The Professional Standards Scheme under the spotlight: lessons from recent cases
The Law Society of New South Wales provides a Professional Standards Scheme to protect legal consumers while capping civil liability for solicitors. Solicitors must adhere to specific criteria to qualify for these liability protections.
Why it matters
Understanding professional liability schemes is essential for legal practitioners to manage risk and for consumers to understand their rights in negligence claims.
The Professional Standards Scheme (‘ Scheme ‘) administered by the Law Society of New South Wales is intended to protect consumers of legal services by raising professional standards. It is also intended to protect solicitors from calamitous claims by capping their liability for civil damages. The Scheme can be very beneficial for solicitors subject to negligence claims. However, to obtain that benefit, solicitors must meet certain criteria. There are also some features of the Scheme which mean it will not always apply.
The article provides a factual overview of a regulatory scheme without taking a political stance.
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