inspired by your example and will want to do the same. This is how we change the legal profession - as we always have, one piece at a time. It’s like the common law, turbo-charged by technology. Of course, once you get going, you will run into the next problem - of all of the things I could possibly do, which ones are worth pursuing and which ones threaten to destroy something that is actually worth preserving? I think the answer lies in our ethical duties to the court and the client. If you feel that a change could be destructive, ask yourself whether it affects your duty to the court. If it does not adversely affect your duty to the court, consider whether it enhances your client’s experience of the legal service. If it does, then go for it! In using this criteria, I think we need to be honest about the extent of our ethical duties to courts and clients. We need to revisit and re-engage with the purposes and principles of those duties. When I speak to law students, I exhort them to study jurisprudence, because legal philosophy will be a much surer guide to navigating innovation in the legal profession than the technical rules. Practising lawyers need to take a similar approach to legal ethics. Don’t waste your ethics CPD on the same session about conflict of interest you’ve been hearing for years. Engage more deeply with your ethical obligations by attending lectures, such as those hosted by the Australian Academy of Law and the Rule of Law Institute of Australia. I say we need to be ‘honest’, because I think our ethical duties can sometimes be used as shields to oppose changes that are uncomfortable to lawyers. I have heard lawyers express doubt about whether unbundling of services undermines our duty to the court. When that doubt is itself unbundled, it usually turns out to be more a concern about unbundling not meeting the expectations or preferences of individual judicial officers, rather than any point of principle that offends our ethical duty to the court. Similarly, I have heard lawyers oppose changes to legal practice as ‘not being in the best interests of the client’. Again, when we dive a little deeper, it is usually a departure from a service that the lawyer would prefer the client to use because it is more exhaustive or accurate and the client does not want to invest the time, money and emotional investment required. Innovation requires lawyers to understand that, ultimately, a client is in the best position to decide what is in their best interests - and we can’t blame them if they choose a quick, but less than perfect, option to resolve their legal issues. As we progress down this path, I think we will reach points where innovation clashes with the rules regulating lawyers. I draw a distinction between our ethical duties and the Australian Solicitor Conduct Rules. I think we should exercise extreme caution in changing the former, whereas the latter may be more open to debate and change. We must remember that, in large part, the Rules merely codify years of case law, in which courts have applied the principles of our ethical duties to particular factual scenarios. As the world changes, some of those scenarios may become redundant - and, if so, it follows that the rules should at least be revisited to see if they still have relevance. For example, regulators used to interpret the rules as requiring the publication of a physical address for a legal practice. This rule clearly doesn’t work with virtual practices, especially those run from home. By revisiting the purpose of the rule and how it related to our ethical duties, it was possible to reshape the rule so that it focused on ensuring clients could contact lawyers and serve documents and less about finding a lawyer in a physical location. Consideration will also need to be given as to what constitutes ‘legal work’ or ‘legal practice’. Old definitions which rely on legal work being ‘what lawyers traditionally do’ are inherently inimical to innovation. Furthermore, it may expose consumers to risk by excluding from regulations some online services that deliver legal outcomes. For example, it may be time to revisit whether online websites that produce legal documents constitute ‘legal work’. The disclaimers that the website ‘does not constitute legal advice’ should be questioned when the websites do more than fill in gaps on a form letter by guiding users with targeted questions and information which changes depending on the answers provided by the user. Such websites are increasingly incorporating legal knowledge that extends beyond the text of a statute and are providing documents tailored to the individual user’s circumstances. Can it still be said that the websites are providing legal information, not legal advice? We will need to keep debating these issues, on which reasonable minds will differ. We need to test what we are doing and be open to challenge and criticism, from our clients, our peers and our elders. On that front, I would like to congratulate legal elders such as the Chief Justice Martin and Justice Gordon of the High Court in the leadership they are showing in challenging the profession and government to think about these issues. If we really believe that there is something special about legal issues being resolved with the assistance of an independent legal profession (and I think that there is), then it is incumbent upon us to innovate and change in a way that is culturally legal and preserves the things that only lawyers can provide. Because if we don’t, who will? NOTES: 1. Amelia Devlyn, ‘The Magna Carta and its Relevance to Contemporary Australia’ (2016) 7 The West Australian Jurist 389, 395-6 . 2. http://www.allens.com.au/services/accelerate/. 3. Nicola Berkovic, ‘Allens law firm embraces start-ups’, The Australian (online), 18 August 2015 . 4. See e.g. Nest Legal . 5. See e.g. Law Central ; Online Will Kit ; Slater and Gordon Online . 6. See e.g. Family Mediation Station . 7. See e.g. Divorce Right . 8. See e.g. Robot Lawyers Australia . 9. Christine Coumarelos et al, ‘Legal Australia-Wide Survey: Legal Need in Australia’ (Law and Justice Foundation of New South Wales, August 2012) . 10. See e.g. Justice Michelle Gordon, ‘South Australia’s Uniqueness: Challenges and Opportunities for the South Australian Bar’ (Speech delivered at the 2017 Annual Conference, South Australian Bar Association, 25 February 2017) . 11. Department of Justice and Regulation, Access to Justice Review, Report and Recommendations (2016), Chapter 4 . 12. See e.g. Canada’s Civil Resolution Tribunal . 13. Katie Miller, Law Institute of Victoria, Disruption, Innovation and Change: The Future of the Legal Profession (2015) . Special thanks to Supporting Sponsor 19