Her next step would have been somewhere serious in Colgate's office of corporate counsel in Manhattan. Except the next step was back in Sydney, hanging out with the homeless and dispossessed of Kings Cross. She's been there for five weeks as the corporate social relations manager for the Wayside Chapel. Partnership manager is her official title and the work is persuading the suits to get involved with and to fund the work of the Wayside Chapel. When we met early on Wednesday at the flash new offices of the Wayside, I wanted to know why she give away a glamorous international law job with lots of travel and money. Her reply was completely marvellous. ''I didn't give anything away. I didn't hate the law, far from it. I just knew there was another part of me that was up for the next challenge. I now feel like the right version of myself,'' she said. To feel like the right version of yourself is something a lot of lawyers never achieve after a lifetime of hard work, let alone by 35 years of age. This was not an epiphany. It was always there within her. Sarah swapped a world of more and more, for one of an intensified less and less. She was always involved with charities and worked as a volunteer at the Wayside Chapel while she practised law in Sydney.

On her way to work in the city each day there was a homeless man camped on the footpath outside Woolworths, opposite the Town Hall in George Street. Most mornings Whitaker would drop at his feet a $3 McHappy ''meal'' and beetle on her way. She never looked him in the eye, until one morning he lit the bag with a match and flung the flaming hamburger back at her. ''Did you never stop to think I might want a salad sandwich?'' he cried. The salad sandwich moment was a turning point. She started to talk to homeless people, to listen to them, rather than guiltily dispense hurried largesse. Her job at the Chapel in developing partnerships with government and corporations is crucial. At the moment only about 13 per cent of its income comes from corporate and foundation donations, as against 40 per cent from private individuals and 25 per cent from across all levels of government. The rest comes from op shop sales. A growing number of bigwigs are involved. The long-serving barrister and former attorney-general Bob Ellicott is on the board and has acted for and advised the Chapel on legal issues. The sight of the rather reserved Ellicott holding hands and singing with sex workers at Sunday services is, apparently, a moving experience. Clayton Utz partner Doug Bishop is also on the board and his firm funds the work of the Wayside's indigenous project, allowing for the employment of a full-time member of staff to work with Aboriginal people, who make up about 20 per cent of all visitors to the Chapel.

It also tosses in upwards of 200 pro bono hours of legal work. Global law shop Norton Rose also provides lawyers to dispense ''shopfront'' advice to the endless stream of the needy and homeless that are the core of Wayside's ''client'' base. Other city law firms, such as Kennedys, do much to rally around and provide support, particularly at this time of the year. A vast Santa sleigh of prezzies from Kennedys was shipped around this week for the street lunch on Sunday. The big job at hand on Wednesday at the Wayside was the extraction of potentially lethal sharp objects from hundreds of Christmas crackers. Occupational health and safety, again. Most of the big law factories, and some of the boutiques, have been rolling up their sleeves and in one form or other giving their time and resources to great enterprises that right wrongs and upend the established order. Allens Arthur Robinson's partner Malcolm Stephens led a team of lawyers in Sydney and Melbourne that laid waste to the government's wretched asylum seeker policies.

In the High Court, they established the Australian government is obliged to act lawfully and fairly when processing claims on Christmas Island. No black hole law there. Subsequently, much the same team sank the Malaysian solution, with the court finding Malaysia did not meet international standards for the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. The firm also secured in a pro bono case this year, the first ever compensation and an apology from the Victorian government for a member of the stolen generation. Freehills, for years, has been ploughing support into the Shopfront Youth Legal Centre in Darlinghurst. Then there's its legal work for the AIDS Council and the National Breast Cancer Foundation. This year, one of the firm's West Australian partners, Steven Penglis, secured a victory in the High Court for transgender recognition. The upshot from the decision is that people with gender dysphoria will be able to have their sex legally recognised without having to undergo surgery. On and on it goes. Law firms fund and resource the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the Public Interest Law Clearing House.

One of PIAC's neat, but unsung, triumphs this year was in a disability discrimination case that now requires wheelchair access taxis to actually be suitable for wheelchair users. Incredible, but until that case a lot of wheelchair taxis couldn't accommodate wheelchairs. Mallesons's Stephen Jaques provides a secondee solicitor full-time to PIAC. What drives this benefaction by top-gun law firms and barristers, many of whom earn their huge dollars working for tobacco and asbestos manufacturers, banks, cruel insurance companies, polluters and even the government? Is it that a slab of pro bono hours makes everyone feel better or are there genuine big-spirited people trapped in an otherwise heartless landscape? It's not often this column gets to say nice things about lawyers. It must be Christmas.

justinian@lawpress.com.au Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU