Given the stakes, governments must continuously ask how high standards of competence and ethicality among professionals can be assured.

A new report produced by Dr Justine Rogers and Deborah Hartstein, UNSW Law, responds to this problem. Entitled ‘The Value of Contemporary Professional Associations’, it addresses the following questions:

‘What is the role professional associations should play, and are able to play, in professional regulation?'

‘And what do professional associations achieve that state regulation or leaving it to the market alone could not?’

This report was commissioned by the Professional Standards Councils (PSC), which is a statutory regulator of professional associations and through them, of professions. It was part of a three-year program of research on the condition and challenges of modern professions, funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, with the PSC and the support of Allens, Corr Chambers Westgarth and the CLMR.

The Report provides theory-driven standards of excellence as benchmarks, cautionary guidance, and action points for associations and other professional bodies to assess, improve and promote their effectiveness in their roles.

The Report also presents the findings of an in-depth interview study of members and leaders of the Law Society of New South Wales. The Law Society is used as a prototype to demonstrate how this type of inquiry could be extended to other professional associations and professions.

The full report can be accessed using the link below.