Candidate statement

I am the Principal of Jake McKinley, a firm of sixteen staff at Level 12, 32 Martin Place, practising in commercial, litigation, property, family and wills work. I was admitted in 2011 and hold BA, LLB and LLM degrees from the University of Sydney. I am the chief executive of Humans United By Law and have served as a director and treasurer of a not-for-profit community organisation.

The perspective I would bring to Council is that of small private practice: the 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. I stand again because the three questions below will decide what practice looks like for the next decade, and I have spent the past year working on the first of them.

Professional indemnity insurance

Solicitors in this State have one approved insurer for the compulsory layer of professional indemnity 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. Over the past year that question has moved from a policy position to a parliamentary inquiry. In March 2026 the Legislative Council ordered the 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 have read the papers produced and drafted our group's submission from the public record.

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. A Councillor who understands how the compulsory scheme is priced and approved can ask informed questions of management and of the insurer's board, and I would.

Women at the equity level

The next measure of equality in this profession is ownership: whether women hold equity in the firms they help build. In my experience women reach senior associate and then too often leave, or stay and are never sponsored into equity. Either way the firm and its clients lose them. The Society can lead here without waiting for anyone. I would press for it to collect and publish, each year, the proportion of women holding equity in NSW firms by firm size, so that progress is measured rather than asserted. 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. And I would expect the Society's own committees, panels and appointments to reflect the standard it asks of the profession.

Technology with judgment

Artificial intelligence is changing how solicitors work, and with it how the Society must regulate and support them. I build the systems my own firm runs on. Our research platform holds a citation graph of more than 227,000 Australian decisions. Our models run on a server in our office, client documents are de-identified before anything leaves the building, and our matter platform will not let a user proceed until they accept that AI does not draft affidavits or witness statements and that using AI to check AI is not verification. In August 2026 we published our AI policy and configuration templates under an open licence so that any firm can use them. I have written on the Harman undertaking and Practice Note SC Gen 23, published a replication study across 200 family law judgments, spoken on a panel about what is actually happening in NSW firms, and created a paid legal technology internship so that the next generation learns to find the machine wrong. I am a nominee for AI Leader of the Year (SME) in the Australian AI Awards 2026.

That experience has made me a sceptic about the legal technology market. Solicitors are being sold products on the promise that the machine does the work. 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 us. The Society should be the profession's independent voice on these tools. It should publish plain assessments of what a product does and does not do, and set a verification standard that the courts will recognise. I would bring the technical knowledge to have those conversations with vendors on equal terms.

How I would work

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. 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. No Councillor holds every skill, and I would use the Society's induction and development program to build on what practice has taught me. I would be accessible to members across practice areas and firm sizes, and 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.