Professional discipline for incompetent lawyers? Developments in the UK and Australia.

Since the 1980s legislatures in the United Kingdom and Australia have looked for ways to increase the level of protection given to consumers of legal services. This paper places these developments in the context of regulatory theory, compares and contrasts legislative developments in the United Kingdom and Australia to track the various approaches taken, and uses some preliminary statistical data from Australia to test the degree to which the reforms flowed through into the types of charges prosecuted and the sorts of orders made by disciplinary tribunals. The paper concludes that, despite the strong interventionist approach of Australian parliaments, the impact of the reforms may have been limited by the confused nature of the debate surrounding the reforms, and their impact is most likely to be seen in private, mediated settlements of complaints than in the types of matters brought before a disciplinary tribunal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]