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Addressing bullying in the Australian legal profession

In Australia a concern has been building about bullying in the legal profession. This has not arisen in isolation. It reflects broader community disquiet that has led to an amendment to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) to define workplace bullying and provide bullied workers with an avenue for seeking orders to prevent bullying behaviours. In the legal profession, some extra impetus for reflection and action has been generated by a number of events in the public domain that suggest there is a concerning level of bullying being modelled at the higher echelons of the profession and pervasive in legal practice. This suggests that the ‘way lawyers work’ may be ‘a significant explanatory factor in lawyers’ experiences of bullying’. Several public statements by eminent judges pointing to a judicial culture provided a significant catalyst for reflection on bullying. On his retirement from Australia’s highest court in 2013, former Justice Dyson Heydon wrote of ‘stronger judicial personalities [who] tend push the weaker into submission’. He also referred to tactics where a judge might interrupt counsel ‘brutally and continuously’ and then ensure these advocates are further ‘deflated by contemptuous grunts and skeptical snorts and incredulous eyerolling’. Another retired High Court judge, Michael Kirby, expressed further concerns in the same year, noting that even the ‘High Court of Australia has not been exempt from unpleasant behaviour and attempted bullying’. Practical examples of problematic judicial conduct were also exposed when the conduct of a magistrate was examined before the New South Wales Parliament in proceedings for her removal. Media reports that the Deputy Director of Prosecutions in NSW warned prosecutors that bullying was a disciplinary matter were cited as evidence the profession was taking bullying seriously. Around the same time several reports exposed broader problems experienced by members of the profession. The Law Council of Australia commissioned a report to