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Law Society of NSW names new CEO
The chief operating officer of the Law Society of NSW has been named as its new chief executive, a role he has been acting in since October of last year.
Jerome Doraisamy
The Council of the Law Society of NSW, Australia’s largest legal profession membership organisation, has officially appointed Kenneth Tickle (pictured) as its chief executive.
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Tickle joined the Law Society in 2006 and has served as the organisation’s chief operating officer for more than a decade and has also served as its chief financial officer.
When Tickle commenced with the organisation, Law Society president Brett McGrath noted in a statement, Facebook was only two years old and the first iPhone had yet to be launched.
“Since then, the NSW solicitor profession has more than doubled in size to just over 41,000 practitioners,” he said.
Tickle assumed the role of acting CEO in early October last year following the resignation of Sonja Stewart. He holds a bachelor of business and a master of professional accounting and is a chartered accountant. He is also a fellow of CPA Australia, a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a member of the Governance Institute of Australia.
His longevity, McGrath proclaimed, “brings an unequalled depth of corporate knowledge to the role”, offering an “enormous advantage” for work with the organisation’s council, members, and staff.
“This includes work to advance the establishment of a national legal profession as envisioned by uniform legal profession legislation now in operation in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia. I look forward to working with our new CEO on this important project to bring efficiency and opportunities for growth to the profession across Australia,” McGrath said.
McGrath said he is “delighted” that the council had expressed its confidence in Tickle’s leadership of the Law Society.
“The council and I congratulate Mr Tickle on his appointment,” he said.
The news follows a period of wide-ranging advocacy from the Law Society of NSW.
In late February, and as reported by Lawyers Weekly, it released new guidance around climate change issues and related consequences and emphasised that these risks will affect all areas of legal practice, and in January, it flagged concerns about proposed jury laws in the state, as well as flagged hate speech reforms.
Elsewhere, the Law Society of NSW has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) taskforce to assist the state’s legal professionals with the challenges of emerging technology. Lawyers can, McGrath recently told Lawyers Weekly, either embrace AI or run from it, but “either way, we have to deal with it”.
