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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2522 ..

2

The Act provides for 2 types of professional indemnity insurance cover - under Part IX of the Act for insurance which is approved by the Law Society, and under Part X for insurance which is provided by payment of a contribution into the Solicitors' Mutual Indemnity Fund which provides professional indemnity insurance for the solicitors who contribute to it.

In recent times all practitioners in the Territory have been provided with the necessary professional indemnity insurance cover via a contribution to the Solicitors' Mutual Indemnity Fund.

However, the wording of the Act is such that, instead of the requirement being for professional indemnity insurance to be either insurance cover approved by the Law Society or that obtained via a contribution to the Fund, the statutory requirement is for both types of insurance to be held. In practice, the Fund has provided full and proper insurance cover for solicitors and the Law Society has only required them to have this form of cover in its issue of practising certificates and regulation of the profession. However, I believe that this situation is overdue for correction and the Bill does this.

The Bill will continue to allow the Law Society a discretion in approving the insurance providers, and terms, of professional indemnity cover that may be entered into by a solicitor in meeting the requirement for an unrestricted

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