Night Time Legal Advice Service
We will reopen on Tuesday 6 February 2024 as a remote service.
Who are we?
Night Time Legal Advice Service (NTLAS) is a service of Canberra Community Law providing information, referral or one-off legal advice in most areas of law. NTLAS runs each Tuesday evening.
Some examples of problems NTLAS can help you with are:
- Fines and other traffic infringements
- Minor criminal law offences
- Family law and basic advice and referrals on parenting plans/orders, separation and assistance
- Employment law – employees not employers
- Debts – people being pursued for debts but not people seeking to recover debts
- Complaints
- Consumer issues
NTLAS does not provide advice on areas that are covered by Canberra Community Law’s day time services:
NTLAS and Canberra Community’s Day Time service do not provide legal advice on the following matters:
- Immigration and refugee matters
- Neighbourhood disputes (including Body Corporate/Strata Issues)
- For private tenants please call the Tenants Advice Service on 1300 402 512. For public housing tenants, please call Canberra Community Law on (02) 6218 7900
How can we help you?
NTLAS aims to provide at least some initial one off advice and guidance on legal matters.
The service is not resourced to provide casework or ongoing assistance. A solicitor is employed to supervise NTLAS, but otherwise the service is provided by a committed group of volunteer solicitors.
Would you like to contact NTLAS?
The Night Time Legal Advice Service (NTLAS) has an email address where you can contact our solicitors directly:
NTLAS@canberracommunitylaw.org.au
If you have a legal issue such as a contract dispute, employment issue, a building dispute, other civil matter, or an issue in any of the areas we deal with, please email your query to us. Please also complete and email us the intake form.
Download the intake form (DOCX)
To help us respond as quickly as possible, please give us a brief, factual outline of your matter and attach any relevant documents. Please use standard formats (Word documents, PDFs, or images) for attachments. We find that document sharing does not work reliably.
Also, please tell us who the other party is in your matter (for example, if you have entered into a contract, please tell us who with). Please include their name and contact number. This is for identification purposes only. We will not contact them without your consent.
If you contact us about an employment issue, please tell us who your employer is, how long you have worked there and what your employment status is (full time/ part time/casual/other).
If you can not email you can still call us during business hours on (02) 6218 7900.
Urgent matters
Please be aware that if your matter is time critical (for example, you have a court date coming up soon) we may not be able to advise you before that time. We try to triage the most urgent matters, but we cannot guarantee that we can assist in time critical matters or meet deadlines you are facing. We do not provide representation in courts or tribunals but we can often advise on these matters if they are not time critical. But if you have a court date coming up very soon please refer to our other legal services or contact Legal Aid ACT for options.
Our volunteers
We rely on volunteer solicitors and pro bono assistance from the Canberra legal community to help us with our work. We will sometimes send your information to them on a confidential basis to provide assistance with your matter. This means your information may be transmitted to a third party solicitor or law firm by email. Our volunteers and pro-bono partners are bound by the same strict rules of confidentiality that apply to all lawyers in the ACT, however, if you do not wish for this to happen, please let us know in your email.
Helpful links
Download the Night Time Legal Advice Service Brochure (PDF)
Download the Night Time Legal Advice Service Brochure in Easy English (PDF)