Law & Society: Professional bodies wield extraordinary power, but where should we draw the line?

David Harvey

Law & society columnist·New Zealand Listener·

21 Jul, 2026 06:04 PM3 mins to read

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Professional regulatory bodies can license doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, accountants and many others – and can suspend members or strip them of the right to practise altogether. Photo / Getty Images

Professional regulatory bodies wield extraordinary power. They license doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, accountants and many others – and can suspend members or strip them of the right to practise altogether.

The traditional justification is simple: consumer protection. People who rely on expert services should not be harmed by the
incompetent or the dishonest. Increasingly, though, these bodies have drifted well beyond that mandate.

Consider the case of lawyer and former Act MP Stephen Franks. In February 2025, he wrote to medical practitioners involved in gender-affirming care, citing the UK’s Cass Review and warning of possible legal exposure over puberty blockers. None of the recipients complained.

Instead, six unconnected outsiders – among them a nursing professor, a business academic and a human rights advocate – lodged complaints with the New Zealand Law Society. A standards committee found him guilty of misconduct. He appealed, and in March, the legal complaints review officer, Fraser Goldsmith, overturned the finding. The whole affair drained time, money and energy for a case that went nowhere.

This is not an aberration; it is a symptom. Under the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, almost anyone can complain about a lawyer, regardless of any connection to the matter. The “sufficient personal interest” test, meant to filter out unaffected complainants, is no real barrier.

The results are predictable. Opponents weaponise the process in family and relationship property disputes. Convicted offenders file complaints against prosecutors from prison as collateral attacks. In 2024, the law society received 1231 complaints; only 28 reached the disciplinary tribunal. The vast majority were meritless, yet each consumed legal resources and ultimately cost clients more.

Worse, when a lawyer must weigh every robust letter against a possible complaint from a stranger, caution wins – and clients pay.

England, Canada and the United States impose tighter standing requirements that make it far harder for ideologically motivated bystanders to trigger proceedings.

Behind all this lies a deeper shift. Some bodies now demand training in unconscious bias, cultural safety and diversity, equity and inclusion that is unnecessary to the work and have disciplined members for opinions expressed in their private lives.

Critics call this “ideological capture” – activists seizing a governing body to impose a world view on every member. Whether or not one accepts the label, the underlying concern is real. When a licence to practise depends not just on competence and honesty but on conformity to particular social and political views, the nature of regulation changes fundamentally.

Professional bodies should not sanction members for what they say or write on contentious issues, on or off duty. The exceptions should be narrow and obvious: threatening violence, sexual misconduct involving clients or minors, breaching client confidentiality, or conduct that directly impugns professional honesty or competence, such as a fraud conviction.

Professionals should be free to decline a specific task that offends deeply held beliefs, provided they give early notice and help the client obtain the service elsewhere. Mandatory continuing education should be confined to what is demonstrably necessary to do the job and protect consumers – nothing more. Neutrality must cut both ways. A regulator could no more act on reactionary prejudice than on progressive identity politics.

The question is what professional regulation is for. The answer is consumer protection from the incompetent and the dishonest – and nothing beyond it.

How to strike the balance between professional autonomy and the public interest is a debate worth having. But it should begin with that single, clarifying purpose.

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