The Queensland solicitors' conveyancing reservation: past and future development - Part I

Abstract

Queensland is now the only State in Australia to reserve conveyancing work exclusively for solicitors. This is, of course, a source of lingering controversy and resentment, especially amongst nonlawyer conveyancers elsewhere in Australia who, despite enjoying a long history, have grown most significantly in numbers and market profile since the 1990s.In this article, and a second that will follow in a later edition of the University of Queensland Law Journal, we therefore revisit the Queensland solicitors’ conveyancing reservation. The next section is an account of the nature and scope of the reservation. This includes its historical development – a process that, despite the debate of the last two decades, was in the strictest legal terms only properly completed in 2004. The legal ground covered by the reservation is also outlined. It involves an analysis of the scope of the reservation, and the extent to which the solicitors’ branch of the legal profession (when considered as a group) can genuinely be considered to have 'monopolised' the field of conveyancing work. In the second article, we will consider the competition implications of the reservation, and the arguments for and against maintaining it.