NSW’s top judge launches blistering attack on legal college

NSW’s top judge has declared war on a major not-for-profit body raking in millions of dollars from aspiring lawyers, in an unprecedented intervention likely to trigger a shake-up of legal training across the country.

In an extraordinary speech in Sydney on Thursday night, Chief Justice Andrew Bell said he had contacted the College of Law to express his “profound concern about the level of charging of students” after becoming aware of “the extremely high fees charged for practical legal training … in this state”.

NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell has taken aim at the College of Law.

The College of Law is the country’s largest provider of practical legal training (PLT) to law graduates. The training, which starts after a budding lawyer completes their degree, is a prerequisite to practising law. It takes 15 weeks full-time, and there is a separate work experience component.

The college touts itself on its website as a “a proudly not-for-profit entity” that “stands for learning – not earning”.

But the chief justice said he had examined its financial statements and “discovered (to my surprise, to put the matter mildly) that the College of Law has been generating an average ‘surplus’ of almost $16 million per annum over the past decade and accumulated ‘retained earnings’ of just under $180 million”.

Its surplus in the 2023-24 financial year was $18.8 million, financial records show, while in the previous year it was $15.9 million.

“The College of Law ... has accumulated ‘retained earnings’ of just under $180 million.”

NSW Chief Justice Andrew Bell

“The provision of PLT is, as I understand it, the College of Law’s principal source of revenue,” Bell said in the speech marking the opening of the law term.

Bell said the fees last year “were between $11,000 and $12,000 … to obtain the graduate diploma [of legal practice], which is, of course, a prerequisite for admission to practice”.

“This is an extremely large amount of money which may well present a significant barrier to entry to the legal profession, especially given the increasing cost of university fees,” he said.

Bell said he had expressed his “profound concern about the level of charging to the chairman and chief executive of the College of Law, especially the practice of generating very substantial annual surpluses by a not-for-profit body, from students required to undertake PLT”.

He said he raised the concerns in his capacity as chief justice and a member of the Legal Profession Admission Board (LPAB), which considers the eligibility and suitability of people seeking to be admitted as NSW lawyers, “together with [Court of Appeal] Justice Tony Payne, who is the presiding member of the LPAB”.

“I am pleased to note that, subsequent to my meeting, the College of Law has announced that it will significantly reduce the standard PLT tuition fee to a newly adjusted base of $9200, with arrangements in place for ongoing review mechanisms into the future,” Bell said.

It is a long-standing practice that some, typically large, law firms cover PLT fees as a means of luring new graduates, subject to a condition that the recruits stay at the firm for a set period.

Chief Justice Andrew Bell said the college had accumulated a huge pool of reserves. Credit: Supreme Court of NSW

While Bell did not criticise that practice, he said it “no doubt operates as a disincentive” to young lawyers who wanted to start their careers in the public sector, such as with the Director of Public Prosecutions, Legal Aid, the Aboriginal Legal Service, or community legal centres.

“It goes without saying that the administration of justice requires capable, well-motivated young lawyers in these publicly important roles,” he said.

Bell said the College of Law’s reduction in fees this year was a “salutary development” but “[the] fact remains … that the College has accumulated a huge pool of reserves which I would expect to be returned to the profession”.

“One way this might be done would be by way of forgiveness of past fees, and future fee waivers, for those law graduates entering or who have entered into public service roles of the kind I have described,” he said.

“I know that the Attorney [General, Michael Daley] shares my concern about the fees which have been charged for practical legal training and the huge reserves that have been accumulated. We both look forward to further action from the College of Law in this regard.”

In a sign this is the first shot fired in a campaign to overhaul practical legal training and reduce fees, Bell announced it was also an “appropriate time” to gauge the profession’s views about PLT.

He said the LPAB had, with his support, engaged independent research agency Urbis to conduct a profession-wide survey, to be distributed next week.

“The survey will, I hope, form the initial basis for the development of proposals for the reform of PLT,” Bell said.

“I hope that, with the assistance of the profession, PLT can be improved in quality and the costs of undertaking it for entry-level lawyers can come down significantly.”

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