Cross-border lawyer regulation in Australia

Abstract

Australia comprises six States that, when self-governing British colonies, agreed from 1901 to federate under a limited, central Government. Each of these colonies had its own legal profession, and after Federation these remained organised under State law and a State responsibility. Until the 1980s, the separate State professions grew differently. In some States the professions were divided between banisters and solicitors branches; in others the profession was fused. In some it was sufficient to be admitted as a lawyer to practise law in the State; in others an admitted lawyer also needed an annual practising certificate to engage in private practice. There were differences in regulation (and even in the 1980s some State professions were completely unregulated), differences in the disciplinary systems, professional rules, educational standards and training requirements. Australia also has a number of federal territories, which also had autonomous responsibility for their own legal professions and added even greater variety to this mix. (And I should add that, when I mention the 'States' in this paper, I include the federal territories — although legal professions are only found in the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory and Norfolk Island). That period of the State's splendid isolation, of autonomous responsibility for the legal professions, is over, and my purpose in this paper is to explain the beginning in 2004 of a period of cooperative federalism in the regulation of Australian legal professions and to sketch the new scheme of cross-border regulation of lawyers.