New Conduct Rules commenced on 1 July. Have you read them?

The Legal Profession (Solicitors) Conduct Rules 2026 took effect across the Uniform Law jurisdictions and the ACT, amended in part to sit alongside the new AML/CTF regime.

The Profession Press · Editorial

New Conduct Rules commenced on 1 July. Have you read them?

The Legal Profession (Solicitors) Conduct Rules 2026 commenced on 1 July 2026, alongside the Legal Profession Uniform Legal Practice (Solicitors) Amendment Rules 2026 and amendments to the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules. The ACT Law Society has urged members to familiarise themselves with the changes, which followed a consultation running from May to June.

Part of the amendment work was driven from the national level, through the Law Council, to align conduct obligations with the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing reforms that commenced the same day. Two regulatory regimes, one commencement date, and a profession that spent most of June finalising end-of-financial-year matters.

The practical problem

Conduct rule amendments do not announce themselves. There is no transitional grace period in which a practitioner may plead unfamiliarity, and no regulator has ever accepted "I did not know the rule had changed" as an answer. The obligation to know the rules is itself a rule.

What makes this round harder than most is the interaction. Where conduct obligations and AML/CTF obligations meet — client identification, source of funds, the handling of trust monies, the point at which suspicion crystallises — the two frameworks now have to be read together. A practitioner can satisfy one and breach the other. Confidentiality and the duty to report do not always point the same way, and the amended rules are the profession's attempt to say which yields.

What to do this week

Read the amended rules against your existing engagement and file-opening precedents, not in isolation.
Identify which of your matters now trigger designated services under the AML/CTF regime, and check that your conduct rule compliance follows the same client.
Diarise a supervision conversation with junior practitioners. They will not have read the rules either, and the responsibility for their conduct is not theirs alone.

Rules commence quietly. Breaches do not.