Rules of Professional Conduct and Practice

In February 2002 the Law Council promulgated its Model Rules of Professional Conduct and Practice (Model Rules) as a statement of ethical practising standards for legal practitioners. The Model Rules informed and influenced the development of Legal Profession Rules of the States and territories. A breach of the Legal Profession Rules is legislatively deemed as conduct capable of constituting unsatisfactory professional conduct or professional misconduct, and as such, represents the basis upon which to initiate complaints and discipline processes.

In late 2008 a reference group comprising representatives from the Law Societies and the Large Law Firm Group was established to review the various jurisdictional threads of work being undertaken to update conduct rules. The scope of the review of the Model Rules was expanded in order to take advantage of the valuable work being done in this field by other bodies including the Law Institute of Victoria and the Queensland Law Society. However, the Reference Group also drew on a broad range of source materials including, where appropriate, international professional conduct rules.

A new group, the National Conduct Rules Reference Group, was formed in late 2008 to assist in the task. The Reference Group includes two representatives from the previous Model Conduct Rules Working Group, a representative from each law society and a representative of the Large Law Firm Group.

It is expected that the project will result in a single set of Mutual Conduct Rules which can ultimately be linked into the COAG National Legal Profession Project.