High Court Chief Justice Stephen Gageler has called for the Legal Profession Uniform Law – which governs New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia – to be adopted nationally.
In a lecture delivered in New South Wales Supreme Court last week, to mark Volume 100 of the Australia Law Journal (ALJ), His Honour called on practitioners to commit to the long-held vision of a truly national profession.
He said the establishment of the Law Council of Australia in 1933 and the first Australian Legal Convention in 1935 began “to draw lawyers from around the country into a national conversation”.
“The vision was of a truly national and distinctively Australian legal profession, which collaborated to address issues of common concern, was actively engaged in the improvement of Australian law and our legal system and was grounded in a set of shared professional standards, values and commitments,” he said.
Chief Justice Gageler said that at the 1935 Convention, the then Chief Justice John Latham hoped that the event would “help towards producing a sense of unity in our profession”.
“The thrust of the vision was that practitioners should begin to think of themselves not as divided into six communities connected simply by a common heritage, but as members of a national profession,” he said.
“A sense of shared identity would be valuable because a profession that could think nationally, act nationally and unite around common values would be better equipped to service its clients and fulfil its public responsibilities.”
His Honour stated there were five clear elements of the vision. It was of a profession: with cross-border connections which could act together on matters of common concern; bound by shared professional standards; engaged in the intellectual Iife of the law; engaged in reform; and cognisant that its ultimate purpose was to serve the community.
He said the profession had evolved in profound ways over the past century, yet the vision remained “in significant aspects unfulfilled”.
He pointed to the High Court’s Street v Bar Association decision in 1989, which enforced the prohibition on discrimination against interstate residents, and the Mutual Recognition Act 1992 (Cth).
There were less generated from within the profession than they were thrust upon it, he said.
“The Australian legal profession stands at just over 100,000 within an Australian population of almost 28 million within a world population of over 8 billion…” he said.
“The relatively small national profession stands stronger when it works together; the Australian community and its democratic institutions are the beneficiaries.
“That was the core of the founding vision of the ALJ and remains as important now as it was a century ago.
“We are the present leaders and custodians of the profession.
“This occasion allows us to reflect on the founding vision and provides us with an opportunity to recommit ourselves to its future realisation.”
Read the full speech here.
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