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National Competition Policy Review of the Legal Profession Act 1987
____________________ 6.1 Principle 2 of the COAG Working Party report stated that member Governments would not sanction in legislation professional association rules which mandated or gave exclusive status to particular specialist accreditation schemes.
I CURRENT SCHEME
6.2 The 1993 Act inserted section 38K which provides that a barrister or solicitor may hold himself or herself out as a specialist, but only if the barrister or solicitor has appropriate expertise or experience or is accredited under an accreditation scheme conducted by the Law Society or the Bar Association.[21]
6.3 The Law Society conducts professional accreditation schemes.
II EVALUATION
6.4 The Act permits accreditation schemes but does not give them exclusive status.
6.5 Accreditation may enhance the ability of consumers to choose legal services, by giving them access to more information about the relative merits of practitioners. Conversely, accreditation may distort markets by increasing the costs of services and excluding practitioners who are not accredited from providing services, even if they have the expertise to do so.[22] In this case, it would have an anti-competitive effect.
6.6 It is not clear whether accreditation schemes have had an anti-competitive effect on the market for legal services. However, because a practitioner need not be accredited to advertise himself or herself as a specialist, the existence of formal accreditation schemes appears unlikely to have this effect. Further, the Law Society's annual report of 1997 indicates that more than 1000 solicitors, of a total of about 13,000, are accredited specialists. This is a significant proportion of the profession.
QUESTIONS
A. Have the specialist accreditation schemes affected the market for legal services?
B. Does the public benefit achieved by informing consumers about quality services outweigh any anti-competitive effect on other practitioners?
C. Are the existing accreditation schemes sufficiently rigorous to ensure that accredited practitioners can offer highly specialised services? Should the Act expressly permit other organisations, such as universities, to offer accreditation schemes?
Footnotes
[21] The Law Institute, in Victoria, and the respective Law Societies, in Queensland and Western Australia offer specialist accreditation schemes. In these states, only practitioners who have successfully completed these schemes may hold themselves out as 'specialists'. Practitioners in South Australia and Tasmania may hold themselves out as 'specialists', providing that the claim is not 'false, misleading or deceptive'. The ACT Barristers Rules permit practitioners to describe themselves as 'specialists' in certain circumstances. Northern Territory practitioners are prohibited from advertising 'specialist' services.
[22] Paper presented by Mr Steve Rix, Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Proceedings of the Seminar on the Motor Accidents Scheme - Legal Costs, Parliament of New South Wales Standing Committee on Law and Justice (Sydney 1997) , 7.
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