Workplace & conduct · 02
Professional-conduct inquiries for statutory bodies
Presiding over or prosecuting conduct inquiries under a professional body’s own rules — charge-sheet drafting, evidence and bundle preparation, the inquiry on the record, and the determination with…
Presiding over or prosecuting conduct inquiries under a professional body’s own rules — charge-sheet drafting, evidence and bundle preparation, the inquiry on the record, and the determination with reasons.
Statutory councils and professional bodies regulating their own registered persons.
A conduct inquiry that does not follow the body’s own rules to the letter is reviewable no matter how well-founded the finding. The rules were made by the council and bind the council first.
The law it sits under
The framework this work answers to.
A professional-conduct inquiry run by a statutory body is an exercise of public power. It is governed by the body’s own enabling Act, rules and code of conduct, by the principle of legality, and — where the outcome amounts to administrative action — by PAJA, including the right to reasons. The audi alteram partem rule is not a formality here: the record of what the respondent was told, and when, is usually the first thing a review court looks at.
How the engagement runs
What you are committing to.
The inquiry is designed against the body’s own instrument first, because a process borrowed from a different council is reviewable on that ground alone. The work covers the framing of charges, the evidentiary standard, the conduct of the inquiry, and the written finding with reasons capable of surviving review.
This is the work the practice was built on. The director spent nine years inside the national regulator of the legal profession, including in its disciplinary and compliance functions, which is a different vantage point from having appeared before one.
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