What Safe Work Australia’s Best Practice Review could mean for the legal profession 

The Consultation Summary notes that stakeholders are calling for WHS laws to more clearly address harmful behaviours at work, including harassment and discrimination on the basis of sex, sexuality, gender identity, race, disability, and age, as well as gendered hazards like work-related gendered violence (which encompasses both bullying and harassment).

Many legal workplaces are already taking meaningful steps, but the Review invites all of us to consider what more can be done to build a safer, healthier sector.

Rates of harm higher than global averages

Approximately 73 per cent of women in Australian legal workplaces have been bullied at work, and approximately 61 per cent have experienced sexual harassment, rates which are significantly higher than global averages (International Bar Association, 2019; VLSBC, 2019). Exposure to these hazards can result in anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and, in the worst cases, suicide (WorkSafe Victoria, 2022). Framed through a safety lens, these are foreseeable hazards that legal workplaces have an obligation to prevent.

Understanding the structural drivers of harm

The underrepresentation of women and diverse groups, both within the profession and in leadership roles, drives behavioural harm, noting that low workforce diversity and power imbalances along gendered lines are known risk factors for harmful behaviour, particularly in hierarchical workplaces like law (Safe Work Australia, 2022).

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Women comprise less than 29 per cent of partners or principals (College of Law, 2022) but are over-represented in reports of harm, noting that there are frequently power differentials at the time of the most recent incident (VLSBC, 2019). This is consistent with previous Safe Work Australia research, which has found that 62.3 per cent of bullying perpetrators held supervisory roles, and that harmful behaviour is a common tactic to maintain workplace power (Safe Work Australia, 2016).

People from culturally and racially marginalised communities have also faced unique hurdles entering and progressing in the profession (The Law Society of NSW, 2024). Despite approximately 20 per cent of Australians having Asian ancestry, only 5 per cent of the legal profession are Asian Australians, and it will take almost 100 years before our judiciary reflects the Australian population (Asian Australian Lawyers Association, 2025). The Disabled Australian Lawyers Association has similarly found that our profession lacks a culture of embedding inclusive practices (Dalton, A., Alexander, E., Wade, N., 2022).

The current lack of diversity in the profession and in leadership roles means that decision makers may be less likely to acknowledge, understand and safely address harmful behaviour experienced by diverse groups (Women’s Legal Services Victoria, 2025). Put plainly, the people most likely to be harmed are least likely to be in rooms where safety decisions are made.

Embedding safety into workplace structures

The instinct in legal workplaces, as in most other workplaces, has been to respond to individual reports of behavioural harm through training programs and complaints-based reporting frameworks. The evidence tells us these do not work without structural change. A review of 30 years of workplace training in the United States found no evidence that it reduced the frequency of harassment, concluding that most prevention training had not functioned as a prevention tool (US EEOC, 2016).

The answer is found in primary prevention. Put simply, the key to ending harmful behaviour against women and diverse groups is to achieve equity in decision-making roles (Our Watch, 2nd Ed., 2021). For legal employers, this raises questions that go beyond policy documents and training schedules.

A path forward for the legal profession

People like me are statistically underrepresented in our profession (DEWR, 2025). Because of this, in 2011, as a migrant woman of colour on a scholarship at Bond University, the odds were not in my favour. I got lucky.

It was around this time that Patrick Keyzer invited me to an Australian Lawyers for Human Rights Dinner Against the Death Penalty, where I was seated next to Julian Burnside AO KC and Stephen Keim SC. I told them my story, and they agreed to give me an opportunity for work experience. There were many other wonderful humans I would meet along the way who opened doors for me.

These people did something remarkable. And yet, for every person like me who found their way in through a chance encounter, how many didn’t? This question should inform our approach to structural inclusion.

For the people who made it in, how many more left the profession because of the behavioural harm they experienced or because they could never see a path for themselves reflected in leadership? These questions should inform our retention and progression strategies.

Former High Court Justice Kirby said, “Despite the high aspirations we have of our legal system, the law in Australia was sometimes quite discriminatory. It was discriminatory against women, people of colour, and Aboriginal Australians… I knew discrimination extended also to me, as a gay man” (The Law Society of NSW, 2026).

Justice Kirby’s words are a reminder that progress in our profession has always depended on those willing to name what others preferred to leave unsaid.

The Best Practice Review presents an opportunity to consider how the diversity within our profession, and at its most senior ranks, contributes to safer, more equitable outcomes for all people, regardless of sex, sexuality, gender identity, race, disability, and age.

In doing this, we can examine our recruitment and progression pipelines, what attrition data looks like by demographic and how structural inequality is contributing to behavioural harm. The answers to these questions will tell us more about our workplaces than any policy document or training program.

Sapphire Parsons is a senior workplace lawyer.