DIANNE COTTER: What do you love about law?

CATHERINE BROOKS: Two things. One, that you feel like you’re helping someone. It doesn’t matter if it’s an organisation or the owner of a business: you’re making a difference to what they do. The second is that you get to be creative—even though it’s not creative artistically, it’s creative in helping people solve problems, and that’s really rewarding. You could be drafting a black and white document that looks boring, however you’re actually creating a merger and acquisitions deal, assisting a philanthropist create something amazing or even helping a shareholder with a new start-up.

I would never have expected you to say creative! Where do you find purpose in your work?

Moores is all about contributing to social good. So our family lawyers work in helping victims escape domestic violence, our Estate planning team help private wealth individuals set up wealth distribution vehicles to benefit their family and charities. We represent for-profit, for-purpose organisations to help ensure they’re running sustainably. That’s hugely rewarding.

And what’s unusual for a law firm is that you have a pre-agreed approach with your pricing.

Yes. In July 2012, we completely got rid of the billable hour across the entire firm. David Wells, our managing principal, was a real leader in this. What Moores has done is very disruptive, in both the legal and accounting sectors. We communicate with our clients to determine the scope of work and agree on a price together relating to the value of that work.

Tell us about the Not-for-Profit Assist Legal Membership Service.

It’s about trying to share more of our intellectual property with the for-purpose sector. If someone signs up, they can call us at any time and access our lawyers who are experts in a range of legal areas. There’s no cap on the number of times an organisation can call or how long they can speak to us for. Our members also love our 30-minute response time.

What challenges do you face given people’s cynicism towards lawyers?

We do sometimes get pushback from clients asking, “Why do we have to involve lawyers?” It comes down to communicating that we do things differently.

We’re about building a relationship with our clients that is supportive. I explain to people I’m not a “normal” lawyer and that our approach is to offer strategic, practical, commercial guidance as well as legal advice.

Describe the world you want to live in.

I believe all children deserve access to education, and that there shouldn’t be a single homeless person in Australia. I want to live in a world where there’s greater social equity. I think the values of Moores really reflect that as well.