I am the Principal of Jake McKinley, a firm of twenty staff, practising in commercial, litigation, employment, property, elderlaw, family and wills and estates work. I was admitted in 2011 and hold BA, LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Sydney. I am the chief executive officer of Humans United By Law and have served as a director and treasurer of Metro Assist Ltd, a not-for-profit community organisation. The perspective I bring to Council is that of small private practice: firms that train graduates, run their own trust accounts, pay their own premiums and meet the Law Society both as regulator and as parent of their insurer. I stood for Council last year on that basis, and I stand again.

Professional indemnity insurance is the most pressing issue for many firms, and it is where I have spent much of the past year. Solicitors in this state have one approved insurer for the compulsory layer of cover, and that insurer is owned by the Law Society. I convene Solicitors for PI Choice, a group of practitioners who ask that a second insurer be approved to offer the compulsory layer on the same terms, so that solicitors can choose. In March 2026 the Legislative Council ordered production of the Department of Communities and Justice's papers on the approval of an additional insurer, and in August it referred the question to a Select Committee. I drafted our group's submission from the papers produced. We make no criticism of Lawcover, which has insured this profession for a quarter of a century. Our point is about choice and about who decides. The Society is both the regulator of the profession and the parent of its only insurer, and Council is where those roles meet.

I support genuine choice in professional indemnity insurance. Members should be free to select from any insurer that offers a policy compliant with s 210 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law. Council should actively advocate for approval of compliant alternatives and ensure transparent comparisons of coverage, exclusions and claims processes with the existing monopoly policy. For many boutique and suburban practices, premiums now exceed $70,000 a year. Insurance should protect the public and the profession while remaining affordable enough to support growing practices. My commitment is to press for open, transparent approval processes and competitive choice that preserves Minimum Standards while delivering affordability.

Supporting women in law and creating genuine career pathways is another priority, and the next measure of equality in this profession is ownership: whether women hold equity in the firms they help build. Women make up almost two thirds of solicitors under 30, yet two thirds of principals and partners are still men, and many women leave the profession in their 30s and 40s when leadership opportunities should be opening. I would press for the Society to collect and publish, each year, the proportion of women holding equity in firms by firm size, so that progress can be tracked over time. I would support a Society-backed sponsorship program that pairs women approaching partnership with equity partners in other firms who will advocate for them. I would ask the Society to publish model partnership terms under which parental leave and flexible work are compatible with holding equity, and to recognise the firms that adopt them. I would press for clear anti-bullying and harassment policies, independent reporting mechanisms and continuous training for principals and managers, and for CPD recognition of mentoring so that those who invest in others are acknowledged.

Too often women are mentored and never promoted. I would expect the Society's own committees, panels and appointments to reflect the standard it asks of the profession. Artificial intelligence is changing how solicitors work, and with it how the Society must regulate and support them. I build and run the systems my own firm uses, so I understand what a vendor's claims mean in practice. My concern is that solicitors are being sold products on the promise that the machine does the work, and are unwittingly exposed to professional standards complaints because they have trusted a vendor's claims with no independent means of testing them. When the output is wrong, the consequences fall on the solicitor who signed it, in court and before the regulator, and never on the vendor. The Supreme Court has already responded with a practice note that restricts what generative AI may be used for and leaves verification where it always sat, with the solicitor. The Society should be the profession's independent voice on these tools. It should commission independent vetting and publish plain assessments of what a product does and does not do, set a verification standard that courts and regulators will recognise, and give clear guidance on confidentiality and data handling when client information is put into a legal technology product. I would press for practical, scenario-based education so that solicitors learn how these products fail, how to check citations and how to preserve confidentiality and privilege before a mistake reaches a client or a court, and for vendor neutral guidance that solicitors can rely on whichever product they use.

Councillors are directors of a public company limited by guarantee, and each must read its financial reports and understand its risks. I run a firm: I set its budget, employ its staff, operate its trust account and decide what technology it buys and how it is secured, and as treasurer of a community organisation I have reported to a board on its finances. I would prepare thoroughly, ask direct questions, decide on evidence and report back to members in plain language. I would be accessible to members across practice areas and firm sizes. I would measure my term by whether solicitors can see the difference in their premiums, in who sits at the ownership table of their firms, and in the tools they are sold.