Local services, programs and agencies
29 April 2020

Free phone legal help during COVID-19

Whilst our physical office is closed, Inner Melbourne Community Legal is continuing to provide free legal help over the phone to people experiencing hardship who live, work, study or are connected to services in the inner-city area.

This includes:
  • people on low income who live, work or study in the CBD, Docklands, North Melbourne, Carlton, Parkville, or West Melbourne
  • people who are connected to local community services like schools, family services and homelessness organisations
  • patients at our partner hospitals - the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Royal Women's Hospital and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
  • parties to intervention order proceedings in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court
To speak to our administrative staff, call 9328 1885.

Community organisations are instrumental in getting legal services to those in need


We have set up the following direct mobile numbers to our lawyers in order to facilitate referrals and encourage you to get in touch:

In these times of rapid change we are attempting to assist however we can

We are open to receiving enquiries on a broad range of legal areas, and if we can't help directly, we'll try to find who can.

We can help with the following legal problems, and provide information in additional areas as required:

  • family violence
  • personal safety
  • employment
  • debt/financial counselling
  • family law, including parenting
  • housing problems, like evictions and other problems with landlords
  • child protection
  • fines
  • criminal law
  • social security
  • victim of crime

In particular, we know that this crisis is likely to increase the incidence of family violence. Our lawyers can provide legal advice to both victim survivors and respondents to intervention order applications. It is important to get independent legal advice and we encourage all service providers to let people know that we can provide free, confidential phone help prior to court hearings.

We are also working with other organisations to advocate for systemic change on critical issues such as rental evictions, family violence and fines.

You can stay updated on our services and advocacy during the pandemic here:

https://imcl.org.au/news/organisation-updates/covid-19-update