Law School: Events

Digital vulnerability: Vulnerable individuals and remote access technologies in justice
2026-05-31 22:43 (Australia/Sydney)
2023 Criminal Law CPD Series:
Digital vulnerability: Vulnerable individuals and remote access technologies in justice
Ethics & professional responsibility
Professional skills
Practice Management
CPD Points: 1.5
About
This seminar will focus on the use of remote access technologies, such as audiovisual links, when working with vulnerable individuals in the justice system, and the developing concept of â€˜digital vulnerability’. The seminar will draw on Dr McKay’s current Australian Research Council (â€˜ARC’) funded research and examine the multiple layers of vulnerability that individuals may experience while involved in legal matters. It will present preliminary findings from initial fieldwork interviews with lawyers and judicial officers that reveal critical perspectives on the impacts of digitalisation on vulnerable people in the justice system. While the research project and findings centre on the criminal justice system, many of the issues are equally relevant to legal practitioners working with vulnerable people in civil matters.
Presenter
Dr Carolyn McKay is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney Law School where she teaches Criminal Law, Civil & Criminal Procedure and Digital Criminology. She is CoDirector of the Sydney Institute of Criminology.
Carolyn is recognised for her research into technologies in justice, specifically her empirical research into prisoners’ experiences of accessing justice from a custodial situation by audio visual links, published in her monograph,The Pixelated Prisoner: Prison video links, court â€˜appearance’ and the justice matrix (2018)Â Routledge. During the period July 2021 – June 2024, Carolyn will undertake her ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) ‘The Digital Criminal Justice Project: Vulnerability and the Digital Subject’.
Carolyn serves on the NSW Bar Association Innovation & Technology Committee and served on the 2019 NSW Law Society Legal Technologies Committee. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford 2019 and for 3 months at the OÃ±ati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Spain 2013-14. Carolyn has previously consulted on anti-dumping trade disputes and indirect taxation, working in both Sydney and Tokyo, and she also has a digital media/visual arts practice.

This webinar will be released on Thursday 29 June, 2023.
Find out more about the series.

Vulnerable witness advocacy
2026-05-31 22:43
2023-24 Criminal Law CPD Series:
Vulnerable witness advocacy
Professional skills
Ethics & professional responsibility
CPD Points: 1.5
About
This seminar will discuss the definition of a vulnerable witness in theÂ Criminal Procedure ActÂ 1986Â (NSW) and the provisions in the Act that allow for the use of pre-recorded evidence and provide for other alternative means of giving evidence. The seminar will particularly consider the way a complainant’s evidence is adduced in the Child Sexual Assault Program operating in some NSW courts. There will also be some discussion ofÂ Evidence ActÂ 1995Â (NSW) provisions that may be relevant to the evidence of a vulnerable witness. Finally, the seminar will cover relevant provisions of theÂ Equality before the Law Bench BookÂ and some findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Presenter
Philip Hogan is a Deputy Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (NSW) (â€˜ODPP’). He was appointed to this office in 2018, having served as a Crown Prosecutor since 2010. Before that, Philip spent 13 years at the NSW Bar, practising from Samuel Griffiths Chambers. He appears regularly in serious criminal proceedings in the Supreme Court of NSW and the District Court of NSW.

This webinar will be released on Thursday 25 May, 2023.
Find out more about the series.
