Speeches and Papers
“Is State Regulation of the Legal Profession Inevitable?”
Steve Mark
NSW Legal Services Commissioner
Pacific Rim Conference
Heron Island
27 September – 4 October 2003
Self-regulation or State regulation?
Traditionally, the legal profession has been governed without State interference. This character of autonomy has been eroded in recent decades. The “blissful relationship” of co-existence of the legal professions self-regulation and the State’s acceptance of its right and ability to do so is now history. Professor Stephen Parker, in a speech at the Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Brisbane, Griffith University, entitled “Islands of Civil Virtue? Lawyers and Civil Justice Reform”, Griffith University (1996), explains:
“the self-regulatory project inherited by Australian lawyers had been conceived in the middle of the 19th century at a time when the state was much less interventionist in its regulatory policy, and the community less demanding in its expectation of dynamic democratic involvement in “private governments” than they are today”.
As Professor Parker further states:
“They, (the Australian Law Reform Commission) point out that while lawyers are supposed to owe their highest duties to the administration of justice, this is usually overwhelmed by their apparent fulfilment of their duty to clients by using aggressive adversarial tactics. This produces undue delay, cost and unfairness in a whole system that ultimately disadvantages everyone except the lawyers”.
Most importantly, as this paper will attempt to establish, the main force for reform in this area must come from the legal profession itself. The profession itself must recognise and institute internal catalyst for change, independent of the spectre of external reports. How is this to occur?
The profession needs a wake up call to no longer wait until the State intervenes through legislative means with its often un-intended consequences. We need to create a climate within the legal profession of debate and willingness to grapple with these issues head on or the profession may well lose its role in the debate.
Many enquires by Government agencies have established over the last decade that law is not only becoming priced out of the reach of all but a very few members of our society, but that “too many (lawyers) see their duty in handling matters as requiring them to exploit every avenue offering an advantage to their clients even when it borders on the unethical and even the unlawful”. (1993 Cost of Justice Enquiry, Canberra)
The problem of excessive adversarialism has remained largely unaddressed in our society to date. This however, has formed one of the central planks of the New South Wales Government’s drive to restrict lawyers from advertising in relation to personal injury matters and major changes to the workers compensation and tort law areas are examples of the Government’s intentions in this area.
Co-Regulation of the Legal Profession in New South Wales
The OSLC is the first port of call for all complaints against legal practitioners and licensed conveyancers in NSW.
All complaints received by the Law Society and the Bar Association are now referred to us at first instance. When we receive these complaints, or when complaints are received directly by us, we initially decide whether we have jurisdiction over the complaint or whether the complaint should be otherwise declined.
Where I decide not to dismiss a complaint at the outset, I make one of three other choices.
- I determine to keep the complaint within my office seeking further information and attempting informal mediation, or mediation as defined under division 4 of Part 10 - Mediation of Consumer Disputes.
- I determine that I will investigate the complaint myself under Section 147A of the Act.
- I refer the complaint to the appropriate Council for investigation, with or without directions as to how that investigation should be conducted.
On our present statistics, of the total complaints received we refer slightly less than 23% of those complaints to the Law Society or Bar Association for investigation. The remainder are retained by this Office and investigated or resolved in one way or another.
Where a matter is referred to the appropriate Council for investigation, I have the power to set the parameters and standards for that investigation, I may require the complaint to be referred back to me for investigation at any time and where the Council has investigated a complaint and determined that the complaint should be dismissed or only a reprimand be offered, I can on my own motion or at the request of the complainant review that decision and ultimately overturn it.
While the Law Society and the Bar Association have a statutory responsibility to set the rules of professional behaviour, I have a power to review those rules and make recommendations to the Attorney if I find the rules are contrary to the public interest or that new rules should be considered.
I share, along with the professional associations, an educative role in attempting to improve the service provision of the legal provision to the community as well as address the often unrealistic expectations of the consumers of legal services within the community.
This system of co-regulation is unique in the world.
In most other jurisdictions, at least in the common law world, the profession, through its professional associations plays the major role in regulating its members. However, there has been over the past decade a worldwide trend to test and challenge this arrangement and independent Ombudsmans have been established in many jurisdictions to oversee the work of the professional associations.
Here in New South Wales, we have gone a step further. In relation to complaints and discipline, the powers to investigate and prosecute conduct complaints is shared equally between my Office and the professional associations. While I have the overall responsibility of overseeing the process, the professional associations play an active and vital role within it.
However, it is my view that it is essential that the rule of law, and in particular its application to the separation of powers be carefully observed where a body such as mine is created within the Executive branch of Government with a role of regulating the judicial branch.
In this regard, I believe it to be no breach of the rule of law (discussed below) that I investigate complaints, and indeed could, if I so choose, investigate all complaints and refer none to the professional associations. However, it is my view that it would be contrary to the rule of law for me to have all regulatory responsibilities, and most particularly the setting of rules and standards for the profession, due to my position within the Executive Branch of Government.
Accordingly, a strong relationship has developed between my Office and the professional associations for the purpose of improving the profession and ensuring that their high ethical standards are met. This co-regulatory regime is, in my view, the best existing model for regulation of the legal profession as it encourages the profession to continue on its path of self-regulation and improvement, albeit with direction from my Office. It also seems to me that it would be counter-productive if the role of the professional associations were limited to defending its members against charges of misconduct as this would create an adversarial relationship between them and my Office and also be of concern to the ethical members of the profession that their association was acting as an advocate for the worst of its members.
Rule of law
In the broadest sense, the rule of law, simply stated, could say “I would rather be ruled by the written law than by the arbitratory decisions of a despot”.
This is perhaps even more true where the written laws are created by a Parliament which is democratically elected. In such systems of Government, the public has at least an indirect say in the laws under which they live.
In a pluralist democratic society, one of the strongest protections for the rule of law is the doctrine of separation of powers. In this doctrine, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of Government have a matrix of checks and balances between them so that no-one branch can ultimately dominate the others.
As Chairman of the Australian Section of the International Commission of Jurists, a Geneva based organisation established in 1952 to promote the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and human rights, I am particularly sensitive to the role my Office (located in the executive) plays in relation to the regulation of the legal profession (situated in the judicial branch).
American Bar Association Annual Conference
San Francisco August 2003
During early August 2003 I had the great privilege of attending the American Bar Association Annual General Meeting in San Francisco where I participated in a panel discussion on the subject “Is federal regulation of the legal profession inevitable?”, a title not very different from that of this paper.
As I had spoken at previous conferences in America, many of the organisers were familiar with my role as co-regulator with the Law Society and Bar Association of the legal profession here in New South Wales, and in particular my position as head of an independent statutory office and not, as in all American jurisdiction, a part of the court structure or the legal profession directly.
Of acute interest at this conference were developments that flowed from the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002 in the United States. This Act will be expanded on in more detail later in this paper, but in general it requires employees of publicly listed companies to disclose any knowledge of corruption or other unlawful activity that they are aware of within the corporation to their superiors and if their superiors fail to act on that disclosure, to continue to disclose “up the ladder” within the corporation until action is taken.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act also requires the Securities and Exchange Commission (similar to our ASIC) to issue rules which require lawyers who appear and practise before the Commission to disclose or report evidence of breaches of ethics or fiduciary duty by their employer company, and failure to do so could amount to professional misconduct.
Not only did this create concern in America in that an external body, the Securities and Exchange Commission, was making conduct rules for the legal profession, but the rule could also force a lawyer to breach their legal professional privilege with their clients.
In effect, a lawyer could be placed in the unenviable position of being required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose information, the disclosure of which could render that lawyer liable under legal professional conduct rules for breaching client confidentiality.
An intriguing debate in the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association ensued. One side argued that legal professional privilege is a cornerstone of the legal profession, and any erosion of it could lead to the diminution of the profession as a whole.
The other argument was that a lawyer’s first duty is to the court and through the court to the general community, and as such, disclosure of information that could be of great benefit to the community (example the Enron collapse) should be an overriding consideration for the profession. In addition, this argument also suggested that the legal profession would not necessarily receive general public support for arguments that lawyers needed to retain client legal professional privilege in order to be allowed to stay in the boardrooms of companies who were intending to act corruptly.
After an extremely lively debate, the House of Delegates decided on a very narrow vote to pass a motion which would allow legal profession conduct rules to be relaxed so as to allow a lawyer the discretion to disclose any information concerning the corruption of their employer company (or client) without facing prosecution for breaching the rule in relation to client confidentiality.
While I personally was pleased at the result of this debate, the focus of my talk to the conference related more to the structure of regulation in New South Wales, how we in Australia have embraced the concept of a national profession and national legal services market and the importance of retaining the profession within the regulatory regime. These issues will be explored later in the paper but it must also be stated that permeating the debate in America and the debate which has yet to come in Australia is the spectral hand of politics and the perception in the community of the legal profession.
Sarbanes-Oxley Act 2002
Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted as a reactive measure to the collapse of roughly a dozen large United States public companies in 2001 and 2002. What began with Enron’s file for bankruptcy in December 2001, culminated in the largest bankruptcy filing in American history being, supplanted from Enron by WorldCom in June 2002. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act heralds the entry of corporate governance into US securities law by setting forth broad prescriptions for corporate governance. The Act has been described as “[a]rguably the most far-reaching corporate reform legislation since the Securities and Exchange Acts of 1933 and 1934”.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 is a reaction not simply to the failure of laws and regulations, but also to a failure of ethical behaviour by corporate leaders and corporate attorneys. The Act attempts to increase transparency, integrity and accountability of public companies through a broad definition of behaviour in an attempt to foster an even more expansive self-policing of behaviour. Congress’s answer to a domino effect of corporate collapses was to make the audit committee of companies responsible for corporate financial disclosure. The audit committee is to be composed solely of independent directors, at least one of whom must be a financial expert. Enron had both an internal compliance program and an audit committee composed of six independent directors, two of whom had formal accounting training and experience. As numerous commentators have illustrated, the problem with Enron was not the structure or compliance procedures in place, but the unethical disregard of those procedures. The collapse of Enron powerfully demonstrates that a corporate code of behaviour is only as good as the directors and officers responsible for implementing it, and the effectiveness of the regulators in ensuring compliance.
In relation to the legal profession, an amendment to the original Sarbanes Bill was introduced by Senator Edwards. The Edwards amendment to the Sarbanes Bill suggested two principle directives: The first is a mandatory obligation on lawyers to disclose evidence that may otherwise be seen as a violation of client confidentiality, the second is the new role of the SEC in lawyer regulation. Specifically, when lawyers encounter evidence of material violations of laws relevant to the SEC’s jurisdiction in the course of representing their client, they must report the existence of such evidence up the corporate ladder to the board of directors, and if necessary to have the evidence investigated and any wrongdoing corrected. This standard of whistle-blowing is an objective one: when a reasonable and prudent lawyer would conclude that credible evidence available to her constituted probable cause to believe a material violation of law had, was or would occur. The second directive contained in the Edwards amendment requires the SEC to discipline securities lawyers through the issuance of regulations governing ethical conduct. The Edwards amendment to the Sarbanes bill passed the Senate 97-0.
As stated above, the Act authorizes the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to develop rules for professional conduct for lawyers. Congress has set the SEC up to perform an impossible task. As of 2003, the SEC is charged with a mandate to overhaul and reform the ethics of corporate American attorneys. How is the SEC to enforce a new normative standard of conduct? In January 2003, the SEC took its first step in executing this mandate when it adopted Pt 205 of the Commission Rules of Practice. Section 406 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act directs the SEC to monitor whether or not a company has adopted a “code of ethics”; the rationale being that the transparency through disclosure and public filing of the codes will attract investor attention and serve to be a new ‘index of ethics’ for investors and regulators. Most large US companies have their own codes of behaviour: ninety percent of Fortune 500 companies have some type of code.
Regulation: the US example
In practice, how effective will Sarbanes-Oxley Act be in regulating corporate ethics? The adherence by the legal profession to the traditional model of self-regulation and autonomy appears to be directly correlated to the rise of a ‘law-free zone’ of unaccountability. Apparently, there is nothing new or unique about lawyers assisting with fraud and aiding in concealing damaging corporate information. Although Arthur Andersen was eradicated over the Enron debacle, we must not forget that lawyers were at the heart of the Andersen’s obstruction: “[w]ho frees corporate clients from the law that would constrain them? Their lawyers do”.
The SEC has had an unsuccessful history, prior to Sarbanes-Oxley Act, of attempting to regulate the American bar. SEC has too much to do to be the sole method of regulating the securities bar. It still remains to be seen whether the SEC, the “paper tiger”, will take-up the Congressional mandate of Sarbanes-Oxley with any meaning. In the US, other avenues of regulation appear even more ineffectual than the SEC.
The Critique of Sarbanes-Oxley
Enron Corp. had a compliance plan that was regarded as state-of-the-art. How is any legislation going to enforce compliance? The current system does not include any incentive by lawyers to open themselves up to scrutiny by breaching their client confidentiality. Flying in the face of centuries’ old fiduciary duties enshrined and protected in legal professional privilege, Congress has not created incentives for compliance with the new scheme.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been assailed as empty and ineffectual, or, worse still, counter-productive by targeting the ‘honest’ while providing a structure that the ‘fraudulent’ will continue to circumvent : “As long as lawyers stand ready to interpret our laws out of existence to serve management’s goals, our new laws will be as ineffective as our old ones.”
The Australian experience
The most recent example of federal regulation of the legal profession in Australia is the enactment of the Financial Services Reform Act 2001 (FSRA). The FSRA inserts into the Corporations Act 2001 new provisions for persons providing a financial service.
The relevant issue for lawyers and accountants is the provision of financial product advice defined under section 766B of the Corporations Act 2001. The addition of section 766B(5) has limited the regulatory reach of the Act, allowing lawyers to provide incidental advice without it necessarily coming under the definition of “financial product advice”. The nebulous definition of incidental advice continues to animate concerns over the fundamental issue of who should regulate the legal profession. The scope of the exception has yet to be tested.
One of the main concerns is whether the exception extends to cover practitioners who provide financial advice that is incidental to advice of a legal nature. In the absence of any clear authority, the submissions to the Report reflect the principle issues raised by the amendments.
Is there a “clear dividing line” between advice provided incidentally as part of a solicitor’s professional practice and advice offered in the course of a solicitor’s non-legal business activities? Senator Cooney, a barrister experienced in commercial matters, highlighted during the Parliamentary debate that a lawyer running a commercial case will naturally discuss commercial matters with a client.
The FSRA can be compared in several ways to the American Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Both pieces of legislation threaten the erosion of legal professional privilege, by giving the respective federal regulatory body a right to review lawyers’ actions. Furthermore, in both instances there is considerable debate about whether the legislation can be practically enforced.
In the case of Australia, who will undertake the role and responsibilities imposed on ‘declared professional bodies’ by the amendments? If the state-based Law Societies are not willing to undertake these responsibilities, will law firms need to become licensed by ASIC, due to the limited nature of the ‘legal advice’ exemption? With regard to the federal regulatory bodies, there is a question as to whether ASIC and SEC resources should be diverted from their core regulatory functions to assume functions of regulation of the legal profession.
This particular concern also plays a major role in relation to incorporated legal practices which have been allowed under the legislation in New South Wales since July 2001. There are now over 250 incorporated legal practices in New South Wales which have responsibilities both under corporations law and the Legal Profession Act. One important new requirement for incorporated legal practices is that they not only have to disclose their fees as do other legal practices in New South Wales, but they also must disclose which aspects of the services they are providing are legal services and which aspects are non-legal services. Unfortunately, detailed discussion on the impact of this is outside the scope of this paper.
Regulation of “personal injury” advertising in New South Wales
The Legal Profession Amendment (Advertising) Regulation 2002 commenced on 1 April 2002 and restricted the way in which a solicitor or barrister could advertise for personal injury services. The Regulation inserts new Part 7B (clauses 68A, B and C) into Legal Profession Regulation 1994.
The Legal Profession Amendment (Personal Injury Advertising) Regulation 2003 now Part 14 of the Legal Profession Regulation 2002 (“the Regulation”) amended the 2002 amendments to the Regulation and commenced on the 23 May 2003. It has added further restrictions on the way in which solicitors and barristers could advertise for personal injury services.
In essence the Regulation prohibits the advertisement of personal (including work) injury services by Legal Practitioners.
A breach of the 2003 Regulation is a criminal offence and constitutes professional misconduct. Accordingly, a breach of the Regulation can affect a practitioner’s ability to practice.
The Regulation is one of a series of responses made by the Government in New South Wales since early to mid 2002 aimed at addressing steep increases in public liability premiums. Although the causes for the premiums rises is a complex national issue, newspapers reported a significant cause as being a large increase in smaller public liability claims.
The Regulation seeks to address community perceptions that certain types of advertising by lawyers generates unnecessary litigation and drives the price of insurance premiums upwards.
The Regulation therefore attempts to balance the right of people to find a legal practitioner for their personal injury needs against exaggerated touting by the legal profession, which may be perceived as encouraging people to lodge claims for personal injury.
The essence of clause 139(1) is to proscribe conduct by a legal practitioner, which consists of the following elements:
- “publishing”, or causing or permitting to be published;
- an “advertisement”;
- which contains
a depiction of ; or
a reference to;
any of the subject matter referred to in cl139(1)(a), (b) or (c).
Clause 139 of the Regulation prohibits publication of an advertisement that includes any reference or depiction of:
- Personal Injury [or work injury];
- Any circumstance, activity or event that suggests personal injury, or the possibility of personal injury; and
- Any connection to, or association with, personal injury or a cause of personal injury.
Clause 138 of the Regulation defines “advertisement” to mean:
“..any communication of information (whether by means of writing, or any still or moving visual image or message or audible message, or any combination of them) that advertises or otherwise promotes the availability or use of a barrister or solicitor to provide legal services, whether or not that is its purpose or only purpose and whether or not that is its only effect”.
Clause 138(a)-(g) defines “publish” as meaning “publish in a newspaper, magazine, journal, periodical, directory or other printed publication….” The scope of the definition is very wide providing for all forms of advertising.
The 2003 Regulation defines advertising as the publication of (amongst other things) any communication that promotes the availability or use of a legal practitioner to provide any legal services, whether or not such promotion is the only purpose or effect of the advertisement.
Exceptions to the 2003 Regulation
Clauses 140 and 140A provide for a number of exceptions to the prohibition on advertising with any connection to personal injury. 140A allows for the advertisement of the practitioner’s “accredited specialty” but with very limited application. For example, a solicitor’s card depicting “specialty accreditation in personal injury may not be gratuitously distributed. A practitioner may advertise this specialisation to present clients, but not to future ones.
The difficulties experienced in promoting compliance with this regulation include the enormous scope of the regulation and the following specific concerns.
- The accredited specialist scheme in New South Wales would seem to be irrelevant in relation to personal injury specialisation if the practitioner cannot advertise that accreditation.
- A great deal of confusion exists around websites and what websites can actually show.
- Concern about the regulation has been expressed by the ACCC in that it may be anti-competitive as it does not have national coverage.
- The regulation appears to have some unintended consequences such as limiting the advertising of occupational health and safety education and other forms of legal education.
- There are jurisdictional and cross-border problems caused when practitioners in a neighbouring state can advertise but New South Wales practitioners may not.
- There are potential constitutional problems in relation to a perceived restraint on interstate trade.
- As both the 2003 and the 2002 regulations are directed at any inducement to legal action, it is no longer possible in New South Wales to advertise “no win no fee”. This may have an adverse impact on the most disadvantaged in our society.
My Office has received complaints in relation to the advertising regulation which allege that the name of a particular solicitor’s firm (in one case where the firm has been practising for over ten years) is in itself arguably in breach of the regulation. Is this form of regulation the best way to regulate advertising in the legal profession in New South Wales? Section 38J of the Legal Profession Act 1987 presently, and has since 1994, rendered it both an offence and potentially professional misconduct or unsatisfactory professional conduct for a barrister or a solicitor to advertise in a way that is either:
- False, misleading or deceptive
- In contravention of the Trade Practices Act
- In contravention of any requirements of the regulations
Although few complaints have been lodged in relation to advertising, and the connection between Section 38J and Part 10 of the Legal Profession Act dealing with complaints and discipline is unclear, the approach suggested here may be more effective if the legislation were to be clarified.
Another approach that seems to be gaining momentum within the legal professional associations in New South Wales is to simply ban all advertising by lawyers with some particular exemptions in relation to the size and type of signage etc. This would, in effect, be a return to pre-1994 regulation. It may also be of concern to the ACCC.
Other areas of governmental intervention in the legal profession’s “monopoly” practice
Over the past decade two other major areas of traditional legal work have been hived off from the profession in New South Wales. These concern work now performed by migration agents and licensed conveyancers.
At present in New South Wales, due to the impact of the legislation which has created MARA (Migration Agents Regulatory Authority) no lawyer may perform the work of a migration agent which is proscribed by Federal legislation. This does not, of course, deny the right of a lawyer to become a migration agent, and many have. However, concern has been expressed over the level of training required to become a registered migration agent (approximately one week), and the ethicacy of the regulation of these officers by MARA itself.
While debate has raged in Queensland recently about the introduction of licensed conveyancers, New South Wales has for almost ten years had licensed conveyancers.
Interestingly, I receive few complaints against licensed conveyancers. This may be because the clients of licensed conveyancers are not aware that they can lodge complaints to my Office, or that perhaps the concerns in relation to conveyancers do not emerge until the property is re-sold and not enough has yet passed for this to have occurred. Nevertheless, the Department of Fair Trading in New South Wales has recently argued (successfully) that licensed conveyancers should no longer be covered by the Legal Profession Act and regulated through my Office. They will, in the not too far distant future, be regulated completely through the Department of Fair Trading.
Money versus Ethics
Shortly after my appointment as Legal Services Commissioner, I was asked to deliver a dinner speech to a function held by a major Sydney commercial law firm. I was asked to speak on the nature of my role, which was new and little understood at the time.
In addressing my topic, I delivered a speech that covered what I considered to be the philosophical underpinning of my Office and how I intended to apply those philosophies in administering my powers under the Legal Profession Act.
I had developed a paper on this subject through a number of speeches that I had given around New South Wales while visiting regional Law Societies and discussing with them similar issues.
Throughout the delivery of my speech that night, I was aware that my audience was, to say the least, hostile. At one point in my speech I decided that I should depart from the paper I had prepared and discuss with them the reasons for their hostility. Accordingly, I asked the audience what their concerns about my position were.
One member of the audience got to his feet and with a great deal of anger and sarcasm put to me the following question:
“Mr Mark, you say that as members of the legal profession we not only owe a duty to, but are indeed accountable to the general community. Well, our bank managers and accountants call us businessmen and they say we are accountable to them. Do you see any tension here?”
As part of my reply I put to him that if I were delivering a similar speech to a room full of doctors, it would be highly unlikely that, in the light of the Hippocratic Oath, any doctor would have the temerity to stand in front of his or her colleagues and say something like; “Mr Mark, on the one hand we have medical ethics on the other hand a desire to make money. We are deciding to drop the ethics and go for the money.”
I proffered that no such doctor could make such a statement and survive amongst his peers, even though some in the room may have actually agreed with that thought. Yet, as I suggested to my audience of lawyers, the individual raising the question with me would probably get a standing ovation, and he did.
This belief in a dichotomy between legal ethics and the ability to make money is both fallacious and incredibly damaging to the profession.
As I mentioned to the audience that night, if the profession is only interested in making money and competing on price it will no longer be a profession but an industry. As an industry, the lawyers would be competing with anybody who could offer a service, without requisite training or ethical standards, but inevitably cheaper than any lawyer.
It is my belief that the legal profession cannot and must not compete on cost alone or, as I have stated earlier, is no longer a profession. What the legal profession needs to do is to find better ways of competing on value and marketing their work in terms of the value they produce rather than the cost of their hourly rate.
I have been told by lawyers that they cannot afford to be ethical in all circumstances as this could lead their clients to leave them and take their work elsewhere. My response has always been: “If the profession remains ethical they will have nowhere else to go”.
Is State Regulation of the Legal Profession Inevitable?
The short answer is yes. The better question is how much State regulation, in what areas and for what purpose.
The creation of my Office in 1994, and the fact that it is now being replicated in Victoria, Queensland and possibly Tasmania as well as potentially in the United Kingdom, is suggestive of the fact that some level of State regulation is inevitable. Also, as mentioned earlier, regulation by organisations like ASIC, ACCC, and direct regulation through Government legislative initiatives have always to some extent been in existence, but only now are gaining speed and frequency.
My thesis is that it is imperative that the legal profession play a much more active and pro-active role in the regulation of the profession both through traditional modes of self-regulation and through creative submissions and suggestions to Government for achieving outcomes to benefit the community directly rather than feasting now with the reality of starvation in the future when Government inevitably intervenes.
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