# Who may do conveyancing in Queensland, and why it takes a law firm
Queensland has no licensed conveyancers: the work belongs to solicitors and law practices. What the Act says, where clerks fit, and how other states differ.
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A buyer moving north from Sydney, Melbourne or Adelaide often arrives with a habit: when a contract is on the way, ask around for a good conveyancer. In those cities the word names a licensed occupation, separate from the legal profession, with its own regulator. In Queensland the same question is answered with the name of a law firm. The person who runs the file may well be called a conveyancer on the firm's website, and may be very good at it, but the business that takes on the work is a law practice and a solicitor answers for it.
This is one of the real differences between the states, and it confuses people on both sides of the border. This guide sets out what the Legal Profession Act 2007 says, how the Legal Services Commission and the Queensland Law Society describe the position, who is who inside a Queensland conveyancing team, how the other jurisdictions arrange things, and how to read the word "conveyancer" when a Queensland firm uses it.
## The rule sits in one section of one Act
The starting point is section 24 of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld). Its first subsection says that a person must not engage in legal practice in Queensland unless the person is an Australian legal practitioner. The maximum penalty printed under it is 300 penalty units or two years' imprisonment.
Section 25 is its companion. It says a person must not represent or advertise that they are entitled to engage in legal practice unless they are an Australian legal practitioner, and it carries the same maximum penalty. A second limb applies the same idea to the officers of a corporation who represent that the corporation is entitled to practise when it is not.
Section 24 then lists what the prohibition does not catch. As the section reads on the Queensland legislation website, the exceptions include legal practice carried on under the authority of another Queensland or Commonwealth law, legal practice by an incorporated legal practice under part 2.7 of the Act, the practice of foreign law by an Australian-registered foreign lawyer, work done by trustee companies in preparing wills and administering trusts and estates, and anything prescribed by regulation. Later subsections deal with the work that licensees under the Property Occupations Act and their employees do on property contracts, which is the part of the section that concerns real estate agents.
Two things are worth noticing. The first is that the list contains no licensed conveyancer, settlement agent or similar occupation. The second is that the opening chapters of the Act, where these sections sit, do not use the word "conveyancing" at all. The Act reserves "legal practice" in general terms. That conveyancing for a client falls inside those words is something the regulators state plainly.
## What the regulators say about conveyancing
The Legal Services Commission is the body that receives complaints about lawyers in Queensland and prosecutes people who practise without being entitled to. In a media release dated 21 July 2023 it reported a prosecution in the Brisbane Magistrates Court of a conveyancing business and its director, who were not a law practice or a solicitor and had acted for clients in residential conveyances. Each was convicted on two charges under the Legal Profession Act; the Commission reported fines of $12,000 for the company and $4,000 for the director.
The release puts the rule in one sentence. Conveyancing, it says, is a legal service in Queensland that "can only be provided by qualified and licensed solicitors and law practices". The Commission added that operating without the safety net of insurance exposes both the operator and the clients to unnecessary risk.
The Queensland Law Society says the same thing from the public's side. Its page for people buying or selling a home tells them they will need a lawyer who works in conveyancing, which it calls a conveyancing lawyer, to handle the transfer of title, the duty and the advice on the contract of sale. The Queensland Government's home buying pages speak of "conveyancing solicitors" and suggest finding a firm that specialises in property or conveyancing.
A national document confirms the picture from another angle. The Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council, the body of the state and territory land registrars that oversees electronic conveyancing, published a direction in July 2020 called "Entitlement to Sign Registry Instruments", prepared on advice from the practitioner regulators of each jurisdiction. In its Queensland entry, the row for licensed conveyancers reads "No". So do the rows for interstate-registered licensed conveyancers and for supervised employees who are not practitioners. The only category entitled to sign in Queensland is the Australian legal practitioner, and the regulators named are the Queensland Law Society and the Legal Services Commission.
## Solicitor, lawyer, legal practitioner: the vocabulary
The Act uses precise terms, and they explain a good deal.
An "Australian lawyer", under section 5, is a person admitted to the legal profession under the Queensland Act or a corresponding law of another state or territory. Admission alone does not entitle anyone to act for clients. For that, section 6 defines an "Australian legal practitioner": an Australian lawyer who holds a current local practising certificate or a current interstate practising certificate.
That definition has a consequence for interstate work. A solicitor holding a current practising certificate from another state is an Australian legal practitioner within the Queensland definition, while an interstate conveyancer's licence has no counterpart in the Queensland Act. The two professions cross the border differently.
A new solicitor does not practise alone from the first day. Section 56 of the Act attaches a statutory condition to a first practising certificate: the holder may engage in supervised legal practice only, until a set period has been completed. The period is 18 months for a person who qualified through supervised legal training, and two years for a person who completed other practical legal training. The Act allows the Law Society to exempt a person or shorten the period.
From law graduate to unsupervised solicitor
AdmissionThe person is admitted to the legal profession and becomes an Australian lawyer under section 5.
Practising certificateWith a current certificate the lawyer is an Australian legal practitioner under section 6 and may engage in legal practice.
Supervised practiceSection 56 limits a new solicitor to supervised legal practice for 18 months or two years, depending on the training route.
In everyday speech "solicitor", "lawyer" and "conveyancing lawyer" are used for the same person. The statutory phrase that matters for section 24 is the longer one, and it turns on the practising certificate.
## Law practices and the people inside them
The Commission's sentence names two things: solicitors and law practices. A conveyance is taken on by a practice, whether that is a sole practitioner, a partnership or a company. Section 24 itself recognises the company form, since one of its exceptions is legal practice by an incorporated legal practice under part 2.7 of the Act.
Inside a practice, not everyone is a lawyer. The Act has a term for the others. Section 7 describes the associates of a law practice and defines a "lay associate" as an associate of the practice who is not an Australian legal practitioner. A conveyancing clerk, a paralegal, a settlement clerk and a legal secretary are all lay associates in that sense. They are part of the practice, and the Act knows they exist, but they are not themselves entitled to engage in legal practice.
Who is who on a Queensland conveyancing fileStatus under the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld)
Person
Status under the Act
What it means on a conveyance
Solicitor with an unrestricted certificate
Australian legal practitioner (section 6)
Entitled to engage in legal practice and to answer for the file.
Newly certified solicitor
Australian legal practitioner under the section 56 condition
Practises under supervision for 18 months or two years.
Conveyancing clerk or paralegal
Lay associate of the practice (section 7)
Works within the practice; not entitled to practise in their own right.
Incorporated legal practice
Covered by an exception in section 24
The company may provide the legal service under part 2.7.
Source: Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), sections 5, 6, 7, 24 and 56, as in force on the Queensland legislation website.
The arrangement puts responsibility in one place. Whoever answers the phone and prepares the documents, the service is provided by the practice, and a legal practitioner stands behind it.
## Where the conveyancing clerk fits
The conveyancing clerk is a familiar figure in Queensland firms, and the role is a skilled one. A conveyance is a sequence of dated tasks, and a person who has run hundreds of them knows where files go wrong.
What the law fixes is the frame around that skill. Because section 24 reserves legal practice to practitioners, a clerk's work is done as part of the practice's work, for the practice's clients, under the practitioners who are responsible for it. A clerk cannot set up alone and offer conveyancing to the public for a fee: that is the situation the Commission's 2023 prosecution addressed.
The national direction on signing shows how firmly Queensland draws the line. In Victoria and Western Australia, the document lists supervised employees who are not practitioners among those who may sign registry instruments, subject to conditions. In Queensland's entry the same row says "No". The electronic documents that change the register, such as the transfer, are signed by a solicitor.
For a client this has a practical meaning. The person they speak to most may be a clerk or paralegal. The advice on the contract, and the signature on the documents that go to the titles registry, come from a legal practitioner in the same practice.
## Why Queensland has no licensed conveyancers
In the states that have them, licensed conveyancers exist because Parliament passed an Act creating the licence. New South Wales is the clearest example. NSW Fair Trading explains that a person needs a conveyancer licence to do conveyancing work unless they are a legal practitioner, an incorporated legal practice or a solicitor corporation, and that the licence is issued under the Conveyancers Licensing Act 2003. The exception in that sentence is revealing: in New South Wales the lawyers are the group exempted from a licensing scheme built for someone else.
Queensland has made no equivalent law. Its Act has one gate, the practising certificate, and section 24 lists no conveyancing licence among its exceptions. The outcome is the single word in the registrars' direction: licensed conveyancer, "No".
Nothing in the sources read for this guide records a policy debate, and this guide does not guess at one. What can be said is how the Commission frames the result. Its 2023 release ties the rule to protection of clients, pointing to the insurance that stands behind a law practice and that an unlicensed operator lacks.
It also follows that an interstate licence does not travel. A conveyancer licensed in New South Wales or South Australia holds a credential issued under that state's law. The registrars' direction lists interstate-registered licensed conveyancers separately in the Queensland entry, again with the answer "No".
## How the other states and territories compare
The registrars' direction of July 2020 is the most convenient single source for a comparison, because each entry was prepared on the advice of that jurisdiction's own regulators. It covers the jurisdictions that then permitted national electronic conveyancing, so Tasmania and the Northern Territory do not appear in it, and they are left out of the table below for that reason. The New South Wales row is supplemented from NSW Fair Trading's own licensing page.
Who may act on a conveyance, by jurisdictionAs set out in the ARNECC direction of July 2020
Jurisdiction
Lawyers
Licensed conveyancers
Regulators named
Queensland
Yes
No, including interstate licensees
Queensland Law Society; Legal Services Commission
New South Wales
Yes
Yes, under the Conveyancers Licensing Act 2003
Law Society of NSW; NSW Fair Trading
Victoria
Yes
Yes
Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner
Western Australia
Yes
Yes, as settlement agents
Legal Practice Board; the department regulating settlement agents
South Australia
Yes
Yes
Law Society of SA; Consumer and Business Services
Australian Capital Territory
Yes
None listed
ACT Law Society
Source: Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council, "Entitlement to Sign Registry Instruments", July 2020; NSW Fair Trading for the New South Wales Act. Tasmania and the Northern Territory are not covered by the direction.
The New South Wales page gives a sense of what a licensing regime involves. According to NSW Fair Trading, a full conveyancer licence requires at least two years of conveyancing experience, including at least one year of full-time supervised work; a restricted licence requires at least one year of full-time supervised experience and limits the holder to particular kinds of transaction. Professional indemnity insurance is mandatory, and applicants choose a licence term of one, three or five years. An unrestricted licence covers residential and commercial conveyancing, mortgages, the sale of businesses and rural property.
Western Australia uses a different name. The direction refers to the Settlement Agents Act 1981 (WA) for the definition of the occupation, which is why a Perth buyer speaks of a settlement agent where a Sydney buyer speaks of a conveyancer.
The Australian Capital Territory's entry lists Australian legal practitioners and the ACT Law Society and no conveyancer category, which places it nearest to Queensland among the jurisdictions the document covers.
A caution belongs here. This table describes who may act, as recorded in one national document at one date. It says nothing about fees, quality or outcomes in any state, and the details of each licensing regime are a matter for that state's own regulator.
## What 'conveyancer' means on a Queensland website
Queensland firms use the word freely, and reasonably so: it is the word clients search for. On a Queensland website it describes a job, not a licence. It may refer to a solicitor who does mostly property work, to a conveyancing clerk or paralegal employed by a law practice, or to the practice's property team as a whole.
Reading the label
In Queensland, "conveyancer" is a job title inside a law practice
No Queensland Act issues a conveyancer licence. A business offering conveyancing to the public for a fee is a law practice, and section 25 of the Legal Profession Act limits who may represent or advertise an entitlement to engage in legal practice.
Business names follow the same logic. A trading name containing the word "conveyancing" tells a reader what the business does. Whether it is entitled to do it depends on what stands behind the name: a law practice with solicitors holding current practising certificates.
Section 25 is the provision that keeps the advertising honest. Because it prohibits anyone other than an Australian legal practitioner from representing or advertising an entitlement to engage in legal practice, a law practice's website will generally identify the practice and its solicitors somewhere, even where the page a client lands on speaks only of "our conveyancers".
> The word on the door may be conveyancer. The name on the practising certificate is a solicitor's, and that is the one the Act looks for.
## Real estate agents and doing it yourself
Two other participants appear in the Queensland sources.
The first is the real estate agent. The Queensland Law Society's brochure on buying or selling a residential property says that solicitors and real estate agents can assist with a conveyance, and section 24 of the Legal Profession Act contains subsections about the work that Property Occupations Act licensees and their employees do on property contracts. That is the footing on which an agent fills in the contract the parties sign. The same brochure advises seeking a solicitor's advice before signing any contract, so that no avoidable costs or issues arise.
The second is the party acting alone. The Law Society's brochure notes that a person can carry out their own conveyance, at their own risk. Section 24 is aimed at engaging in legal practice, and the Commission's statement concerns services provided to clients. A person handling their own sale or purchase is not providing a service to anyone. The Queensland Government's home buying pages do not make a solicitor compulsory either; they say the Government strongly recommends independent legal advice before buying.
## Checking who is acting
Three public sources help a buyer or seller confirm what kind of business they are dealing with.
The Queensland Government's page on appointing a solicitor says the Queensland Law Society can help people find a solicitor in their area. It suggests choosing a firm that specialises in property or conveyancing, making sure the solicitor is not connected to any other party such as the seller, and asking for a detailed quote for the work before appointing anyone. It notes that some conveyancing solicitors charge a set price.
The Law Society's public page adds that a complex matter may call for a property law accredited specialist, shown by a symbol next to the solicitor's name in its listings.
The Legal Services Commission is the third. It is the regulator named, with the Law Society, in the registrars' direction, and it is the body that acts when someone outside the profession offers legal services.
None of this makes the Queensland arrangement better or worse than its neighbours'. It makes it different in one specific way: there is a single profession at the gate, and every conveyance done for a fee passes through a law practice.