Page 1177 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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from the terms used in the Legal Practitioners Act 1970 aimed at facilitating the national legal practice.
As its title indicates, chapter 2 deals with all of the general requirements of legal practice in the ACT. The simplified outline at clause 14 assists in locating and understanding the nature of this chapter’s many provisions. The chapter contains nine main parts, which principally have the following effects.
Only those who are both qualified and licensed may practise law. This protects the public interest in the administration of justice. To promote a national standard for the admission of people to the Australian legal profession, there is now a national mechanism for recognition of qualifications across all states and territories.
All licensed Australian practitioners can practise in the ACT and all qualified lawyers may obtain a practising certificate here, no matter where in Australia they were admitted to the profession. The significance of this cannot be overstated. At last there is a system for mutual recognition of the status of lawyers in all jurisdictions and a methodology for granting them a licence to practise and for regulating practitioners across all jurisdictions. The bill provides for management, within and across jurisdictions, of the enrolment and licensing of lawyers.
There is now a nationally consistent process for the establishment and general management of incorporated legal practices and multidisciplinary partnerships. These are partnerships in which one or more, but not all, of the partners are conducting a legal practice. This part of the bills flows from a number of national competition policy reviews, which recommended relaxing the restrictions on the sharing of profits and allowing incorporated legal practices and multidisciplinary partnerships to compete in the market.
Part 2.7 frees up the availability of the practice of foreign law in the ACT by foreign lawyers. While the ACT can boast of having put similar provisions in place some time ago, this part reflects a national approach to the recognition and regulation of foreign lawyers in Australia.
Finally, in recognition of the service provided to the ACT by community legal centres, complying community legal centres may operate in the territory without contravening the reservation of legal practice to licensed practitioners. This, of course, applies on certain conditions that protect the consumer from the consequences of substandard professional conduct.
Chapter 3 of the bill concerns the actual conduct of legal practice. Part 3.1 mainly applies core provisions for the establishment of trust accounts and the management of trust money and trust property. While the nature of trust accounts does not fundamentally change, there will now be nationally consistent requirements for management and reporting. This is a significant leap forward in consumer protection and professional standards in relation to money and property that is entrusted to lawyers. Because of the significance of the changes to procedural and reporting requirements, the profession does need some lead time in implementing these provisions. Training and procedural preparation is required. The trust accounting provisions will therefore not commence operation until 1 April 2007.
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