Annual Report 2011 - Legal Services Commissioner

Educating the legal profession
and consumers of legal services
As previously stated, two of the LSC’s statutory
objectives are to:
• educate the legal profession about issues of concern to
the profession and to consumers of legal services, and
• educate the community about legal issues and the
rights and obligations that flow from the client-lawyer
relationship.
The LSC delivers on these objectives
through its Education Program, which
promotes engagement with a diverse
range of consumers of legal services
and members of the legal profession,
in both rural and metropolitan areas
of Victoria.
Educating the legal profession
The LSC engages with and provides
feedback to the legal profession
through a variety of means including
ethics workshops, seminar and
conference presentations, round table
discussions and lectures to law and
legal studies students.
Ethics workshops
The LSC conducts ethics workshops
which aim to educate lawyers about
ethical conduct and their professional
responsibilities. The workshops
present lawyers with a range of
scenarios that they may encounter in
everyday legal practice. As a group,
the participants discuss and consider
the appropriate course of action in
each case. The scenarios are based
on common issues which feature in
complaints to the LSC and in issues
identified through discussions with
community support groups.
LSC staff guide the discussions and
advise the workshop participants
on the appropriate outcome in each
scenario. Lawyers can claim these
workshops as part of the compulsory
continuing professional development
training scheme. In the reporting
year, the LSC conducted ten ethics
workshops for over 300 lawyers.
The workshops included:
• three regional workshops in
Bendigo, Beechworth and
Warrnambool
• four workshops in the city and
suburbs
• two workshops for government
lawyers (the Department of Human
Services Court Advisory Unit and the
Australian Crime Commission), and
• one workshop for a plaintiff law firm.
Seminars and conferences
The LSC also engages with the legal
profession through seminar and
conference presentations. During
the year the LSC presented to over
1,800 lawyers at 28 seminars and
conferences across metropolitan
Melbourne and regional Victoria.
In the previous reporting year, the
LSC delivered 11 presentations to
380 lawyers. The main focus of the
presentations was the changes made
to the complaints handling regime,
however several other topics were
also discussed, including:
• client and practitioner problems
in the area of succession law
• legal cost consultants and the
issues around non-lawyer costs
consultants
• trends in complaints about
lawyers, and how to avoid them
• developing and maintaining
good relationships within
legal partnerships
• the proposed national legal
profession reforms, and
• the regulation of the legal
profession in general.
The presentations were made to a diverse
range of legal professionals, including:
• Northern Suburbs Law Association
meeting (August 2010)
• Conference of Regulatory Officers
(August 2010)
• Leo Cussen Institute’s Talk to the
Profession Seminar (August 2010)
• Australian Lawyers Alliance Cost
Law Seminar (September 2010)
• Victorian Bar Professional Development
Seminar (September 2010)
• Law Institute of Victoria’s Property
and Environment Law Conference
(October 2010)
• Eastern Suburbs Law Association
meeting (October 2010)
• Law Institute of Victoria’s National
Costs Law Conference (February 2011)
• Victorian Bar Readers’ course
(November 2010 and April 2011), and
• Southern Solicitors Group meeting
(May 2011).
University students
and trainee lawyers
The LSC presents to undergraduate and
postgraduate students enrolled in law
courses at Victorian universities. In 2010-
11, the LSC delivered 13 presentations
to 600 law and legal studies students
across four institutions, including
Monash University, La Trobe University,
Victoria University and the University of
Melbourne. The lectures covered the
role and functions of the LSC, Victoria’s
regulatory regime and issues which
feature commonly in complaints to the
LSC. LSC staff also presented to over
100 trainees enrolled in the Leo Cussen
Practical Legal Trainee course. This
presentation discussed the role of the
LSC, common mistakes in legal practice
and the importance of communicating
effectively with clients.
22 Legal Services COMMISSIONER Annual Report 2011