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According to the nation’s first law officer, Australian lawyers have long been ahead of the game. In an exclusive chat with Lawyers Weekly, the Attorney-General reflected on how best practitioners Down Under can keep delivering for clients in a changing world.
Attorney-General Michelle Rowland remembers being a graduate lawyer at the time that Google was still in its infancy. In those days, she told Lawyers Weekly, practitioners – particularly the younger ones – would learn through manual research. Many of this brand’s subscribers, she said, “will have either good memories or challenging memories” of spending long periods of time doing discovery the old-fashioned way.
It was through those processes, she said, that one would learn how best to practise law, and the same lessons are applicable today. While AI “will continue to dominate” and the ways in which lawyers’ skills are obtained will continue to evolve, she said, there are also opportunities.
“One of the key challenges, in a climate where we’ve got global uncertainty, is how Australian lawyers are going to keep being able to compete globally and domestically. From my point of view, there’s no substitute for quality,” she said.
“I’ve always maintained that the Australian legal profession is ahead of its game. Even when I started out [as a lawyer], Australian lawyers were being sought after in the UK, Ireland, [and in] a lot of countries [that] were seeking to have Australian lawyers, because they had such good reputations.”
To this end, the A-G called for our legal profession to “keep being excellent”. We have, she said, outstanding firms, law schools, and an increasingly diverse cohort of people choosing law as a profession, both to practice and enter the private sector, which sets the profession up to maintain such levels of quality.
The comments were made as part of a recent instalment of Legal Firesides, produced exclusively for subscribers of Lawyers Weekly Premium, in which A-G Rowland covered a range of topics, including the newly legislated hate speech laws, the Albanese government’s law reform agenda, and her background as a young lawyer.
In that same episode, she fleshed out how the Attorney-General’s Department and the federal government moved to strike the right balance between various stakeholder interests with the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Act 2026, and how, in a short time frame, the government moved to ensure passage of those laws.
When asked what advice she has for lawyers in tackling some of the market challenges she sees, and ensuring that client service delivery remains at optimal levels, A-G Rowland said the “key is around delivery” – something she and the federal government are striving for in the second term of the Albanese prime ministership.
“The one thing that is expected of service providers, what’s expected of me as a member of parliament, as a cabinet minister, as a colleague, is delivery,” she said.
“Talk is cheap,” the A-G warned, and pointed to the breakdown of trust and confidence in global institutions, and the need to avoid the proffering of solutions that one cannot deliver on.
“Point to the achievements that you’ve had at different milestones. I’ve even set that task for myself as one of the key portfolios in this government, to be able to assist with enabling people to do their jobs. I mean, that’s our job, really,” she said.
“I don’t see my role as Attorney-General as that different to legal professionals these days. It’s about helping other people to get their jobs done. And, despite all the changes in technology, in the global turmoil that we have around us, if we can maintain that as our focus, I think that we’ll all succeed.”
Jerome Doraisamy is the managing editor of professional services (including Lawyers Weekly, HR Leader, Accountants Daily, and Accounting Times). He is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in New South Wales, and a board director of the Minds Count Foundation.
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