Client engagement

By sharing your experiences and feedback you will help us better understand what is important to our clients and people with legal needs. We will use your information to improve our services and get better outcomes and experiences for our clients.

All client advisors are paid for their time sharing their experiences and ideas with us. We will pay you for travel and preparation time and we will discuss this with you for each time you are part of an activity. We will also pay parking costs if you need this. More information is available in the Client Engagement Handbook.

We invite client advisors to do a range of different activities from time to time. You are free to decide which of these you want to do.

• Focus groups: a small discussion group of usually 4-8 people that runs for up to 2 hours.
• One-on-one: a private conversation with an individual client advisor
• Testing: client advisors asked to give feedback on a specific project or survey – this can be done either as a group or online

Your personal details will be kept private and confidential. Details such as your name, address and legal issues are not needed for this purpose. You may choose to share these details in a focus group discussion, but we will not collect that information or use it in any reports or other documents. If you participate in an interview or do some testing, your personal details will be kept private and confidential. 

Nothing you say about your experiences – good or bad – will make any difference to your use of our services. Hearing about your experiences is the only way we can find our what is important to our clients and what you need. We are very grateful to you for helping us do better.

If you are considering sharing your experiences and feedback with us, we know that doing so might be challenging if those experiences have been hard. We want to make sure that this process is as comfortable as possible for you.

To help you prepare, below are some reflection questions you can consider to help you make an informed choice about what you share, how you share, and what you want to achieve by sharing with us. You do not need to share your reflections or answers with us, but we are happy to go through this with you or discuss certain parts if it would help. 

Readiness:

• What do I want to achieve by sharing my experiences? 
• What part of the process am I not sure of or uncomfortable with (if any)?  
• Am I able to say in my own words what I have agreed to do? 

Boundaries:

• What parts of my experiences do I want to share? What things don’t I want to share? 
• What words will I say to let others know that I don’t want to answer a question? 
• If I’m feeling uncomfortable, how can I let the facilitator know?

Support:

• Am I likely to have big emotions when sharing my experiences? Do I feel comfortable doing so? (You are more than welcome to have emotions – it’s a natural part of the story telling process).  
• If I share something difficult as part of my experiences, will I need support during or afterwards? What will this look like?  
• How do I feel my physical, social, cultural, or emotional safety and wellbeing are being supported in this process? Is there anything I can ask TLA to do to support me? 
• If I feel uncomfortable or something unexpected happens when I am sharing my experiences that distresses or upsets me, how will I communicate that to TLA? What steps will I need to take to feel supported? (For example, stopping the interview, taking a break, going outside, etc.)

Other people:

• Are there people in my life that I am likely to talk about? Will they be identifiable by the information I share? Do I need to discuss this with them? How am I considering those people’s right to privacy? 
• How will people in my life feel about and react to my decision to share my experiences with TLA? How might their reaction impact me? Are there any risks I should consider?