Many of the issues confronting practitioners are common across jurisdictions, as Greg Ross discovers.

People often assume that government and public sector legal practice is jurisdiction centric. However, many of the issues confronting practitioners are common across jurisdictions, as I’ve discovered through my involvement with the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA).

The CLA is a body that seeks to, “uphold the rule of law, by encouraging exchanges between members of the profession, through projects, conferences and workshops, and by driving improvements in legal education.”

The CLA’s very existence and nature also facilitates friendships between members, where they can share their experiences and ideas to better serve the needs of their respective communities and jurisdictions.

CPD in Nauru

I first met Graham Leung at a CLA dinner in Kenya in 2007. Graham is a human rights lawyer and practitioner with regional and international experience. He is currently Secretary for Justice and Border Control for the Republic of Nauru. Graham has a special interest in the role of judges and lawyers in promoting the rule of law, democracy and good governance, especially for countries in transition.

He invited me to travel to Nauru in May to deliver a series of continuing legal education and training seminars to government lawyers and officials. Never one to decline an invitation to talk and share ideas with lawyers in other parts of the world, I accepted.

While we were initially expecting a small number of participants from the Department of Justice and Border Control, the turnout over the two days was three times the originally anticipated audience, as representatives of other agencies became aware of the availability of the training sessions and chose to participate.

Topics formally covered in the seminar series were:

• Current issues in procurement.
• The who, what, when and why of contract.
• Legal ethics and model litigant principles.
• Contract negotiation skills and tactics.
• Common commercial agreements.
• Contract management, discussion and Q+A. 

Issues in procurement

Procurement is a constantly developing and specialist area for lawyers and procurement practitioners, hence Nauru officials were keen to receive training on developments in a larger jurisdiction.

For a number of smaller island countries, like Nauru, there’s a recognised benefit in what might be described as the pooling of procurement, through a historic ‘Procurement Agent’ model, so as to obtain better prices. As internal procurement capacity develops, Nauru is placing less reliance upon the Procurement Agent model.

We also discussed the use of the procurement system to further social policy, such as the introduction of Indigenous suppliers into the supply chain and the potential impact of the implementation of the recently promulgated ISO 20400 standard to do with building sustainability into the supply chain.

The impact of blockchain technology on procurement was also discussed, particularly in context of potential risks to sovereign entities of that type technology.

Climate change and procurement

From time to time, we hear about the threat of rising sea levels on small island nations. In the context of government procurement for Nauru, we also discussed the need for performance criteria to consider the ecological impact of supplier production methodologies, as may relate to rising sea levels.

Rule of law

While there are shared problems and issues, the day-to-day differences in practice between Nauru and Australia could hardly be greater. In Nauru, the scarcity of public sector resources in the sense of access to law and the capacity to deal with issues is far more palpable. However, lawyers and officials in both countries share a very real concern about how the rule of law is best supported with increasingly scarce resources.

Of particular concern is the potential for personal and professional conflicts of interest to arise in a small jurisdiction, like Nauru. This led to a discussion of how lawyers might best maintain professional independence in a very small jurisdiction, where everyone is known to everyone.