Accredited specialist solicitor (Australia)

Specialist accreditation was established in 1992 with aims to:[2]

• Provide the profession and public with a reliable means of identifying a practitioner with proven expertise in their chosen area of law;
• Contribute to and encourage continues development and improvement of standards, quality and delivery of legal services;
• Promote the advancement of legal knowledge and skills; and
• Provide practitioners with the opportunity to demonstrate expertise in their chosen are of law and to have this recognised.

To become an accredited specialist a solicitor needs to meet the following requirements:[2]

• Hold a current solicitor's practising certificate;
• Be a current solicitor member of the Law society or full solicitor member of an equivalent body in an Australian state or territory;
• Be engaged in the practice of law full-time for at least 5 years;
• In each of the three years immediately preceding your application, have been engaged in the area of practice of law in which you would like to become an accreditation specialist;
• In the three years preceding this application, have practiced in the area for not less than 25% of full-time practice.

The Specialist Accreditation exam occurs every year but once every two years for a specific area of law. For example, there was a specialist accreditation exam for Immigration law in 2018, you'll be expecting the next exam in 2020.

The accreditation process takes approximately 6–7 months until results are released. The processes are as follow:

• Submitting application for specialist accreditation before closing date
• Take home assessments where solicitors are given a timeframe to complete
• Formal written exams and live assessments
• Results released

Only solicitors as individuals can become an accredited specialist, not firms. Specialist accreditation are offered in 18 areas of law:[3]

• Australian immigration law (also see the Migration Act[4])
• Advocacy
• Business law
• Children's Law
• Commercial litigation
• Criminal law
• Dispute resolution
• Employment & Industrial relations
• Family law
• Government & Administrative law
• Local government and planning law
• Mediation
• Personal injury law
• Planning & Environment law
• Property law
• Public law
• Taxation law – also see Taxation in Australia
• Wills & Estates law

You can tell when a lawyer is an accredited specialist when they show the logo which is as mark of excellence.[5] When a solicitor or lawyer receives this accreditation it is usually newsworthy due to how hard it is to be obtained.[6] Solicitors that hold this accreditation are usually then appointed to high ranking roles such as the NSW Industrial Relations Commission.[7]

A list of those specialists can be found via the respective states law society to validate that an individual is actually accredited. For example, the accredited solicitors in NSW can be found via NSW LAW SOCIETY.[8]

• Law Council of Australia
• Federal Circuit Court of Australia
• Law of Australia
• Australian Law Reform Commission
• New South Wales Law Reform Commission
• Victorian Law Reform Commission

• Accredited Specialist
• Legal Services in Australia
• Law Society – Solicitor's Practising Certificate
• The Law Society of South Australia – Accredited Specialist
• Law Society of Tasmania – Accreditation Specialisations
• Law Society of Western Australia – Accreditation
• Policy on Mutual Recognition of Accredited Specialists