Law schools and the burden of bureaucracy: release the yoke (a plea from the coalface). Part 1: Over-regulation in Australia

Compliance work is stifling the capacity of Australian law schools and legal academics to engage in the core activities of research and teaching. There are multiple bodies who accredit, monitor and/or impose reporting requirements upon legal educators, and the legal profession is involved in more than one of the regulatory systems. In this two-part articles, we make a plea from the coalface of academia, that the burden of regulation, certification, and accreditation of law schools and law teaching be lightened, In the first part, which is this article, we overview the legal profession's role in legal education, the current and proposed Law Admissions Consultative Committee (LACC) regulatory systems, and critique the LACC Standards. In Part 2, (a future article), we draw from international experiences to compare with the Australian regulatory regime and make a proposal for change.