By Dr Felicity Bell and Vishwa Shah -
Snapshot
- Supervised legal practice is widely regarded as an important stage of professional development after admission, yet it remains a source of dissatisfaction.
- Recent cases involving the misuse of generative AI by a supervisee provide a window into problematic work practices and pitfalls, including the challenges of remote supervision and misplaced trust.
- Supervision plans and organisational AI policy must not operate in silos. Normalising transparency in work habits between supervisor and supervisee can contribute to both better supervision and final work product, while helping supervisees to build their practical skills.
Supervised legal practice typically involves experienced practitioners instructing, mentoring and assuming responsibility for a less-experienced practitioner’s work.
But supervision has a wide meaning. Any solicitor can be a supervisee unless they have carriage of the matter, and holders of unrestricted practising certificates who commit disciplinary infractions may find a supervision condition reimposed.
Supervised legal practice
Here, we consider new entrants to the profession, that is, the requirement that newly admitted lawyers must engage in 18 to 24 months of supervised legal practice before ‘Condition 2’ can be removed from their practising certificate. This requirement is a modern, statutory version of the apprenticeship model of legal training. Despite its longevity, the supervision of new lawyers continues to be a source of dissatisfaction for some supervisees (see Early career lawyers’ experiences of supervised legal practice: 2023 survey | VLSB+C). Relatively speaking, however, very few cases result in disciplinary or other legal action. Those that do tend to involve extreme fact circumstances, where poor supervision is one of a multitude of other ethical and practice issues. For instance, in Victorian Legal Services Commissioner v Knight (Legal Practice) [2024] VCAT 887, the principal made the seemingly appropriate concession ‘that he was probably not providing appropriate supervision to junior lawyers when he was coming down off cocaine’ (at [168]). Another category of cases involve junior practitioners committing ethical breaches, which may call into question the adequacy of the supervision they have received (see, e.g., Legal Services Commissioner v Lee [2026] QCAT 34); or appearing in court without proper supervision (Titus & Ksenia [2026] FedCFamC1F 104; Council of the Law Society of New South Wales v Judah [2022] NSWCATOD 89).
