Ask any events manager based in or around Melbourne, what the hardest thing about their job is and they’ll probably say ‘the weather’.

Not organizing three thousand people into the one venue. Not sourcing a giant blow-up bilby for a festival opening, or organising street closures, or making sure there are enough rubbish bins. Not in Melbourne.

In Melbourne, it’s the weather. Everyone has a story about face-paint melting horrifyingly down the faces of children’s entertainers in 45 degree heat, or brides in gumboots wading away from the greatest day of their lives wearing somebody’s dad’s parka and shivering like a Dickens character in the throes of early consumption.

For me, managing Law Week in May 2015, I thought at least the seasons were on my side.

Law Week is a national program of events that invites Australians to reflect on their legal system and learn more about the law.

I work for Victoria Law Foundation and in partnership with around 60 organisations, we coordinate Law Week across Victoria. There are events for everyone – information sessions, seminars, workshops, debates, mock trials, behind-the-scenes tours and ask-a-judge sessions.

The central base for Law Week – where we locate ourselves each year, to allow the public to ask questions and find out more about Law Week  – is in the Law Week Festival Hub, a marquee at Federation Square.

I can’t remember now whether it was the coldest week of the year or it just contained some of the coldest days of the year. It was definitely one of those weeks where the weather was reported on as a story outside of the weather report.

“Melbournians are bracing themselves for a cold one” – that kind of thing. It was completely freezing. Those of us working in the marquee were jumping on the spot, buying puffy jackets in our lunch breaks, and drinking as many hot drinks as we could lay our hands on.

With this in mind, you can imagine how optimistic I was about the prospect of people approaching us in our tent in the middle of Fed Square, with the black clouds hanging low and dark and the rain skittering sideways beneath umbrellas and right into our hopeful, squinting faces.

But here’s an interesting fact: people are actually genuinely passionate about Law. There was I thinking people would walk past, freezing grumpy and wondering what ‘Law Week’ could possibly mean to them, but I quickly came to realise that we could have been standing chest-deep in the river 100 metres to our left for all some people cared – they just wanted to talk about the law.

Law is about stories. Your story versus my story. Our stories becoming one. It’s about power and responsibility and fairness and therefore it’s also about misuse of power and avoidance of responsibility and the damage caused by unfairness. It’s about how we decide we are going to live together. It’s about who gets what. It’s about people and the way we live our lives.

We had a lot of people asking advice and looking for information. We were visited by students and tourists and elderly people and school groups. There were questions and opinions and arguments playing out in front of us all the time.

A lot of people just wanted to tell us their stories. Some of the stories were wonderful, demonstrating how powerful it can be to get legal help early and work things out. Some stories were not so happy. In every instance, these were ordinary people who suddenly had to learn a lot about a certain area of law to which they previously hadn’t been exposed. Knowing where to get help at that crucial moment when you realise you have a problem – often a very stressful moment in the messy context of real life – can make a big difference.

One of the motivations behind Law Week is the idea that people don’t think about the law until they have to. It’s on the telly, mostly, with lots of people shouting ‘objection’ and bringing in DNA evidence at the last minute, but in real life you’re suddenly dealing with something confusing and unpleasant like a contested will or a power of attorney issue or a neighbourhood dispute and you don’t know where to turn.

Law Week makes people think about the law and all its complexities not because they have to but because it’s a week in May called Law Week.

It’s a cold week, maybe, but there are people gathered together around a tent talking about their legal system and how it matters in their own personal lives. And if the worst thing about managing this event is the weather, the best thing is the people.

At the end of the week, when we’re packing up to go home, an elderly woman approaches us and huddles undercover. She thanks us. She went to several events during Law Week, having stopped by and picked up some information from us on the Monday.

A mock trial, a session on wills, a tour of the Old Melbourne Gaol. She learned a lot, she tells us. ‘I feel a bit stronger about things now’, she says. As the rain pinpricks the Yarra and the trams hum away into the night, I think that’s a pretty good result. And also next year I’m bringing gumboots.