Commissioner Update - December 2022
Commissioner update to the legal profession - December 2022. In this edition: Office closure | Removing supervised legal practice condition from your PC | Cybersecurity | LPLC Alert.
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Comparing the impact of place-based integrated service partnerships to traditional models of legal service delivery
Once you have been admitted to the legal profession in an Australian jurisdiction, you are eligible to apply for a Victorian practising certificate with us.
If you hold a current practising certificate from another Australian jurisdiction, you can practise with it in Victoria until it expires. However, you should contact your interstate regulator to ensure you are complying with any requirements needed when engaging in legal practice in another jurisdiction.
If this is the case, you will only need to apply for a Victorian practising certificate for the new practising year before June 30.
Before you can submit an online application for a Victorian practising certificate, you must be registered with us. To register, you need to provide us with a Certificate of Fitness issued by your home jurisdiction. (Depending on the jurisdiction, the certificate may also be known as a 'certificate of evidentiary'.)
When you provide us with a Certificate of Fitness, please also provide the following information:
• Preferred title
• Full name (including any middle names)
• Date of birth, and
• Admissions details, including your state and date of admission (if not included in the certificate).
You can provide your Certificate of Fitness and your personal details through the Lawyer Enquiry Form. We will then issue you with a practitioner ID.
You must apply for your practising certificate via LSB Online within 28 days of the date of your certificate of fitness.
If you intend to engage in legal practice principally in an Australian jurisdiction other than Victoria, please contact the relevant authority in that jurisdiction to determine the registration requirements. As part of the registration process, it is likely that you will need to provide a Certificate of Fitness issued by us within the last 28 days. Request it here.
If you are the principal of a law practice and intend to close your practice, there are a number of steps you should take.
Engaging in unqualified legal practice, or falsely claiming that you are qualified to engage in legal practice, is a criminal offence in Victoria. Each year, we investigate instances of unqualified legal practice by individuals and/or businesses.
Generally, three things may be unqualified legal practice:
To understand who can engage in legal practice, see the Who can practise page of our website.
