Should I Resign If I’m Suffering from Workplace Bullying?

Should I Resign If I’m Suffering from Workplace Bullying

In short, no, you should never be forced to resign because of workplace bullying, discrimination or any other form of harassment. However, every situation is different, and you should always do what’s best for your physical and emotional health and wellbeing.

In order to help you make the correct decision, we’ve worked through some of the complexities of workplace bullying in the following article. Note, however, that this is a very complex subject, which means that we certainly haven’t covered everything in detail.

Similarly, remember to seek professional help if you’re suffering from poor mental or physical health as a result of bullying.

What Is Workplace Bullying?

In general, there’s actually no clear definition of what constitutes workplace bullying. However, it’s very easy to develop a logical definition. Bullying can be thought of as:

“Any actions or behaviour, intentional or not, that is offensive, malicious, insulting or intimidating, along with abuses of power designed to humiliate, injure or undermine the victim”.

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How To Prepare For Your First Meeting With Your Divorce Lawyer

How To Prepare For Your First Meeting With Your Divorce Lawyer

Going through a divorce can be a highly emotional and stressful experience; however, you can reduce the angst in several ways. One of those is hiring an experienced and accomplished family lawyer, more specifically a divorce lawyer and helping them as much as you can to make the best possible case they can for you throughout the negotiations and at court if the need arises.

Now, it is unlikely that you will have kept a divorce lawyer ‘on hold’ as it were and paid them a retainer just in case your marriage ever went awry…at least we hope you didn’t. It can seem like a cynical world sometimes, so we assume you wanted your marriage to work by having a divorce lawyer on standby rather than expecting it would not.

Once you hire a divorce lawyer, one of the most important meetings you will have with them is the first one. This is important for several reasons, but one that is key is that it will confirm, or not, that you are comfortable discussing your marriage and other aspects of your personal life with this particular divorce lawyer.

Depending on how amicable or not the split is, or how likely or not a negotiated settlement might be, there is always the possibility that the divorce will end up in court. If it does, your ex-partner’s lawyer will quite rightly do all they can to make their case, and that could involve bringing up elements of your personal life that you might find uncomfortable.

For this reason, your lawyer needs to know as much about you, your ex-partner, and your marriage as possible so that they counter anything your ex’s lawyer tries to use against you. That is why you have to be completely open and trusting of your lawyer, and so the first meeting is hopefully where that trust begins.

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Crime of Burglary and The Penalties For Committing It

Crime of Burglary and The Penalties For Committing It

Many people are under the belief that burglary is a relatively simple crime to define and thereafter assume that all convicted burglars go to prison, but as any criminal lawyer will confirm, that is simply not how the law relating to burglary operates.

For a start, the definition of burglary is likely to come as a surprise to most people who have the misconception that burglary is simply someone breaking into a house and stealing something from it. That is far too simplistic a definition, and in reality, someone can be convicted of burglary, even if no items have been removed from the property.

If we focus on the definition as written in the law, the offence of burglary occurs when someone enters another person’s property, without their permission, and either commits a crime or is there with the intention to commit a crime.

This covers the act of entering with the intention of stealing property, but not actually doing so, with the obvious example being that they are discovered or caught before they had the chance to actually steal anything.

In order for someone to be convicted of burglary, the police must prove that they did so, and there are specifics which the law says must be proven. The most obvious one is that the accused had entered a property that belonged to someone else. The police must also show at the trial that the accused had no permission to be there, and in return your trial lawyers will defend you.

Depending on whether or not an offence took place, or the intention was there, the police must prove whichever was the case. So, they need evidence of the crime or they need to show that by their actions, or from other evidence such as tools or equipment, that the accused had an intention to commit a crime.

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Family Reports – What They Are And How They Are Produced

Family Reports

In any divorce where the couple has children, there will a number of procedures and processes which require advice from their respective family lawyers. Thankfully, in many cases, with the help of their lawyers, couples are able to agree on all the aspects relating to their children after the divorce, including visitation and support.

Unfortunately, not every divorce ends amicably, and where there is disagreement with regards to the children, a family report is likely to be ordered by the court.

The court will determine that by doing so, the information produced in the report will help it to better consider what is in the children’s best interests when it comes to making significant decisions regarding them. It should be noted that the costs of a family report are met by the court, and not the couple who are getting divorced.

Producing a family report is the responsibility of a family consultant. This will be someone whom the court regards as having sufficient knowledge and experience to make the family report viable. Examples of people who might be designated as a family consultant include child psychologists and social workers.

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Criminal Justice Reform in 2018 – What’s Happening

Criminal Justice Reform

Our headlines seem filled with stories about crimes throughout the country.  If the number of criminal lawyers is any indication it might seem like the overall incidence of crime was on the rise.  However, a careful look at the data shows that the overall rate of crime has remained constant in this generation and it is the rate and total population of incarcerated individuals that has increased – mainly due to stricter sentencing guidelines and changes to laws, such as prostitution in Australia.

If the goal is to scale back incarceration several important areas of the justice system need to be addressed.  Here are some examples:

Sentencing

Some state legislatures have examined their probation systems and begun offering probation to third time non-violent offenders.  They have also offered the same in the case of first-time, low-level violent offenses such as a simple battery.  Other areas have reformed their laws to expand probation eligibility, reclassifying low-level felonies as misdemeanors, streamlining the parole review mechanism, and limiting admissions for technical violations.

Fixing The Race Issue

It is no surprise that there is a wide disparity in the racial representation among prison populations.  In some areas legislatures have adopted new procedures called “racial impact statements”.  These are studies that show how particular sentencing guidelines may have a disproportionate impact on one race over another, or one segment of society more than another.  Some proposed laws require the legislature to show good cause why they enacted any law that disproportionately affects one race more than another.  In another case, an oversight board monitors and implements practices to rectify structural race issues in the justice system.

Raising the Age

In many locales, children as young as 16 are prosecuted as adults.  Many jurisdictions are now re-thinking these rules, with some passing legislation raising the juvenile jurisdiction age limit to 18 for non-violent crimes.

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Six Modern Divorce Ideas That Might Blow Your Mind

Modern Divorce Ideas

In the last few years a huge number of celebrity divorces have uncovered some new and emerging trends for couples who’ve chosen to “consciously uncouple”.  Some are obviously too far are out there to merit serious attention, but other are available using family lawyers and worth your consideration.  Here are a few ideas you might try out if you’re headed for the big “D”.

Bird-Nesting

This might sound strange in the area of divorce but what the term refers to is the situation where children of divorce continue to live in the family home and the parents rotate in and out as they have visitation.  Typically, the parent not currently living in the home will stay at a nearby apartment with a relative or a roommate.  As their turn arrives they take over in the family home and the other parent switches to the apartment.

This approach offers a variety of benefits.  First, it allows for a gradual transition into a two household life with parents living separately.  It provides less interruption for the children since they are not shuttling between different locations.  As mom and dad start to pursue their own independent lives again bird-nesting provides a ‘softer landing’ and more gradual transition for the entire family.

Divorce Doulas

What is a Doula?  The traditional definition of doula is a woman who provides support and assistance during childbirth. A “Divorce Doula” might be accurately described as a “divorce coach”.  These professionals offer a wide variety of much needed services for individual who are divorcing, from personal emotional support to help finding an appropriate lawyer, seeking financial advice, or just being a shoulder to cry on.

For a list of the best local lawyers for you, check out Lawyers List!

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Getting Started With Online Marketing For Your Law Firm

Online Marketing

If you are a law firm that isn’t using online marketing, you will miss out on many clients. It doesn’t matter how many lawyers you employ or how large your firm is; you need to use at least some online marketing!

However, it can be difficult to get started if you have never used online marketing streams before. There are a whole range of different marketing streams that you can use, whether you’re a firm of criminal or commercial lawyers, and it can be hard to know where to start.

Consider the following:

Start By Building A Social Media Presence

If you don’t already have profiles on at least a couple of different social media platforms, you need to get them. Social media marketing is one of the most effective forms of online marketing for law firms – both in terms of visitor numbers, exposure, and cost – and you need to build a strong social media presence.

Start with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Make sure that your social media profiles all lead back to your website. Start sharing engaging, interesting content which encourages a reaction from people. Invite people to follow you or like your page, and ensure you are always looking to optimise your firm’s exposure.

Make Sure Your Website Is Perfect

There’s absolutely no point in spending a lot of time and money on online marketing to send people to an outdated and poorly made website. If you haven’t done any maintenance on your site for a while, consider consulting an SEO expert or finding a webmaster who can go through and tweak things for you. Make sure that you have a modern layout, that your site is mobile responsive, and that you have no broken links or inconsistencies with your site.

Start Working On SEO

As a law firm, online marketing can get very expensive if you aren’t careful. One of the first things you should do is try and improve your search engine ranking through SEO or Search Engine Optimisation by a professional seo agency. Doing this will help you rank highly in the search engine search results for relevant keywords and can help drive organic traffic to your website. Note that SEO can take a lot of time and effort, so most people employ an experienced SEO consultant rather than trying to do things by themselves.

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