Proposed Revisions to the Accreditation Standards for Australian Law Courses
Submission Date: 26 June 2025
The Law Council of Australia provided a submission in response to the proposed revisions to the Accreditation Standards for Australian Law Courses (Standards) (attached). As the peak body for the Australian legal profession, the Law Council has strong interest in ensuring the highest standards of legal education are maintained to ensure that entry level legal practitioners are able to serve the public and the courts in a manner commensurate with experience.
This submission is informed by contributions from the Law Council’s Young Lawyers Committee and the Futures Committee. We also acknowledge the ongoing assistance of the Law Council’s Constituent Bodies in developing the Law Council’s positions regarding legal education which have informed this submission.
The Law Council notes that the intention of the revised Standards is to strike a balance between responding to systemic changes in the higher education sector over the last decade (in particular in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic) and ensuring that entry level graduates meet the competence thresholds of skill and knowledge expected by the profession.
Broadly, the revisions to the Standards aim to:
- recognise and enable different modes of course delivery, including fully in-person, fully online and blended models of course delivery;
- expand the definition of ‘teaching methods’ and clarify the prescribed number of hours for teaching Priestley 11 subjects;
- emphasise the significance of active learning and student engagement as a core requirement, with a minimum requirement of 18 hours of direct student engagement in a subject;
- introduce a requirement for a minimum of 50 per cent of assessment to be invigilated;
- restrict the uses of block/intensive delivery models in the teaching of Priestley 11 subjects; and
- introduce other revisions in response to feedback.
Overarching Law Council position
The Law Council generally supports the proposed revisions, subject to the below comments about law courses which are delivered entirely online. The revisions are a timely and appropriate update that reflect the realities of contemporary legal education. We recognise the importance of the university sector being able to evolve with technology and provide digital access to higher education. But we also recognise that that mode of delivery has substantial limitations. Given the broader contextual issues, we endorse a more concentrated approach focussed on the teaching of Priestley 11 subjects, centring core skills and knowledge in graduate attributes, and ensuring the integrity of results.
The Law Council notes and agrees with the Law Institute of Victoria’s submission that law is a fundamentally human activity that involves nuanced interpersonal skills, ethical awareness, and higher order thinking skills, and agree that it is highly desirable that legal education maximise engagement and human interaction.
There is an ambient concern within the legal profession that many law graduates in Australia do not possess sufficient threshold knowledge and skills to be regarded as ‘practice ready’. A 2021 study by the Queensland Law Society and the Centre for Professional Legal Education at Bond University (the QLS Report) found that 80 per cent of respondents did not consider that entry level law graduates had the skills needed for practice, and only 51 per cent considered students had foundational levels of substantive law.1 These concerns have since been reiterated at the national level by the profession in its feedback to the Law Council. This raises important questions about what students are being taught, how they are being taught and assessed, the level of student engagement, and the certification of students on graduation as meeting threshold competencies.
1 Francina Cantatore, Tanya Atwill and Rachael Field, The Job Readiness of Law Graduates and Entry Level Solicitors in Private Practice (Final Report, Queensland Law Society, December 2022).
Last Updated on 28/11/2025
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