• Location: Australia-wide
• Term: ongoing
• Job Type: Full-time 37.5 hours per week
• Remuneration: SCHADS Level 6.2 – 8.3 $111,500 - $145,925 + 11.5% super + 17.5% Annual Leave Loading
• Travel will be required at times to fulfill this role
• Peoples of Pasifik Island heritage/descent are particularly encouraged to apply, as well as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and people.
• Reporting to: Managing Lawyer – Pasifik Program

Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) is the leading environmental law practice in the Australia Pasifik Region delivering legal solutions for peoples, nature and our climate. Our vision is for a world where nature thrives. We are ambitious about the role we can play in delivering that vision and we have an incredible team across the country working to achieve it.

We are dedicated to protecting our climate, communities and shared environment by providing access to justice, running ground-breaking litigation and leading law reform advocacy. Over our 30-year combined history, we have developed a formidable track record of empowering communities and delivering effective protection of the environment through legal services.

Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have been taking care of their waters and lands throughout the Pasifik. These deep understandings, knowledges and experiences are critical to maintaining the health and vitality of the Pasifik’s unique wildlife and ecosystems. EDO respects these great knowledges and strongly believes that EDO cannot achieve a world where nature thrives without working alongside Indigenous peoples of the Pasifik.

EDO has established a Pasifik-led Program to support Pasifik partners on the ground in various Pasifik countries who provide legal and advocacy services to their communities wishing to protect their environment. The Pasifik Program is designed to ensure that EDO centres understanding of – and respect for – Indigenous perspectives in our work, through utilising its resources to provide legal, governance and administrative support to the Pasifik Partners.

As the region’s legal experts in our field, we aim to be a brave, unified, and focused team, committed to inclusion and excellence in all that we do. We strive to be a diverse and inclusive workplace supporting a highly skilled, engaged, and effective team, where everyone can feel that they belong.

We are recruiting for a Senior Solicitor/Special Counsel to join our Pasifik Program.

The opportunity:

This is an opportunity to use your legal skills to help deliver a world where nature thrives.

We seek an experienced litigator to work with our partners across the Pasifik to protect our climate, communities and shared environment by providing access to justice, running ground-breaking litigation, and leading law reform advocacy.

The Senior Solicitor/Special Counsel will provide legal assistance to partners in the Pasifik on legal issues surrounding environmental protection, indigenous rights, human rights and climate change in the Pacific. In this role you will think creatively about using the law to deliver systemic change, chiefly in relation to climate change.

The role will primarily involve working with high level of autonomy and self-direction to assist Partners as required – including assisting with Partners’ litigation, law reform and legal advice work - as well as to lead on any required media work, seminars, and EDO publications.

Our Pasifik Program embodies Pasifik values, providing pathways for Pasifika environmental lawyers and represents EDO’s regional presence in the wider Pasifik region through maintaining and developing long-standing and trusting relationships with government, partner organisations and local communities across the region and international organisations who share EDO’s vison of a world where nature thrives. The Pasifik Program is focused on working alongside Pasifik partners to uphold their efforts in the protection of nature in the Pasifik. The Program works to deliver key environmental protections via strengthening public interest environmental law in the Pasifik, delivering strategic legal interventions and ensuring local knowledges, custom/kastom and culture plays a central role.

To date the Program has focused on work in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu and has relationships across the entire region. Our work to date involves supporting our partners on the ground to run cases in local courts, use international mechanisms to assist domestic actions, analyse policy and law, support community outreach through advocacy, communications and story-telling about environmental issues and communities in the Pasifik.

To maximise our impact, our Program works closely and collaboratively with international donors, environmental lawyers, journalists, and human rights organisations and a Pasifik-network of organisations, communities and individuals.

Candidate Profile:

You will have an unrestricted practising certificate, and strong PAE working as a lawyer with demonstrated litigation experience – preferably in environmental matters. You will be passionate about helping lead EDO’s Pasifik Program alongside the Managing Lawyer and excel at working with a high level of autonomy within a collaborative team environment.

You think outside the box and want a chance to be creative about delivering systemic change in the fields of environmental protection, indigenous rights, human rights and climate change in the Pacific. You also enjoy supervising and mentoring legal staff, and seeing their expertise grow to benefit the team and our work.

EDO is a diverse and inclusive workplace. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, people of Pasifik Island heritage/descent and members of the Global Majority* are particularly encouraged to apply.

Key selection criteria:

Essential requirements

• An unrestricted practicing certificate or entitlement to one
• A minimum of 5 years PAE working as a solicitor with litigation experience

Substantive experience

• Demonstrated experience leading litigation in environmental, administrative and/or human rights or related disciplines
• Demonstrated experience in administrative and/or environmental law highly desirable
• Experience undertaking law reform or policy desirable
• Demonstrated experience in supervising, mentoring and contributing to the professional development of legal and non-legal staff
• Demonstrated experience working with diverse communities and individuals, including First Nations, desirable

Core skills

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to confidently exercise sound judgement and make decisions in high-pressure scenarios, based on consideration of different views
• Demonstrated ability to work productively autonomously, within a collaborative team environment, and to deadlines
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills suited to a range of audiences
• Excellent file management and delegation skills
• Ability to represent EDO in the media

Personal qualities and cultural competency

• A champion of the EDO values
• Strong initiative and self-motivation
• Commitment to the protection of the environment and related human rights
• Acts with the highest standards of ethical and professional behaviour and obligations
• Demonstrated awareness of, and sensitivity to, the needs and concerns of First Nations peoples and peoples from diverse cultures, backgrounds and orientations in both the delivery of our work and our internal culture
• Thrive in a collaborative team-based environment

Our Culture and Benefits:   

• We care deeply about creating a workplace where our team members feel valued, respected, and empowered. We are committed to providing equal opportunity regardless of gender identity, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or life stage. 
• The chance to be part of the largest environmental legal practice in the Australia-Pacific 
• A very flexible and family-friendly workplace 
• While primarily office-based, some flexibility to work from home
• 8 weeks paid parental leave, regardless of gender or carer status
• 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave per year
• 3 days paid cultural leave per year
• Extra leave over the Christmas period
• Access to Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Ongoing professional development opportunities 
• EDO proudly has a JEDI (Justice, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion) Committee and a Mental Health Ambassador Committee, and has developed a First Nations Program with the aid of indigenous-led consultancies. 
• Three Affinity groups for the following: Disability, Global Majority* and LGBTQIA+

*Global Majority is a collective term that first and foremost speaks to and encourages those so-called, to think of themselves as belonging to the majority on planet earth. It refers to people who are Black, African, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or, have been racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’.

Our Values

Commitment – We are committed to a united organisation, to each other, to collaboration, to justice, to our communities and to creating a world where nature thrives.

Diversity – We are respectful of, and welcome, diversity of staff, volunteers, offices, environmental regions, communities, stakeholders.

Integrity – We work effectively, efficiently, strategically, professionally, and ethically; “justice is in our nature”.

Vision – We lead change and environmental empowerment using innovation, creativity, and courage.

How to Apply

• Click 'Apply Now' below
• To review the position description, please see this link: www.edo.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/EDO-Position-Description-SenSol_SC-Pasifik-Program-May-2025.pdf

If you have queries in regard to this advert, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Applications will be assessed as they are received.

Applications must include a CV and a letter that clearly addresses each of the selection criteria above.

The Key Selection Criteria show the minimum essential requirements of the position. The desirable criteria outline additional attributes which would enable the successful candidate to perform the role more effectively; they are not essential but may be used to distinguish between applicants during the shortlisting process.

EDO particularly encourages applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Pacific Island people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, workers of all ages, people with disabilities and people who identify as LGBTQIA+.

Please note: Your application may be considered for future roles at the EDO within the next 12 months without additional advertising. Please notify us in your application if you would not like to be considered for similar roles beyond this recruitment.

If you have any accessibility needs for the recruitment or interviewing process, please let us know in your application or by emailing [email protected] using the subject line: Senior Solicitor / Special Counsel - Pasifik Program enquiry via EthicalJobs.

Vaccination Requirements

EDO is not issuing a vaccination mandate. EDO staff have the option to share vaccination details within the EDO HRIS system, EDO will maintain this record of vaccination status of EDO employees, however if staff do not wish to disclose this information, it will not be enforced.

Working with clients face-to-face:

• EDO works with diverse peoples and groups across the Australian and Pacific communities, including people who are considered a high-risk group in terms of COVID-19.
• In order to ensure the safety of all EDO employees and the people we work with and around, staff visiting overburdened communities are required to take a COVID-19 test three (3) days prior and on the day of travel to the overburdened community.

Other Information

All offers of employment may be subject to satisfactory background checks including a National Police Check, disclosure of previous or current disciplinary action, referee checks, proof of eligibility to work in Australia and qualification checks.