Professional associations as regulators: an interview study of the Law Society of New South Wales

Abstract

ABSTRACT Professional associations, once the bodies responsible for professional self-regulation, have lost regulatory power. Some have entered into co-regulatory arrangements with state or independent bodies; others have lost power entirely. But although self-regulation has been widely discredited, little research has examined how surviving regulator-associations are adapting to change and, in turn, how those adaptations affect their regulatory roles. Associations that have formal regulatory powers must reconcile their regulatory responsibilities with the need to retain membership and their desires to survive as organisations. This article examines the activities of the Law Society of New South Wales, an association jointly responsible for the regulation of the New South Wales legal profession. Drawing on the results of an interview study of the Law Society’s members and leaders, it analyses the Law Society’s formal and informal regulatory functions and shows how they interact with its commercial membership imperatives, to reveal where regulatory effects might be produced, or lost, and how. The findings support criticisms of association regulation and provide evidence of declining association influence. However, the association is also shown to embody self-regulatory, co-regulatory and corporate values simultaneously, reasserting regulatory influence and pursuing its own survival in the process.