The legal profession in Australia should travel under a “”standard gauge”, so that a lawyer admitted in one state could practice in the others without further formality, the Law Council of Australia has decided.
Its president John Mansfield, QC, said yesterday that each state and territory professional body would approach their respective Attorneys-General to make the legislative changes necessary.
At present, state and territory law requires separate admission formalities, which can cost thousands of dollars for someone seeking admission in all eight jurisdictions.
The Law Council said, “”All lawyers in the nation should be “Australian’ lawyers rather than lawyers belonging to a particular state of territory and they should see themselves as members of a profession operating in a national legal services market under uniform or harmonious rules.
Mr Mansfield said that a year ago the profession had decided on the core subjects in a law degree to meet admission requirements for all jurisdictions and that these had been put to the standing committee of Attorneys-General.
The logical next step was for state governments and courts to make their practice, procedure, legal-aid and evidence rules more uniform. The Commonwealth had proposed a uniform evidence law which NSW had accepted and other states were considering.
The Law Council’s step, taken at a meeting in Canberra at the weekend, would take the legal profession further than the eight governments required. It would go beyond mere mutual recognition of qualifications, under which lawyers in one place were entitled to be admitted elsewhere, because under the council’s proposal they would not have to go through formal admission procedures.
Mr Mansfield likened it to a standard gauge railway.
However, the Council rejected any idea of the regulation of the legal profession moving from the states to the Commonwealth. And lawyers would have to pay appropriate fees to cover things like disciplinary procedures.
The lawyers’ move comes after the adoption by the eight Governments of policies of greater competition. The separate admissions occasionally drove costs up because some state professions were not open to price competition from interstate.