes to honesty and being upfront. Not only will they feel more comfortable with you if you are totally honest, that kind of transparency is the best way to start a new relationship with anyone.

If you are dealing with some legal issues, you will very likely quickly find out that lawyers charge quite the hourly rate.

In fact, in Australia, the hourly rate in most urban areas is between $200 and $400. That’s no laughing matter!

Given that hefty fee, you may be wondering if a paralegal could take care of the tasks you need done.

So what are the differences between attorneys and paralegals?

Keep reading to find out!

The differences between paralegal vs lawyer

To put it simply, the biggest differences between paralegal versus lawyer is the education necessary and the licensing invovled. To be an attorney, one must attend and complete a Juris Doctor (JD) or Bachelor of Law (LLB). After that you have to complete practical legal training, gain admission to a legal practice, and earn your practising certificate.

On top of that, attorneys are required to undergo stringent morality examis, pay annual fees, participate in ongoing legal education requirements, abide by a strict ethical standard, and much more.

When it comes to paralegals, it is not as formalized and the process is far less strict.

The first step to becoming a paralegal is to undergo some form of formal education – in fact a lot of universities and even community colleges offer training in how to become a paralegal. It is becoming increasingly popular for employers to require paralegals to possess a four–year degree or bachelor’s degree.

Paralegals are essentially able to research and draft the majority of legal documents and often assist attorneys with the day-to-day operations of a law firm. That includes scheduling hearings, interacting with clients, and keeping case files and evidence in order.

While paralegals are not allow to offer legal advice to clients and cannot independently prepare legal documents that have not been approved by an attorney, they can get the ball rolling on getting you what you need to be on top of.

What is an independent paralegal?

When it comes to the question of paralegal vs lawyer, it is important to know that most paralegals work directly for lawyers. There are, however, independent paralegals that you can hire for a fraction of the price that lawyers charge hourly.

An independent paralegal, which is also often referred to as a freelance professional, is a non-attorney legal professional who can provide different types of legal document services to patrons for a fee without be under the supervision of an attorney.

While this can be all you need in some cases, it is important to know what these independent paralegals can and cannot do.

Since the paralegal is not working directly under an attorney, there are some strict limitations on what they are lawfully allowed to do.

For example, they are not able to practice law but they can help you with less demanding tasks that do not require a need for legal advice – as only lawyers can do that.

While providing legal advice is not against the law, it is important that a paralegal is careful when it comes to how their patron takes and utilizes the legal advice.

What services are they allowed to provide?

If you are interested in hiring a paralegal, you have to be very careful to be sure that a paralegal can actually benefit you.

In order for your need to qualify as something a paralegal can actually help you.

Essentially, in order for a paralegal to serve a purpose without the need of an attorney, you need to already know what you want when it comes to your legal matter and all you need for someone to locate, retrieve, and fill out the necessary legal forms.

Other proceedings that the paralegal may be able to help you with include matters such as estate planning, probate filings, powers of attorney, bankruptcy petitions, straightforward uncontested divorce forms.

Other tasks that paralegals can complete include:

• Case planning, development, and management
• Legal research, fact gathers and information retrieval
• Drafting correspondence
• Drafting pleasings, document responses and discoveries
• Contacting and conferencing clients
• Analyzing and summarizing documents
• Fact checking
• Preparing for and assisting at trial
• Locating and interviewing witnesses

Another thing to keep in mind is that if you want to hire a paralegal for any basic legal matters that you need but do not require advice in those matters, be sure that you choose the right person for the job.

According to the National Federation of Paralegal Association, consumers should choose a professional who has no less than a paralegal certificate when they want someone other than a lawyer to perform legal and law-related tasks. This certificate at least proves that the professional that you are interested in working with is both trained in and knowledgeable about the law and related procedures.

In short, the choice to hire a paralegal and forgo hiring an attorney can absolutely be a smart one as long as you know what you need them for and as long as you do the research ne cessary to succeed.

In a lot of cases, the amount of legal knowledge and legal defense you get will help you get the outcome you want no matter the dispute.

Unfortunately, legal advice can come with quite the price tag. That’w where the new chatbot Josef Legal comes in.

Josef Legal works by connecting lawyers with potential clients who have questions and concerns. It’s part of what makes the new age of technology so exciting for people across all industries.

Earlier this week, the BucketOrange legal blog sat down with Josef Legal co-founder Sam Flynn to talk about what this new chatbot brings to the legal table.

When asked how it works, Flynn was clear and concise.

“On our no-coding-required platform, legal organisations can build and launch their own chatbots without the need for expensive developers,” he said. “These chatbots can help people resolve a legal problem, including by preparing a personalised document for them (such as a letter or agreement). Because all of these interactions are automated, it allows legal organisations to provide their services at scale.”

Flynn and his partners came up with the idea for Josef Legal when they were asked to find a way to use new technology to increase access to those with justice issues. It wasn’t long before the solution to that problem became a chatbot that connects those with knowledge to those who need it.

How many Australians need legal assistance? According to research, nearly 9 million, but under half of them actually end up seeking legal counsel due to the price.

And it’s not just helpful for those in need of legal assistance. As Josef Legal’s site expresses, it’s an opportunity for lawyers as well.

“But legal technology doesn’t just empower us to bridge the access to justice gap, it is also an unprecedented opportunity for the legal industry to modernise,” it reads. “This allows lawyers to unlock value in untapped markets, streamline their organisations and prepare for a changing industry.

“That is why Josef works with a variety of teams across the US, Europe and Australia, including community legal centres, government, plaintiff and commercial firms and in-house legal teams.”

Overall though, Josef Legal is meant to help the clients first.

“Josef’s utility is to allow legal organisations to automate and scale legal services, streamline their organisations and connect with potential and current clients,” Flynn said.

“For community legal centres, this allows them to help as many people as possible, particularly in the face of a disconnect between increasing demand and decreasing funding. For law firms, this allows them to help more people while also letting them access a huge, unaddressed market, which in the US alone is valued at USD$50B.”

Basically, the more potential clients that lawyers can reach, the more help those who would have otherwise not reached out to lawyers are getting. It also allows firms to potentially charge less if they do begin working with clients they were paired with on Josef Legal because they are spending less time and money to find the clients they would like to represent.

As Flynn expressed, this chatbot has been made in the hopes that it will not only help those in need of legal counsel, but lawyers who are looking to bolster their client roster and tapped untapped markets as well.

So far, the response from those in the legal industry has been “extraordinary,” according to Flynn.

The early success of Josef Legal has surprised some, according to Flynn due to the fact that the legal industry is known to be an incredibly traditional one world wide. But it is impossible to deny ingenious innovation.

For Flynn and his partners, their success didn’t come as a shock. For them, the need for the legal industry to modernize and utilize technology the right way has been clear for years.

Thanks to their early success, those at Josef Legal are already looking towards their next steps.

“In the long-term, we want to change the way that legal services are provided to ensure that people get help whenever and wherever they need it,” Flynn said. “We want to get to the stage where people who have a legal problem seek legal assistance, just like people who have a health problem see a doctor.”

Perhaps the best aspect of the chatbot is that is is flexible based on the needs of the potential client and desires of the firm they’re put in contact with.

Not only can the counsel be free, as it was originally intended to be, there are also ways for firms to charge their clients, making it a multi-tiered and multi-functional chatbot.

It’s pretty incredible how technology has changed the way people work, but until now lawyers have behaved the same for years.

With the advent of companies like Josef Legal, it seems the legal profession is finally starting to catch up.

It will be fascinating where this and other tech-dependent legal companies go from here.

Sometimes in life you’re going to need a lawyer, but no matter why situation you’re dealing with, it’s never a bad idea to think like a lawyer.

Thinking like a lawyer comes down to a few things. Coming to conclusions thanks to reasoning as opposed to emotion, exercising cool logic, problem-solving skills, and precise analysis.

It’s something that many of us wish we could do. Whether we are having a heated exchange with a business partner, a spouse, a friend, or a colleague, it can be easy to let emotions take over. But that is not the way. If you’ve ever gotten in an emotional argument with a personal relation you know that things can quickly spiral out of control.

The truth is, it’s the kind of cold, calculated mental weaponry that can protect you from unhelpful, inflammatory emotions in an argument.

It might sound like an impossible task, but it really isn’t.

The ability to use legal reasoning in everyday life is not a skill reserved only to those who earn a law degree. Like learning a new skill or a new language, thinking like a lawyer is a technique that can be developed and learned with time.

A word of warning – it takes time, practice, patiences, and sometimes a willingness to sound a bit smug or pretentious. But if it takes getting what you want, it can all be quite worth it.

Here are some good ways to get started on your journey.

Become a smooth word operator

Lawyers are competitive people, they want to win, and sometimes winning an argument comes down to simply sounding smarter than the person on the other side. Sometimes, all that means is using big words and thinly veiled jabs.

This is a strategy used by many lawyers to gain an advantage when competing with colleagues and competitors.

Still, if you want to use the trial-lawyer technique of speaking with a silver tongue, you’re going to have to actually brush up on some grammar and vocabulary.

Look through the dictionary and thesaurus, spend time reading great works of fiction and non-fiction. These are great places to start and great ways to not only gain an upper-hand in conversation, but also become a smarter person.

Have a plan for every scenario

One of the biggest aspects of thinking like a lawyer is preparing for things that may or may not come to pass. If you know that a conversation or situation is on the horizon, it is your job to plan and predict the future. This means you will likely have to do risk assessments before making a big decision. You will have to consider all your options, all possible potentialities, and how your options might change depending on what does come to occur.

Like a game of checkers or chess, taking time to methodically plan out your potential future moves based on the moves your opponent is likely to take. The habit of thinking before acting is a smart thing to adopt in nearly all phases of life. It’s part of why lawyers have a reputation of being risk-averse and incredibly methodical.

While this can be quite a lot of hard work, the benefits are incredible. Thinking into the future and thinking about what may come to pass means that you will likely never be surprised by unforeseen negative outcomes of your decisions in personal or professional contexts.

Before taking a course of action, spend some time on your own or with your advisors considering what could potentially go right and what could go wrong.

If you come across something in a discussion that you did not expect, there is also nothing wrong with taking some personal time to yourself during the conversation. Think before you answer a question, and never feel as though you need to have all the answers immediately.

Problem solve and analyze it all

Analytical skills are at the core of the ways lawyers solve nearly all problems and issues.

Analytical thinking allows you to visualize, articulate, conceptualize, and solve simple and complex problems by making educated decisions and taking calculated risks based on available information.

It is equally important to try to not get bogged down in irrelevant details but focus on the most relevant and critical information. In thinking like a lawyer, you will look for the material facts and evidence to support your case. Then, look for a conclusion you can come to given the facts available to you and available to your opponents.

Keep it objective

This is one of the most important things to keep in mind when you are engaging in an oppositional situation.

Leave your emotions at the door, lawyers are masters at it, and you should be too. Submitting to your feelings leave you vulnerable to making mistakes, it clouds your judgement and prevents you from making the best decision in the circumstances.

The ability to tease the emotions out of every situating, including inflamed personal conflicts, is one of the many reasons why lawyers are often seen as non-feeling and robotic.

In the end, it is important to remember that lawyers have not been told some secret truth of the universe to get what they want. They’ve just been given a certain set of skills to get the upper hand in discussions and disagreements.

Using skills similar to the ones you have just read about can give you a similar upper hand. So, the next time you are facing a confrontational situation with a business partner, spouse, friend, or more, considering utilizing some of these methods to start thinking like a lawyer.

Good luck!