• Login   

• For Solicitors
• For the Community
• About the Law Society
• Ressource center

Opening of Law Term Speech (Feb 2010)

1 February 2010

Good evening.

I wish to particularly acknowledge and welcome

• The Honourable James Spigelman AC, Chief Justice of New South Wales, and Mrs Alice Spigelman 
• The Most Reverend Peter Jensen, Anglican Archbishop of Sydney 
• Mr Greg Smith SC MP, NSW Shadow Attorney General 
• Mr Glenn Ferguson, President Law Council of Australia
• AND the many eminent senior members of the judiciary, government agencies and the legal profession who have been able to join us.

I also want to pay my respects to the traditional owners of this land, the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.

Law is here to serve the people. Within that paradigm, tonight I am here to tell you how my 2010 Law Society Council will serve the profession and the community.

I am going to do that firstly by telling you a bit about who I am; and secondly by sharing with you our agenda and goals for this year.

How did I come to this role?

I stand here before you because I am fortunate to have had the support of both current and former Law Society councillors.

I continue to be supported by a great team that includes past and present councillors and Law Society staff.

I wish to particularly acknowledge the support of my predecessor and mentor, Joe Catanzariti. Joe has enabled me to inherit a progressive association where much has been achieved in enhancing the services and support available to members

Elected by my law society council colleagues to this role, I present my self as particularly representative of the NSW legal culture. 

I have worked in Sydney since being admitted in 1985.

I was born in Molong in country NSW, and spent my formative years in Bourke and country towns in NSW.

Upon admission as a lawyer I worked for a large firm, a medium firm and a small firm, each being different firms.

Following this I worked for the government’s property development arm, Landcom. I come to the Law Society from the realm of heavy transport where I was Corporate Counsel at Sydney Buses.

This experience helps me represent all elements of the profession and makes me empathetic towards its manifold emanations.

In giving you an insight into who I am I can’t help but bring my sporting background into the equation.

For the last 15 years I have pursued the two strength sports of power lifting and weightlifting (think Dean Lukin).

I’ve pursued these sports as athlete, referee, coach and now director of the Australian Weightlifting Federation.

Some of my recent experiences in dealing with anxious moments or difficult issues come out of the sporting arena.

Sport, like law, is a great leveller and the importance of playing by the rules has been demonstrated to me time and time again.

In particular, I bring my sporting experience to the national profession process and to the Law Society’s relationship with other legal bodies such as the Law Council of Australia.

I know that even though each one of the states may promote its own issues in particular, in the end, the real competition is usually external to Australia.

Once someone makes the national team, no one thinks of the lifter as being from any particular state.

In law, as in sport, we compete on the world stage, in an endeavour to win, but also just so that we can compete, continue to participate, be relevant and safeguard Australia’s very relevant place in the world for future generations.

The Law Council has recently set its international agenda for 2010 and as a constituent body to the Council, the NSW Law Society will work toward the implementation of the program.

The Law Society of NSW is the largest constituent body of the Law Council with 43% of the nation’s lawyers and most of the incorporated legal practices.

NSW is a business hub and it is appropriate to for this Society to play a role in the Law Council’s endeavour to enhance Australia's legal profile internationally.

Given Australia's vast geographic spread, it is the case, as with the sports structures, that you need state bodies located geographically close to the athletes; or law societies close to the lawyers; to deliver services and be close to the action.

We are not the only country dealing with harmonisation issues. In the United States of America, each of the 50 states has a separate admissions procedure and there is no national mutual recognition scheme. So a Californian practitioner cannot necessarily practice in New York.

By way of further example, Florida doesn’t recognise the practising certificate of a lawyer from another state.

France, a unitary state, with 221 regions and 100 departments, has 179 law societies or ‘barreaux’. Each law society has a role, with the most prominent being the Ordre des Avocats du barreau de Paris comprising approximately 22,000 lawyers or 44 per cent of France’s lawyers.

Like NSW, the Paris barreau is the largest society with correspondingly larger financial resources than the others.

Each of these societies has to link in and work with quite a number of overarching peak legal bodies such as the Conseil National des Barreaux, the Conseil des Barreaux Européens, the Federation des Barreaux d’Europe, the Confédération Nationale des Avocats, and the Conference des Batonniers.

By comparison Australia’s structure seems a trifle simpler and more logical.

The national Legal Profession Reform is reaching a critical point with legislation due any day.

The Law Society of NSW will be reviewing that legislation to try to achieve an efficient regulatory framework that delivers a uniform complaints system; an efficient and streamlined system for lawyers and firms; and good outcomes for consumers.

This discursive look at other countries’ models leads to an examination of what I see as the role of the President of the Law Society of NSW.

I see it as an ambassadorial role. It is a custodial role.

I get the baton from my predecessor Joe Catanzariti and I run as fast and as hard with that baton as I can for a year before I hand the baton to the next “runner”. The next runner happens to be our Senior Vice President Stuart Westgarth.

It is a very short period of time within which to achieve anything so I am pleased that I am able to build upon some of the platforms established by my predecessor presidents such as promoting the mental and physical wellbeing of solicitors, and resisting ageism within the profession.

The French word for Law Society President – Le batonnier – the standard bearer or baton carrier – seems to sum up the dynamic and challenging nature of this role.

The Law Society of NSW has stood the test of a century and a quarter. It must continue to be a force that unites the profession and which credibly and powerfully advances access to justice and the rule of law.

Achieving that cohesion and unity of purpose is a major challenge on several fronts.

Firstly there is a growing segmentation and complexity to the profession.

About 70% of practitioners are in private practice; close to 12% in government areas and 18% in corporate – each have unique needs. So too do the solicitors in large law firms who make up 12.6% of the profession.

Secondly our members are getting younger with about half the membership aged 40 years or under.

Thirdly the ratio between the number of male and female practitioners, currently 55:45 respectively, is expected to reach ‘tipping point’ in 2013.

My goals are threefold.

1. Support solicitors 
2. Enhance access to justice 
3. Build networks (to support the development of the National Profession)

Supporting solicitors

Supporting and strengthening our response to member’s needs and interests will be our primary focus.

In 2010 the Law Society of NSW will be working to:

• Assist sole practitioners and small firms to meet the growing demands of regulatory compliance. 
• Strengthen Continuing Legal Education (CLE) resources targeted to the growing government and corporate lawyers sector.
• Roll out the mental health and wellbeing education program following a successful pilot in 2009.
• Deliver a state-wide program of financial planning seminars.
• Increase our online capacity giving members access to resources and professional support products.
• Engage with recruitment firms to encourage them to have equitable placement policies that include measures to place older lawyers.

Enhancing access to justice

In the spirit of the Commonwealth Attorney General’s ‘Access to Justice’ report I will push for the composition of decision-making bodies to reflect the diversity of the community.
I will push for a culture of inclusion and diversity with regard to senior roles.

The next decade needs to be liberated from the circularity of the debate about gender equity.

The debate has gone on for 30 years. In France, President Nicolas Sarkosy says the debate has spanned 30 years and six pieces of legislation with no resultant change. In Australia as elsewhere, real advances in the area of equity will set us all free.

Access to justice also means engaging the community interest in more complex legal issues, including topical corporate law issues, and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms.

I quote from the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Report by the Access to Justice Taskforce, A Strategic Framework for Access to Justice in the Federal Civil Justice System:

“Justice institutions enable people to protect their rights against infringement by government or other people or bodies in society and permits parties to bring actions against government to limit executive power and ensure government is accountable. People have and will continue to have, disputes. Mostly these are resolved without resorting to the machinery of formal justice. Access to justice should include resilience: reinforcing and enhancing the capacity of people to resolve disputes themselves. Justice must be maintained in individuals’ daily activities. Reform should focus on the everyday justice, not simply the mechanisms of legal institutions. Ultimately access to justice is not just formally bringing cases but also of enhancing the justice quality of the relations and transactions in which people are engaged.”

The Law Society can be a portal for the implementation of access to justice initiatives through programs such as SCRAM, the Law Society's School’s Conflict Resolution and Mediation program which operates in schools working with high schools students to look at ways of resolving conflict in a structured way.

In our role as a portal for justice, the Law Society will also be working to persuade government to extend the Magistrates Early Referral into Treatment (MERIT) program to include defendants who have alcohol problems.

This Local Court-based diversion program targets defendants with a demonstrable drug problem who are eligible for release on bail and who are motivated to engage in rehabilitation.

Research by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research shows that the three month program is having great success in reducing rates of recidivism.

Building networks and avenues for work

We will work with the Law Council of Australia to promote Australian lawyers generally and to enhance the profile of Australian lawyers and the Australian legal system. Clearly this is with a view of cultivating work avenues and opportunities.

However it is also just for the sheer value of having networks, and liaison opportunities.

We will investigate assisting regional solicitors in country areas where there is a dearth of lawyers in providing ‘locum relief’ in the form of overseas lawyers who seek temporary ‘internships’. We will assist young Australian lawyers to find exchange opportunities overseas.

Now you have heard a bit about me and my vision for 2010.

The role of the judiciary in upholding the supremacy of the law and the role of lawyers in defending and promoting that supremacy has a long history.

It harks back to the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. In particular Article 39 stated:

“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land.”

Similarly the tradition of officially marking the Opening of Law Term with the Red Mass and other denominational church services has its origins in the Middle Ages when judges prayed for guidance at the start of the legal term. The first mass was held in the Cathedral of Paris, Notre Dame de Paris, in 1245, and introduced in the United States in 1928 and in Sydney in 1931.

Essential to this year and the decade ahead is public confidence in the legal system. As the Chief Justice has said on an earlier occasion,

"We are the inheritors of an 800 year old tradition which represents one of the most extraordinary constructs. The common law and the adversary system - a manifestation of the power of Socratic dialogue – is one of the greatest mechanisms for the identification of truth and the maintenance of social stability that has ever been devised."

This is a night when we are here to celebrate our emblems and traditions and to affirm our commitment to the justice process.

We seek your support in the Society’s endeavour to be a portal of justice for the community and the profession in this fresh new decade.

As we enter 2010 our eyes will also move to the state election in March 2011 and the upcoming Federal election. The Law Society must stand as an effective protector of justice and sentinel of a just and properly resourced legal system.

Law is a highly competitive area and on many occasions we are competing robustly against close colleagues. Competition is good. It makes us dare to do our best.

With competition as our backdrop I hope that we all recognise:

1. That it is important to support and give back to the profession, and
2. That we are all best served by having a collegiate and cohesive profession.

Before I go, it is traditional to commend to you the official President’s charity.

The official charity for 2010 will be Caritas Australia. Caritas supports communities particularly women in the Congo, families in the Pacific and in Indigenous communities in NSW and Western Australia’s Kimberly region.

Enjoy your evening. Thank you – and ‘bon appetit’ (or enjoy your main).

Mary Macken
President, Law Society of NSW