Happy New Year and welcome back

Happy New Year to you all. I hope that even though we had a COVID set back over the break you managed to have some downtime and relax with family and friends.

2020 was certainly a year like no other. I, for one, am hoping this year will be less challenging and less like living on a rollercoaster. Having said that, some good things came out of last year – the profession responded exceptionally well to moving online (virtually overnight) and, notwithstanding impacts on our practices, the quality of our service to our clients was impacted as little as possible. The courts also made great strides forward with online hearings and minimising, insofar as possible, the negative impact on access to justice. And we all learned new skills on Teams, Zoom and other platforms and how to manage working from home. 

We will be living with COVID for a while yet. Even when we are through it, our working lives are unlikely to completely revert. So, the challenge is to take the best from our pandemic experience and capitalise on it for the benefit of our clients, our practices and for each of us as professionals. I am keen to capture examples of innovation in legal practice during the pandemic and share these with the wider profession. So too I am keen to include business development topics and skills acquired in this last year in ongoing initiatives like our 2021 Future of Law and Innovation in the Profession (FLIP) program.

There are other topics I want to explore through our Thought Leadership program. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues are becoming increasingly important to many businesses (particularly those with market disclosure obligations) and exploring legal issues around, for example, climate change risk, will be of interest to many segments of our profession. In addition, I have always been passionate about diversity and inclusion in the profession, and I am keen that this year we develop resources in two areas. First, guidance for law practices/legal teams on creating disability confident workplaces and, second, a platform for supporting cultural diversity in the profession.

I am deeply honoured to be your President for this year, and I am very excited about the year ahead. 

Juliana Warner, President, the Law Society of NSW

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