The National Legal Profession Reform Project
The regulation of the legal profession and the delivery of legal services is a state not a federal responsibility. Lawyers and law firms are increasingly delivering legal services across state and territory borders, however, and finding themselves subject to multiple regulatory regimes.
Not surprisingly in these circumstances professional bodies, regulators and governments acted to ‘harmonise’ the regulatory arrangements and all the Australian states and territories but for South Australia have now enacted Legal Profession Acts based on national model laws that were agreed by the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) in 2004 – hence the Queensland Legal Profession Act 2007 (and its predecessor legislation, the Legal Profession Act 2004).
That is a significant achievement but has served to highlight the many differences that still remain - hence the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed on 30 April 2009 to establish a National Legal Profession Reform Project Taskforce and to give it two primary objectives:
- to prepare nationally uniform legislation by 30 April 2010; and
- to recommend the regulatory structures that will be required to achieve uniformity of regulatory practice.
The Taskforce comprises the Chief Executives of the Commonwealth and New South Wales Attorney-General’s Departments and the Victorian Justice Department, the Deputy Chief Executive of the ACT Department of Justice and Community Safety and the Secretary-General of the Law Council of Australia.
The Taskforce will be assisted by a Consultative Group chaired by a former Commonwealth Attorney-General and now Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Queensland University of Technology, the Hon Michael Lavarch. The Consultative group comprises 18 people who are between them broadly representative of the profession, the courts, regulators, legal educators and consumers including the Queensland Legal Services Commissioner, John Briton, and the Chief Executive officer of the Queensland Law Society, Noela’ L’Estrange.
The Taskforce has established a National Legal Profession Reform Project website which describes its mandate in greater detail and will include progress reports as events unfold:
- click www.ag.gov.au/legalprofession for further information.