The backroom boys who run the world have been itching to put together a "national legal profession" for about a deade or so. They came up with a scheme which caused many of the smaller jurisdictions to reject the whole idea. So far it has been rejected by W.A. Tasmania, S.A and the Northern Territory.

Strangely there doesn't seem to be any political uniformity about it. The NSW O'Farrell government seems to be happy to go along with the whole idea even though it has claimed to be a champion of States rights when it comes to things like share of GST revenue and the carbon tax. Even though they would never dream of abolishing their own Supreme Courts and just letting the Federal court system run everything, they seem to think that letting the Federal government run their legal profession is a good idea. The Federal system originally envisaged by those who drafted our Constitution did not contemplate the abolition of the States. As some commentators have suggested, a Federal system works best if there is a division of power between the States and the Federal government.

You won't read about it much in the newspapers because it is considered to be one of those boring issues which the public doesn't care much about, and most of the scheming is done at COAG meetings where the Attorney-General has secretive talks with the States. In fact, very few people, including those affected, think much about it.

They lost me when they put out a draft regulation making it misconduct for a lawyer to attend a press conference on behalf of a client. I suppose the next thing they would like to do, is make it misconduct to represent a client.