ERA Advocate for Hire
For eighteen months now, I have been inside a process that is built to make sense to lawyers and almost nobody else. DIA had a legal team and the budget behind it. I had to learn how that process actually works, the Employment Relations Authority, the Employment Court, all of it, while navigating a broken system. It cost me financially and cognitively, on top of the psychosocial harm I was already carrying from the bullying.
I am registering as an employment relations advocate, so other people do not have to learn it the way I had to.
Some of you may already know that an employment relations advocate does not need to be a lawyer in New Zealand. For those who do not, here is how it works. You can be represented at the Employment Relations Authority or at mediation by anyone you authorise in writing, a union, a lawyer, a family member, an advocate.
As readers of this series will already know, Allan Halse is my advocate. While we were thinking through the next steps in my own case, he suggested I use my skills to help other people who cannot afford a lawyer.
People have written to me since I started this series, about their own situations, asking what they should do. I wish I could help every one of them on a no win no fee basis. DIA's termination of my employment makes that impossible for now, so this is paid work.
My services include preparing people for mediation, putting together the paperwork an ERA filing actually needs, representing people in mediation itself, and representing people at ERA hearings. Employment lawyers in New Zealand generally charge somewhere between 250 and 600 dollars an hour, most of them landing around 300 to 450. Mine sits at roughly a third of that.
I am also building fixed price packages for people who want to know the full cost before they start. Every one of them comes with the same standard, properly prepared material, and updates when I say I will give them. There is also a special discount waiting for the first five people who retain me.
Use the contact form on this website or email contact.voicesatworknz@gmail.com. I will respond within 24 hours.
