This, I am afraid, allows us to become complacent and, in the public eye, appear reactionary and precious. Perhaps my second impression is more useful, even if it seems to contradict the first. The more I read and hear the repeated complaints about lawyers being expensive, out of touch and combative, the more I am struck by the importance of upholding, and portraying, the real message. Even our most ignorant critics, whose lack of research is rivalled only by their confidence in their generalisations, are right to share our wish for upholding the profession s key values of integrity, efficiency and accessibility. If we can overcome public disenchantment misled by ill-informed and cliched complaints, we have more chance of getting the right mixture of delivering words and achieving action which upholds the continuance of those values.
Legal practitioners can implement that strategy individually, and as a body.
Lawyers interested in maintaining and advancing our professional standards should express their views to the Law Council through their professional associations, so that they may influence what the Law Council does on behalf of the Australian legal profession. As lawyers, we should assume that we will benefit from robust debate. But that debate must be rational, based on solid research and examples, and must note the positive with the negative. There are good news stories about Australian lawyers which we should not be shy to tell. Wherever our professional structures have been affected by statutory changes in the wake of Hilmer and COAG we have disappointed those who cried chaos, by embracing the changes and, indeed, often driving them.