Tendayi was born in Zimbabwe and has lived in Australia for more than 14 years. Tendayi is hardworking, efficient and delivers outstanding results. Tendayi has excellent skills in identifying, understanding and addressing cross-cultural issues and issues facing socially and economically disadvantaged people.

Tendayi has dedicated her career to social justice and ensuring that people from all backgrounds have access to representation and services. Tendayi is the proud recipient of a University Scholarship and was named Valedictorian in her first year of study at the University of Newcastle. Tendayi completed her Law Degree and Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice in 2011.

Tendayi was admitted to practice law in the Supreme Court of NSW on 13 April 2012 and holds a current NSW practising certificate. Tendayi has a diverse portfolio of experience having worked for Legal Aid NSW, the Hunter Community Legal Centre, two small boutique firms and a large tier firm where she was promoted to Office Manager and Care and Protection State Manager within a few short months.

Tendayi has appeared in Local Courts across the state, the District Court, the Family Court, the Federal Circuit Court, the Children’s Court, NCAT and other forums such as the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse. Tendayi has a track record for exceptional representation and dedicated client service. Tendayi has written a number of published articles and has been featured on ABC News 24.

In her spare time, Tendayi loves to sing and was an x-factor competitor. Tendayi also enjoys running and mentoring others. Above all though, Tendayi is a mother and her daughter comes first. Tendayi started Tee Legal due to a gap in the legal world for working mothers who are passionate solicitors.

Tee Legal Prides itself in being family friendly and family orientated. Here at Tee Legal we value our staff and their families.

Sharni completed Bachelor of Laws/Diploma of Legal Practice in 2013 and was admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of NSW on 21st February 2014. Prior to this, Sharni completed a double degree in Bachelor of Teaching (Primary)/Bachelor of Arts, graduating with Honours.

Sharni has used both of these qualifications in assisting children and adults, in particular disadvantaged or the vulnerable in her words "level the playing field". That is her passion and what drives her.

Sharni's practical legal training included placement with a District Court Judge and his Associate at the Downing Centre Sydney, The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Legal Aid NSW and the University of Newcastle Legal Centre (UNLC).

Whilst in her last year of studying Law, she was selected as a student law clerk by the Director of the UNLC to assist with research to Senior Barristers in a high profile case, where the defendant had been imprisoned for life and had exhausted her appeal avenues.

In Sharni's words, "to her knowledge the fight in that particular case continues because of passionate lawyers who refuse to give up when a miscarriage of justice has occurred".

Post admission, Sharni was employed as a Solicitor in a small firm in Bolton Street Newcastle. Most of her experience was in criminal law and mental health advocacy and was appointed on both the Legal Aid Crime and Mental Health Advocacy private practitioner panels during her first year of practice.

Her interest in criminal law, but particularly the NSW Drug Court grew and in 2015 gained employment within the Legal Aid criminal law division and the particular niche jurisdiction of the Hunter Drug Court. Sharni practised law within Legal Aid until 2020.

She reflects on some of her most rewarding results which includes being the first defence solicitor at the Hunter Drug Court to successfully argue, after the amendments to the Road Transport Act, that the Drug Court had the power to revisit and possibly reduce the period of driving disqualification imposed at initial sentence, at the completion of a client's program, at final sentence.

Sharni also advocated for her client's Habitual Traffic Offender Declarations to be quashed within the Drug Court jurisdiction, dealing with the applications for eligible clients, without the need to congest the Local Court system with applications in regards to clients within the Drug Court program.

Sharni worked tirelessly for law reform to rules within legislation and policy governing Work Development Orders (WDO) and how that the major equity issue that impacted her Drug Court clients. With permission from the Honourable Judge at the Hunter Drug Court, Sharni wrote submissions to the WDO Corporate Governance Group to allow drug court clients to work off their state debt during their program.

Those submissions written by Sharni in her capacity as a Solicitor within Legal Aid were presented to all sectors involved in the functioning of the Hunter Drug Court including the NSW Police Prosecutor, ODPP Solicitors, Health and Community Corrections, each supporting the submissions. When months passed and there was no change, Sharni took it upon herself to look into other ways that her clients could still satisfy the scheme so she took a secondment role to the Legal Aid Civil Law jurisdiction to work on write off applications for eligible candidates or placing her clients on external WDO's.

When she could not succeed in her first attempt at change, she went about the change from another angle, achieving the same or (in many cases) a better result result for her clients. As a solicitor within Legal Aid, Sharni achieved success in 100% of her write off applications submitted to Revenue NSW, saving her clients in the hundreds of thousands of dollars combined in state debt.

Sharni resigned from Legal Aid in November 2020, for a number of reasons. Since then, she has been appointed as a Youth Justice Conference Convener, has gained experience working with vulnerable children who are living in out of home care, and been employed with Community Corrections to extend her knowledge of another key stakeholder involved in the criminal justice system.

These experiences combined and with some time out from practising law to reassess what is important to her, has reignited her passion to "fight the good fight". Why did she seek out Tee Legal? Because as a practitioner re-entering the profession, Sharni wanted to take that step with a Principal she trusted completely.

Sharni would only return to practice on her own terms, for someone who shared her core values of fairness, consistency, justice and ethics, and that is Tendayi Chivunga. All Sharni wants to say when announcing her return to the practise of law is this 💋........