The interesting world of Patrick Garcia

Patrick Garcia was recently appointed to the SHINE board of directors. This article was published in the July 2013 edition of the Law Society Journal.

The new large firm representative on the Law Society council tells Anne Susskind about his plans and passions.

When Patrick Garcia, who replaced Joe Catanzariti on the Law Society council last month, was policy director for former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally between 2009 and 2011, he was horrified at how a "great woman with an earnest desire to improve the world" was treated from so many angles. After that, a year and a half as senior adviser in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet reinforced his belief in the pitfalls of a high-profile political career.

"Would you want a job where the other party's principal aim was to get you fired and where your performance review was splashed on the front page of the paper every day for your family to see?" Garcia asked LSJ.

It was back to law and local politics for the solicitor who is now a partner in Clayton Utz and also a Randwick City councillor. He is also policy director for the Large Law Firm Group, and has become the group's voice on the Law Society council.

He has, he says, always had a passion for the law – his late grandfather, to whom he was very attached, was a lawyer in the Philippines and used to tell him stories about cases when he was four or five years old, so when the other kids said they wanted to be a flreman or doctor, he never wavered. At law school, he was president of the Sydney University Law Society.

He has three priorities in his role as Law Society councillor. First is to see the national legal profession reform go through in NSW and Victoria, and then more broadly over time. Many lawyers, he says, believe thtl the profession is inefficiently regulated at present.

In Australia, about 61,000 lawyers are regulated by 55 different bodies and more than 4,700 pages of regulation. Despite supposed harmonisation, there are still differences in legal practice, including admission, cost agreements, billing, and costs assessment. CLE, too, is different over jurisdictions, as is complaints handling.

"That regulatory burden for law firms has an impact on clients and Practitioners. It impedes competition and inhibits the ability of law firms to compete in an increasingly globalised market for legal services," says Garcia.

Unlimited liability Partnerships – unlike the limited liability of the UK or US – are "antiquated" structures, suited to small businesses with two or three partners who are well acquainted with each other, rather than those in multi-jurisdictional partnerships with many partners who would not know each other's work, "or what the partner in Perth is doing".

"When you consider that these are half-billion dollar organisations, they are significant entities, unsuited to the 19th century partnership model. It's unfair for Australian firms to compete internationally with the larger US and UK limited liability firms, with that sort of liability around their necks.

'That's something that has to be pushed, and certainly the Law Council of Australia is looking at that."

It is also important to defend the reputation of the profession, "which is not great at the moment", says Garcia. "Lawyers do so many good things. They are critical of the rule of law and do lots of pro bono. Outside of a purely legal capacity, many sit on boards of NGOs or are in politics, or government or prominent in other ways." Among the people Garcia greatly admires are Gough Whitlam, David Gonski and Sir William Dean – all lawyers. Those sorts of examples need promotion, he says.

Garcia supports a wlde list of organisations, including Coogee Surf Life Saving Club, where he's a lifesaver, the McKell Institute, where he's a fellow, and the SHINE for Kids Cooperative (a charity for children whose parents are incarcerated) where he's a board director.

SHINE for Kids is very close to his heart, because it looks after children who are "quite innocent but stigmatised" because of their parents. "They've in effect become orphans and have had to deal with some very emotional events ... prison visits, the absence of their parent and then their re-entry into everyday life."

He's also an Australian Army Reservist and a Captain with the Australian Army Legal Corps, posted to Victoria Barracks in Paddington. He joins two other army reservists on the Law Society Council, Rob Mooy and Doug Humphries.

The Law Society's newest councillor is also passionate about youth issues, and is a non-executive director of Youth Action (the peak body representing youth in NSW).

What drives him, Garcia says, is curiosity: "l find everything interesting, which is terrible sometimes – I find people interesting, and organisations interesting. Harry Truman used to say that decisions are made by those who show up. Fortunately, when you find the world interesting, you tend to show up a lot."

See the article PDF »