Page 3954 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 October 1991
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LEGAL PRACTITIONERS (AMENDMENT) BILL (NO. 2) 1991
Debate resumed from 19 September 1991, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR COLLAERY (4.10): Mr Deputy Speaker, this is a functional amendment to allow the Government Law Office generic description to be altered to take account of the revised description of that function in the administrative arrangements orders initially, and now in legislation. It is a technical amendment and, of course, it has the support of the Residents Rally.
I want to take this opportunity to say just a couple of words about legal practitioners. Of course, as one of the more recently readmitted legal practitioners - in fact, from the day before yesterday - I am pleased to be up speaking again as a practising solicitor.
I am reminded of a cartoon that appeared in the Justinian earlier this year. It shows a group of people mounted on horses holding up sabres, with a dramatic Cecil B. De Mille sort of sight of a cavalry charge coming down a hill. The leader is holding up a sabre and saying, "Charge" - and at the back someone is saying "How much?". I make that available to members on an informal basis; I do not know how long I will last back in my profession.
I assure you that it is an interesting prospect to read that there is now a vast oversupply of legal practitioners in New South Wales. It will mean competition. I remember the grim struggle in the Law Society a few years ago - more than a few years ago - when a group of us wanted to advertise for conveyancing, and we lost the battle. The vote was taken at the Canberra Club. I am not sure how our women members were admitted to that club at that time. Things have changed in that regard at least; but, of course, the Federal Government has taken many initiatives in the area that will allow some of the monopolies in the law to go away.
The practice of law in the Territory is an onerous one. It requires people in it to have extremely good personal integrity and personal values. The vast majority of lawyers in this country are good people; but there is, in my view, a need to develop a new form of legal professional. The new legal professional is that person who is actually tied to a corporate function. It is a corporate lawyer in-house - stabled, in effect; a corporate lawyer who exists, of course, in a recognisable firm but is entirely preoccupied with the advisings to sometimes a single corporation. And they often become almost a veritable mouthpiece, as we saw during the period of the celebrated Westpac letters.
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