If the 29-year-old Rohingyan felt the pressure as he sat across the desk from a lawyer two years his junior in a Collingwood office on a sunny autumn day this week, it did not show.

Over more than four hours, Nasir told his story of persecution: the harassment by local Buddhists and the military; the random violence; the denial of the most basic rights (like being forced to leave school after two years); the forced (and unpaid) labour.

His voice was soft and his answers short, as if detachment was a mechanism of self-protection. When he described being bashed and imprisoned for getting married without the authorities' permission, it is almost as if he is talking about someone else.

Then he was questioned about his time in transit in Malaysia, where he was able to obtain an identity card from the United Nations refugee agency, but could only work illegally, under the threat of arrest or extortion.

Finally, he was asked about the decision to pay a smuggler and the journey to Christmas Island on a leaky boat.

In between, he spoke about the nightmares that invariably involve someone coming after him with a gun, or after the family that remains in Myanmar. "I saw a lot of different things in the nightmares," he said.

As Nasir's words were interpreted, David Burke, whose day job is in insurance litigation at Lander & Rogers, one of Melbourne's leading commercial law firms, took the notes that he would draw on to prepare Nasir's statement seeking protection.

Burke also went over the answers Nasir had given one of hundreds of volunteer paralegals, who had helped him fill out forms requiring detailed answers to more than 100 questions, including every address he has had for the past 30 years.

When Nasir left Refugee Legal, some seven hours after he arrived, he had a copy of the full set of documents that would make up his application, and the satisfaction that, finally, he had been able to present his case.

Like Nasir, Burke had no illusions about the importance of this day. "You are sitting across the desk from somebody and you know that this is their one opportunity to tell their story and to get it right - and that their future hangs in the balance," he says.

The same goes for other corporate lawyers from 12 firms, who leave their offices in the city each Tuesday to work pro bono at this clinic, preparing applications for a group of asylum seekers who are known as the "legacy caseload".

They number 30,000 and the vast majority of them are subject to a new process the Coalition government says was designed to deal more efficiently and effectively with the mess it says Labor created.

It is called the Fast Track Assessment process but, in reality, it is anything but, with the department taking an average of 247 days to process each application (the average for those not subject to the fast track system is 308 days).

Only in the past 18 months have those in the legacy caseload progressively been given ministerial permission to lodge their protection applications.

The number involved and the complexity of that task has meant the non-profit agencies offering free legal assistance have had to prioritise the most urgent cases and find innovative ways to tackle the backlog.

At Refugee Legal (formerly the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre), this has meant re-instituting clinics that operated in 2002 to assist those who had temporary protection visas apply for permanent residency.

The difference this time is that the clinics rely much more heavily on corporate lawyers like Burke giving up a day of their billable time during the week and often volunteering on the weekend.

In recent weeks almost 900 in the legacy group, including Nasir, have received letters telling them their applications must be lodged with 60 days.

"If you do not lodge an application within 60 days of the date of this letter we may not grant you another bridging visa," they have been told. "This will mean you will be an unlawful non-citizen. You will lose access to Medicare and permission to work in Australia."

The letter also tells them the minister, Peter Dutton, has the power to revoke his permission for them to lodge a visa application, and that this may happen if they fail to meet the deadline.

They can apply for an extension if they have a good reason, but the letter concludes with a statement that amounts to a threat: fail to apply for a temporary protection visa or safe haven enterprise visa and "you are not considered an asylum seeker and are expected to leave Australia".

At a Senate committee hearing last week, department secretary Michael Pezzullo, appeared surprised the letters were causing alarm and anxiety, saying they had only been sent to those who were given the go ahead to apply for protection more than 11 months ago. He also scoffed at the idea that lawyers were needed to help asylum seekers lodge their applications.

"What we are seeking is a very plain statement," Pezzullo told Greens senator Nick McKim.

"I do not think the forms are excessively legalistic or complicated. Step one of the process is, tell us who you are, and what is the basis upon which you have come to our country seeking our protection. I am not sure that you need a lot of lawyers to assist with that."

To those being asked to complete their applications under the threat of sanctions, the secretary said: "We just want to know who you are, why you are in our country and what it is that you are fearful of. We need to know so that we can start to assess your protection claims."

The problem with Pezzullo's assurances is they are at odds with both the requirements of the Fast Track Assessment process and the experience of many who have been subjected to it.

"Under the Fast Track Assessment process, it is extremely important to give us your protection claims early and in full," the department's own fact sheet says.

The advice tells asylum seekers to include all relevant information in their application and warns there will only be a limited form of review of negative decisions, with no access to an independent tribunal and no capacity to put new information unless there are "exceptional circumstances".

This has alarmed officials from the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, who argue that being able to articulate "exceptional circumstances" is beyond many asylum seekers, especially those who are illiterate, traumatised, non-English speaking and unrepresented.

The agency is also concerned that many asylum seekers are not eligible to have negative decisions reviewed, including those who have had previous claims rejected or presented bogus documents when they arrived.

The agency says this fails to take account of changed circumstances that may have arisen, or the varying quality of decision making in different jurisdictions. "Asylum seekers are often compelled to have recourse to false or fraudulent documentation when leaving a country, or to dispose of their identity documentation," it says.

Charlie Powles says the need for asylum seekers to be given help to get their application right at the outset is one of the main reasons he returned to Refugee Legal after five-years on the Refugee Review Tribunal (now the Administrative Appeals Tribunal).

"There is no one in this building who wants anything other than a thorough and rigorous assessment process. In fact, the clients have wanted to participate in a rigorous assessment process for years," he says.

Australia's border protection regime under John Howard was described as the harshest in the developed world because the detention system was mandatory, indefinite and non-reviewable, but lawyers and advocates say the current system is more punitive in several respects.

Under the Pacific Solution, boat arrivals who were found to be refugees could apply for permanent protection when their temporary visas expired; they were processed more promptly; and assisted by taxpayer-funded legal services.

Now, those on Nauru and Manus have been told they will never be resettled in Australia; those in the legacy caseload face huge hurdles to permanency; only those considered "exceptionally vulnerable" are afforded free legal assistance; and delays in processing claims are much, much longer.

While the department asserts that asylum seekers have the chance to clarify information when they are interviewed by an immigration officer after submitting their application, lawyers say this is problematic for many asylum seekers.

"I think the department is underestimating what is being asked of these people," says lawyer Clare Brennan. "They are being asked to share their story with someone they will only see once and, if it is someone in authority and they come from countries where they have never trusted authority, that brings added pressure."

Now, without warning, that pressure has increased dramatically with the department's decision to send threatening letters to those who have not submitted applications for visas.

While the goal of clearing the backlog is strongly supported, Refugee Legal's executive director David Manne says he is puzzled by the department's approach. "There is a finite number of people who came to this country seeking protection, there is an application process, they want to use it and the delays have not been their fault."

The solution, he says, is for the government to work with the sector to ensure that people are given the help they need to make applications so that fair decisions can be reached. "Forcing people to apply under these time frames denies them the right to get essential legal help - and the most obvious consequence of that is the real possibility of people not being able to make proper application, not getting a fair hearing and being deported to death or torture," he says.

Sutha*, a single Tamil woman who fled Sri Lanka who arrived in 2012 after fleeing Sri Lanka's civil war, says she received her letter before Christmas and immediately suffered panic attacks and flashbacks of past traumas.

"I came from a war-torn place and I was very frightened, shaken up when the letter came. I was thinking, if I can't lodge my application, if I am forced to go back, what will happen to me?" she tells Fairfax Media.

"Fortunately, through God's grace I got a good lawyer and he helped me to submit the application before the deadline. I was very happy. But I wonder how it affected other refugees like me, those who can't have such divine help from legal firms. What will happen to them?"

* The names have been changed to protect the privacy of asylum seekers.

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