Today marks an important milestone in our association’s long history as we welcome our new Chief Executive Officer, Sonja Stewart, to the Law Society of NSW.

Sonja has been a Deputy Secretary within the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet and before that, a Deputy Commissioner of the NSW Public Service Commission. Most recently, she was the Interim Chief Executive Officer of Arrilla Consulting, a joint venture with KPMG.

When I announced Sonja’s appointment last month, she said she was excited by the opportunity to work with the Law Society Council; to listen to and represent the legal profession, and to lead an organisation with a history of ensuring a just legal system.

On behalf of the state’s 35,000 solicitors, I would like to wish Sonja every success in the CEO role.

One of Sonja’s first engagements will be to ‘attend’ the Law Society’s online Thought Leadership Series event on defamation reforms later today, featuring NSW Attorney General the Hon. Mark Speakman SC MP, and two leading experts on defamation law, Jim Micallef and Sophie Dawson.

This event has attracted a great deal of interest, which is not surprising given that NSW is the first Australian jurisdiction to legislate far-reaching reforms to our nation’s defamation laws.

The much-anticipated event will be streamed live from 4pm today. Registration is essential.

The Law Society is now calling for expressions of interest from members interested in serving on the Law Society’s policy, regulatory and liaison committees in 2021. Our committees perform valuable work across a range of areas of law and provide an opportunity for members to actively contribute to the work of the Law Society.

Our policy committees draw upon the expertise of volunteer members to prepare our policy submissions to government on key law reform issues while our regulatory committees make important decisions in relation to the various regulatory functions the Law Society undertakes. The committee members meet on a monthly basis during the course of the year, as well as dealing with various matters in between meetings.

Each year, we seek to appoint a broad range of solicitors to our committees which reflect the diversity of the Law Society’s membership. Whatever your area of expertise, I encourage you to consider registering your interest in serving on a Law Society committee. Having served on five specialist committees in my time, including currently as Chair of the Property Law Committee and Chair of the Specialist Accreditation Board, I can attest to the value of contributing to the legal profession in this way.

Richard Harvey, President, Law Society of NSW

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