Ann Marie Elenius

Senior Legal Assistant

• +61 3 7020 6542
• Ann Marie Elenius

Ann Marie Elenius is a senior legal assistant who has worked in various areas of law in her 25 years working in the legal industry, 22 of those years having been spent working in family law.

Ann Marie has a high level of professionalism and discretion. She prides herself on being empathic towards family law clients who may be experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions whilst negotiating their way through property, family violence and/or parenting matters.

Ann Marie’s dedication to her Family Law team is evident and is always happy to assist the team with getting the job done.

When Ann Marie is not at work, she could be found challenging herself with trail running, searching for the latest coffee haunt, or searching for the next plant to add to her large garden.

Emily Waghorne

Next Team Member

At Empower Family Law we understand the pressure our clients are under and the distress they feel. We work diligently to navigate them through to better times.

We take pride in offering our clients expert advice tailored to their situation and empowering them to achieve the best possible result.

Want to know more about the Empower Team?

Meet the Team

Speak with us

Your first 30-minute consultation is free. Call (03) 7020 6542 or contact our team to discuss your circumstances and next steps.

What a Senior Legal Assistant does on your matter

A legal assistant does not provide legal advice, but in a family law practice the role carries much of the work that determines how smoothly a matter runs.

Family law files are document-heavy. Financial matters require taxation returns, payslips or business financial statements, bank and credit card statements, superannuation statements and property and loan documents, all of which must be gathered, organised and exchanged. Parenting matters can involve school reports, medical records, correspondence and chronologies. Court matters add filed documents, affidavits, subpoenaed material and strict timeframes: a filed document must generally be served as soon as possible and no more than 12 months after filing, and a disclosure undertaking must be filed before the first court date.

Keeping that material in order, and keeping track of what has been produced and what is outstanding, is a substantial part of what makes a matter proceed efficiently — and it is work that is not billed at a lawyer's rate.

What this means for you

Much of your routine contact about documents, appointments and court dates will come from the support team rather than from your lawyer. That is deliberate and it keeps costs down.

Questions about advice, strategy or the merits of a proposal should go to your lawyer. Questions about what document is needed, when something is due, or where a matter is up to in its administrative steps can usually be answered more quickly by the people handling that work.

Clients working through property, family violence or parenting matters are frequently doing so at the most difficult point in their lives, and the quality of that day-to-day contact matters as much as the quality of the advice.

Arranging an appointment

Call (03) 7020 6542 or use the contact page. Initial appointments usually run for 1 to 1.5 hours, with the first 30 minutes at no charge, and can be conducted remotely by Microsoft Teams.