Changing the culture across the legal profession – Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner
The Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner (OLSC) is the regulator responsible for receiving complaints about NSW lawyers. It has the power to investigate and discipline NSW lawyers for unsatisfactory professional conduct and professional misconduct. The OLSC has stated that, in its view, a lawyer who engages in sexual harassment can be investigated and disciplined for professional misconduct.
In 2019, the OLSC launched a program to improve the culture in the NSW legal profession in relation to sexual harassment. The program identifies sexual harassment as a workplace health and safety issue. It aims to end the ‘culture of silence’ around sexual harassment in the legal profession and to encourage law practices to adopt effective, victim-centred processes to prevent and respond to reports of sexual harassment in law practices.
A key part of the program is the introduction of a new process for people to make reports to the OLSC (anonymously if they wish) about sexual harassment by a person in a law practice. Reports are encouraged from both those who have experienced and those who have witnessed sexual harassment.
Reports can be made to the OLSC either via a telephone service or using forms available from its website. An online reporting platform is also currently being developed. Six OLSC staff members have been specifically trained to handle any reports made, sensitively and supportively.
The program’s guiding principle is to never cause further trauma to a person making a report and to give them control over what use is made of the information they provide. A person making a report can choose whether to make an anonymous report, disclose their identity to the OLSC but (subject to any legal limitations) request that their identity not be disclosed to others, or make a report in which their identity is revealed to relevant parties.
The OLSC will collate, monitor and analyse information provided via these reporting channels. Reports may also trigger compliance audits of law practices and (subject to the wishes of those making reports and the requirements of procedural fairness) disciplinary investigations of individual lawyers.
Statement on sexual harassment in the legal profession