The Grind Is Real
Fifty-two percent of lawyers report burnout. Lawyers aged 26-35 experience the highest levels. SafeWork NSW classifies law as a high-risk profession for fatigue—the same category as emergency services and fly-in, fly-out workers. One in ten lawyers plans to leave the profession within a year.
First-year lawyers at major Australian firms are expected to bill over forty hours weekly. In May 2025, HWL Ebsworth announced that associates must now bill 6.75 hours daily—which translates to nine or ten actual working hours once you factor in administration, training, and non-billable tasks. The billable hour target has become a six-minute tyrant governing young legal careers.
And when you appear before a judge unprepared, exhausted, scrambling? No sympathy. No accommodation for the midnight billing, the four hours’ sleep, the three other matters exploding simultaneously.
Why? Because we’re different. And if you don’t understand why, you don’t understand your own profession.
Chapter III and the Solicitor
Open the Australian Constitution. The first three chapters are headed “The Parliament,” “The Executive Government,” and “The Judicature.” This is the architecture of Australian democracy.
In the 1956 Boilermakers’ Case, the High Court established what’s now called the Boilermakers’ principle: only courts created under, or given power through, Chapter III of the Constitution can exercise Commonwealth judicial power. And those courts cannot exercise executive or legislative powers. This is strict separation—stricter than England, where until 2005 the Lord Chancellor sat across all three branches.
What does this have to do with you? Everything. When you were admitted to practice, you became an officer of a Chapter III institution. When you file documents, when you appear in court, when you draft pleadings—you’re participating in the exercise of judicial power under the Constitution.
You’re not just an employee with a law degree. You’re a constitutional actor. The court system doesn’t work without you. The third branch of government depends on your competence, your preparation, your honesty. When you fail, the constitutional machinery grinds.
That’s why there’s no sympathy from the bench. The judge isn’t being cruel. The judge understands what you might not yet: the administration of justice—the thing that stands between citizens and arbitrary power—depends on you showing up ready.
The Kable Legacy
In 1996, Gregory Wayne Kable challenged a NSW statute that allowed preventive detention based on predictions of future dangerousness. The High Court struck it down in Kable v Director of Public Prosecutions—not because it violated any express constitutional right, but because it compromised the institutional integrity of the NSW Supreme Court.
The doctrine that emerged has profound implications. State parliaments cannot abolish their Supreme Courts. They cannot confer functions on state courts that undermine their institutional integrity as components of the integrated Australian court system. Chapter III creates a national judicial architecture where state and federal courts are interrelated. It would be inconsistent to have two grades of justice where independence is protected federally but not at the state level.
Why does this matter to you? The Kable principle means that across every Australian jurisdiction—federal, state, and territory—the courts must maintain their constitutional character. And you’re part of how they do that.
When you exercise independent judgment—when you refuse to be the mere mouthpiece of the client—you’re not just following ethical rules. You’re participating in the constitutional protection of judicial integrity. Your independence isn’t a nice professional ideal. It’s constitutionally mandated.
The Kable doctrine protects courts from legislative interference. But courts also need protection from practitioners who would subordinate their professional judgment to client pressure, partner demands, or commercial convenience. You are part of the constitutional architecture. Act like it.
The Brennan Burden
Sir Gerard Brennan served as Chief Justice of Australia from 1995 to 1998. He wrote the lead judgment in Mabo, overturning terra nullius. He shaped administrative law in Kioa v West. He understood, perhaps better than any modern jurist, the relationship between the lawyer and the rule of law.
His essential formulation:
“A lawyer therefore carries both a benefit and a burden. The benefit is obvious; the opportunity to pursue a career in the law as a member of the legal profession. The burden lies in the lawyer’s obligation to apply the rule of law and in the duty to assist the court in the doing of justice according to law.” — Sir Gerard Brennan AC KBE
Note the structure: benefit and burden. You don’t get one without the other.
In a 2007 speech, Brennan elaborated:
“The legal profession is a profession of service. In maintaining the rule of law, it gives vitality to the peace and order, the freedom and the decency, of the society in which we live. Sometimes that may be an anxious duty, sometimes difficult to perform. But that has long been the experience of a robust and proud profession.”
Anxious duty. Difficult to perform. Sir Gerard wasn’t naive about what practice demands. He knew the weight. But he also knew the stakes. In his 1997 address on the State of the Judicature, he observed that the judiciary “is the institution which avoids self-help in resolving disputes and controls excesses of power. Its decrees give concrete effect to the laws of the State. What the Judicature does or does not do largely determines the character of the society in which we live.”
The Judicature determines the character of society. You’re part of the Judicature now. The burnout, the billable hours, the demanding judges, the impossible deadlines—they’re the price of the Brennan burden. Not punishment. Price.
No Independent Profession, No Democracy
On 31 October 2024, Justice Banks-Smith of the Federal Court delivered the Sir Francis Burt Oration. Her central proposition was stark:
“Where there is no independent legal profession there can be no independent judiciary, no rule of law, no justice, no democracy and no freedom.” — Justice Banks-Smith, Federal Court of Australia
Read that chain of dependencies. No independent legal profession leads to no independent judiciary leads to no rule of law leads to no justice leads to no democracy leads to no freedom. You are the first link in that chain.
Justice Banks-Smith addressed lawyers directly, noting that they have their ears to the ground, that they hear about injustice, that they have the capacity to work on it. This isn’t aspirational rhetoric. It’s a description of constitutional reality.
The courts can only adjudicate matters brought before them. Citizens can only access the courts through lawyers in most cases. If the profession is compromised—captured by government, corrupted by commercial pressure, degraded by incompetence—the entire system downstream fails.
How much of your law degree was devoted to understanding this? How many PLT sessions explained why your admission was a constitutional moment? How many mentors have walked you through Chapter III and its implications for your daily practice? You need to understand not just how to practice, but why the practice exists and what it protects.
Admission as Judicial Act
When you became a lawyer, you probably thought of it as completing a qualification—like finishing a degree or getting a professional certification. It wasn’t.
Being admitted to the legal profession is a judicial proceeding—an exercise by the Supreme Court of an inherent function in the administration of justice. You weren’t licensed by an administrative agency. You weren’t certified by an industry body. You were admitted by a court—the Supreme Court of your state or territory—exercising its inherent jurisdiction.
The Legal Profession Uniform Law explicitly preserves this: nothing in the legislation is intended to interfere with the inherent jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to refuse admission. Parliament can pass legislation about legal practice. But Parliament cannot abolish the Supreme Court’s inherent power to determine who may appear before it and under what conditions.
This creates a different relationship than other professions have with their regulators. The Medical Board licenses doctors under statutory authority. CPA Australia certifies accountants. But the Supreme Court doesn’t merely regulate lawyers. It admits them—makes them officers of the court, part of the institution itself.
And the supervisory jurisdiction that follows is designed to impose on solicitors higher standards than the law applies generally. Not contract standards. Not negligence standards. Higher standards—for the purpose of ensuring honourable conduct on the part of the Court’s own officers.
That’s why the standards feel relentless. You’re not being held to the standard of a reasonable professional. You’re being held to the standard of an officer of the court.
The 2025 Challenge
On 6 February 2025, Chief Justice Andrew Bell of the NSW Supreme Court delivered the Opening of Law Term address. His theme was present and future challenges to the rule of law and for the legal profession. He acknowledged that events domestically and abroad had generated great disquiet and anxiety about the state of society and the rule of law.
On the legal profession’s role, he was direct:
“The legal profession is and should be a critical, thinking profession.” — Chief Justice Andrew Bell, NSW Supreme Court, February 2025
He warned against outsourcing judgment to AI, noting that qualified lawyers are admitted to practice law, for which they remain responsible—this does not mean delegating the job to a sophisticated computer program.
The Chief Justice also cited the rise of anti-Semitic incidents in Australia, US presidential pardons for January 6 rioters which “gravely undermined the rule of law in the United States,” the sovereign citizen movement gaining traction in Australia, and lawyers using AI to generate non-existent case references and false transcript extracts.
His conclusion echoed the bicentenary theme of the NSW Supreme Court: “The rule of law, as with democracy itself, cannot be taken for granted.”
We are practising law at a moment when the rule of law faces genuine threats—not hypothetical ones, not exam-question scenarios, but actual challenges to the constitutional order. Being a critical, thinking profession means more than analytical rigour in legal research. It means understanding your constitutional position well enough to recognise when that position—and the broader system it supports—is under threat.
Why the Grind Exists
So let’s return to where we started: the exhaustion, the pressure, the apparent lack of sympathy from the bench. It’s not cruelty. It’s constitutional necessity.
Chapter III establishes a strict separation of judicial power. You participate in that power when you practice. The Kable doctrine protects the institutional integrity of courts across the integrated national system. Your independence is part of that protection. The Brennan burden articulates what you accepted at admission: the obligation to apply the rule of law and assist the court in doing justice according to law—even when it’s anxious, even when it’s difficult.
Justice Banks-Smith’s chain shows what’s at stake: no independent profession means no independent judiciary means no rule of law means no democracy means no freedom. Admission as judicial act explains why the standards are higher than the law applies generally—you’re not a contractor, you’re an officer of the court. Chief Justice Bell’s 2025 challenge reminds us that the rule of law cannot be taken for granted, and that we must be a critical, thinking profession capable of identifying and resisting threats.
A Word to Mentors
If you’re a senior practitioner reading this, consider how often you explain why the standards are what they are. It’s easy to tell a graduate to be better prepared, to know the authorities, to arrive on time, to maintain their duties to the court. But without the constitutional context, these demands can feel like arbitrary hazing—the legal profession’s equivalent of military discipline for its own sake.
Young lawyers need to understand that their admission was a judicial act, not administrative certification. They need to know they are Chapter III actors, not just employees with law degrees. They need to grasp that their independence is constitutionally mandated, not merely professionally preferred. They need to see that the standards they’re held to are higher than ordinary legal standards for a reason. They need to comprehend that the system of checks and balances protecting Australian democracy depends on their competence.
When a young lawyer understands why the burden exists, they’re better equipped to carry it.
Know Jill
If you don’t understand the separation of powers, you don’t understand why you were admitted by a court rather than licensed by an agency. You don’t understand why your duty to the court overrides your duty to the client. You don’t understand why the Supreme Court exercises inherent jurisdiction over your conduct. You don’t understand why the standards are higher than the law applies generally. You don’t understand why the bench expects preparation, not excuses. You don’t understand why the profession’s independence from the executive matters. You don’t understand why burnout in this profession isn’t just an HR problem—it’s constitutionally significant.
We are different. Not better than accountants or doctors or engineers—different. Constitutionally embedded. Chapter III officers. The human infrastructure of the third branch of government.
Sir Gerard Brennan called it a benefit and a burden. Justice Banks-Smith called it the precondition of democracy itself. Chief Justice Bell called us to be a critical, thinking profession.
Understanding this won’t make the hours shorter. It won’t make the partners less demanding. It won’t make the judges more forgiving. But it might make the grind meaningful. And in a profession where fifty-two percent report burnout, meaning matters.
You carry the Brennan burden now. You’re part of the Kable legacy. You stand in the constitutional architecture that makes Australian democracy possible.
Now, get back to work!