Sydney’s legal sector walks for justice
On National Pro Bono Day, almost 200 members of Sydney’s legal community gathered for the Walk for Justice 2025, to celebrate the positive impact that legal pro bono work has on social justice in Australia. Twenty organisations were represented at this year’s event, with most walkers donning company t-shirts or caps.
Run by the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, the Walk for Justice NSW 2025 invites law firms, legal practitioners and supporters of social justice to walk together in Sydney’s CBD in celebration of the hundreds of thousands of pro bono hours provided by the Australian legal sector every year.
The Walk for Justice is an annual, global legal sector initiative. In Australia, Walks take place in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia, generally happening on or around the Tuesday of Law Week, which is National Pro Bono Day.
The Sydney walk was run for many years until 2015 by PILCH (now Justice Connect). In 2021, our friends at the National Justice Project (NJP) took up the mantle, organising a “virtual” Walk due to COVID-19 restrictions. From 2022 to 2024, the NSW Walk for Justice was jointly organised by NJP and RACS.
2025 is the first year that RACS has been the sole coordinator of the event.
Despite a week of wet weather, National Pro Bono Day 2025 remained dry for walkers, who met at noon on Tuesday 20 May, at Queens Square, Sydney near the Supreme Court of NSW building. After Uncle Allen Madden welcomed walkers to Gadigal Country, RACS Centre Director & Principal Solicitor Sarah Dale shared a few words on the importance of pro bono legal work.
“It’s a day to celebrate what is a wonderful tradition of the legal profession,” she said. “Pro bono is something we should rightly be proud of.
“Wherever you are dedicating your pro bono hours – for refugees, for Indigenous communities, for the environment, for the rights of the underserved – we celebrate your contribution to a kinder, more compassionate Australia,” said Ms Dale.
The Refugee Advice & Casework Service, which provides free legal advice, assistance and representation to refugees, people seeking asylum, the stateless and displaced, was supported by more than 12,000 pro bono hours of work in 2024, worth over $5.7 million. These hours of legal work were kindly donated by generous law firms who are passionate about justice for people escaping persecution and seeking safety.
Participants walked together through Hyde Park and down Macquarie Street, passing the NSW Parliament House before returning to the starting point.
Here’s what some participants had to say about the Walk for Justice:
“This event unites the legal community in support of an important cause – ensuring people have access to legal representation when they need it most.”
“As a firm, we reflected on the increasing need for critical legal help driven by global and domestic conditions, and our ongoing commitment to using our professional skills to respond to this need and promote equality of justice.”
The Walk is “a meaningful way to action our firm’s commitment to pro bono work and to advancing access to justice in the communities we operate within.”
“The Walk for Justice and Legal Walk is a show of support from the legal community for the important work that many community legal centres and clearinghouses undertake in providing frontline legal advice to the community, and triaging cases for people in need.”
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Nationally, approximately 2,780 people participated in Walks for Justice in 2025, raising almost $500,000 for access to justice.
