Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill

The debate includes debate on schedule 5.

Part 8 continues the Council of Legal Education, which is renamed the New Zealand Council of Legal Education. I recall that submitters on this part were very grateful to members of the council for making the effort to make direct submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee. The functions and powers of the council have been aligned more closely with current practice. The council’s functions and powers include regulation of the education of candidates for admissions and the recognition of foreign legal qualifications. The work the council does is absolutely imperative to the quality of the legal profession in this country, and I am very pleased to be supporting this part.

I should note that Government Supplementary Order Paper 289 will change the arrangements for funding the council. I recall that the select committee debated this at some length. It seemed to be a vexed question. However, it is a vexed question that has now been resolved by agreement between the council and the New Zealand Law Society. That agreement is reflected in the Supplementary Order Paper, which states that the levies paid to the council to fund its annual budget shall not exceed an aggregate of 5 percent of the practising fees paid by lawyers. Should the 5 percent be insufficient, any dispute between the council and the New Zealand Law Society is to be referred to the Minister, who may set an amount above 5 percent.

I pay tribute to both parties for coming to a sensible arrangement, and I commend the part to the Committee.

As Dr Worth has said, he is currently serving on the Council of Legal Education. I served on it during the 1990s, and I do not think it would be inappropriate simply to mention that the Speaker herself served on the Council of Legal Education when she was Dean of the University of Waikato School of Law. So there is some experience of that council around this place. I agree with the Minister that the council performs a very important role, particularly in prescribing courses for candidates for admission as barristers and solicitors. Of course, it is the Law Society thereafter that is responsible for continuing legal education, and for what I hope, as I said earlier, will be mandatory continuing legal education.

The functions are set out in clause 251, and I have no problem with that. The Minister has referred to the agreement on levies, so I will not waste time on that. But I will say something about the Institute of Professional Legal Studies, because I am very interested and pleased to see that a power has been included in clause 256 that will enable the council to sell, on such terms as it thinks fit, the business conducted by the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. My hope is that that sale comes sooner rather than later, because at the present time I think the council is in the invidious position of being not only a regulator of professional legal studies but also an operator of one of the two options for professional legal studies. In my opinion, that is unfair to the College of Law that runs the competitor system. Generally speaking, especially in the 1980s, there was, in some respects, an obsession about dividing organisations between regulators and those who actually operate the service—

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: Funders and providers.

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON:—funders and providers—that sometimes reached absurd proportions. That occurred, for example, with the Arts Council and the Arts Board, but I will not go there; I would rather focus on lawyers and conveyancers. However, I think it is appropriate for the Council of Legal Education to operate as regulator, and it can sell the Institute of Professional Legal Studies to some other body in such a way that when it is dealing with the College of Law, it is able—and is seen to be able—to act fairly and justly, as between various providers.

So I too pay tribute to the Council of Legal Education. I especially pay tribute to Justice Tipping, now of the Supreme Court, who has been chair of that body for many years, and to those lawyers who have given up their time to serve on it, as well. They are the only comments I wish to make about this part, because generally speaking the council is working very well.

Perhaps there is not a lot in Part 8 that need detain us as we move to the closing stages of debate on this Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill, but it is right to know that apparently for good reason the Council of Legal Education has been renamed the New Zealand Council of Legal Education. The previous speaker paid tribute to Justice Tipping, and that is wholly appropriate, but I also identify for recognition the secretary of the council, Rosemary Gordon, who gives much of her time, and certainly all of her skill, to running that enterprise on a proper and professional basis. It is certainly a challenging organisation to be part of. There are people in this Chamber, including people like Christine Grice, who make a magnificent contribution to the work of the council.

The council’s primary task is concerned with supervising the provision of training for those who, having secured their degrees in law, embark on pre-admission training prior to being admitted as barristers and solicitors of the High Court. That is, of course, not its only function, but that is its primary function. I would also instance as an example of the further work it does the liaison that is undertaken with the deans of the faculties of law schools throughout this country, in both the setting of prescriptions and the assessment and moderation of papers in the core subjects that are seen to constitute the prerequisites for a law degree.

One of the issues that has challenged the New Zealand Council of Legal Education in recent times is the flow of persons from overseas who wish to practise law in this country. Those people come from a range of jurisdictions, where the practice of law may be markedly different from the way law is practised in this country. They come not only from the common law jurisdictions with which we are all very familiar, but from other places as well where the rule of law is perhaps pursued in a somewhat different way. I mention this only because there is an issue that sweeps across a wider spectrum of activity than simply the law—that of authenticating the qualifications that those coming from other countries claim. I do not doubt—and certainly the Council of Legal Education has struck this—there are circumstances whereby people proffer their credentials for scrutiny and those credentials, following scrutiny, do not stack up. We need to develop more sophisticated mechanisms to make sure that those who seek to practise in this country against the background of qualifications secured in a foreign clime do, in fact, have the qualifications they assert they do.

Mr Finlayson has spoken of a current issue—and it is probably rightly described as a conflict—between the College of Law and the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. The College of Law has a background of delivering training in jurisdictions other than New Zealand and Australia—in other countries besides—and it has recently entered the market, particularly at the behest of the major law firms, to provide a greater degree of distance learning. That, I suppose, has provoked a response from the Institute of Professional Legal Studies to offer a similar type of training programme. How achievable it is, as Mr Finlayson has suggested, to sell the institute is not perhaps an issue for today, but he is right to identify the potential for conflict that exists in the case of a council that has both a regulating and a providing function. Quite clearly, it is a time of tension between those entities. The Council of Legal Education’s concern has to be that services are properly delivered.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 10 in the name of the Hon Mark Burton to an amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 289 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to clause 252 be agreed to.

Amendment to the amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 289 in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to clause 252 as amended, the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 324 in his name, and the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 10 in the name of the Hon Mark Burton to Part 8 be agreed to.

Amendment as amended and amendments agreed to.

Part 8 as amended agreed to.

Part 9 Lawyers and Conveyancers Special Fund