Sitting forward in his office on Phillip Street in Sydney, Justin Dowd’s eyes narrow in thought.

As he considers his long association with the New South Wales Law Society (NSWLS), he can’t quite recall all of the committees he has served on since he became a councillor in 2007.

“I guess I just didn’t know how to say, ‘No’,” says Dowd, who spent his first 20 years growing up in Denistone.

But it was probably more than a simple unwillingness to say no when it came to serving on the NSWLS’s Professional Conduct, Family Issues, Dispute Resolution, Audit, Finance, Juvenile Justice and Executive Committees. The same goes for his membership of LawAsia, the board of the World Congress on Children’s Rights and Family Law, and the Law Council of Australia.

Natural instinct

From a young age, Dowd had a problem with injustice.

He still hasn’t forgotten an occasion when he was very young and punished unfairly for something he says he didn’t do.

“I just thought that was really unjust and it made me look for fairness, and when I didn’t see it then, it really offended me … I can remember a couple of instances of things that happened at school [to me and to others] which were unfair and it [surprisingly] really got to me,” says Dowd.

This natural reaction to injustice is something which led him straight into a four-year Bachelor of Laws at the University of Sydney after finishing his final year of school. He graduated and was admitted in 1976 when he was just 21 years old, making him one of the youngest solicitors ever in NSW at the time.

BA Laws graduation, University of Sydney 20 March 1976 with parents Bill and Nancy

Some things change

Dowd can remember when the fax machine made its debut in his first law firm Tierney & Dowd. It happened shortly after he moved to Riverina in June 1976 to begin with a local Leeton firm. He also recalls the firm investing a secretary’s annual salary – $12,000 in those days – into buying its first word processor.

“It gave a one-line display of memory of what the machine was capable of,” he recalls.

Dowd had planned to work in Leeton for just one year to gain experience, but ended up staying for 11.

He became a partner with two other lawyers at Tierney & Dowd, one of whom was his brother Michael, who is 16 years his senior and now one of his greatest mentors in the law.

“I loved it. It was very rural. A town of 5000 people, two legal firms [and] five or six solicitors with a very busy general practice,” he says. “We knew everybody. Doing business was easier in a whole lot of ways; we were very familiar with court staff and everybody we needed to transact with.”

Bush brothers

Dowd understands well the challenges that face country firms.

While the internet has made keeping up to date with changes in the law easier for all, rural and regional firms are still struggling to attract and retain solicitors, as well as good legal support staff.

That’s why, last month, Dowd helped launch the online Small Practice Portal aimed at equipping small-firm solicitors and sole practitioners, which now make up 39 per cent of all NSW solicitors, with the business skills they need to set up and manage a successful small firm. The web portal offers information on IT, marketing, financial management and business and succession planning.

In his first presidential speech at the Opening of Law Term Dinner in January this year, Dowd also committed to visiting each of the NSWLS’s 29 regions over the next two years. And he is on track to do so, having visited Newcastle, Merimbula, Campbelltown, the Hunter Valley and the City of Sydney recently.

Regional law societies, he says, are a “really good interface” between head office and practising lawyers.

“I would love to see the role of the regional law societies enhanced so that they can increase the benefit to members, particularly [in terms of] collegiality. It is a difficult profession, and if lawyers can get support form each other then I think that’s the ideal way to do it.”

Dowd extends that notion of collegiality to the Muslim members of the NSW profession, including those he met at the Muslim Legal Networks Opening of Law Term Dinner at Auburn Gallipoli Mosque in February.

“They’re a segment as valid as sole practitioners or women lawyers or large law firm groups,” he says.

“[The Muslim Legal Network] can potentially offer us a slightly different approach to law and how it should be made and administered … They can offer us the experience of another culture and a background of Sharia law and that’s something we can benefit from.”

A noble professional

Apart from his business prowess, which has contributed to the smooth operation of the NSWLS regulatory functions, Dowd is a strong believer in democratic ideals.

If he wasn’t a lawyer, he would love to be a journalist.

“I think journalism has the potential, like law, to be a very noble profession. I think it’s a fabulous way of protecting the democratic ideals that we have.

“Open government and proper governance is as much the responsibility of journalism as it is of the law,” he says, adding that, unfortunately, there is too much laziness in both professions.

But Dowd is already investigating stories of injustice.

This year he is keeping a close eye on the existing Bail Act; in particular section 22, which limits the number of bail applications that can be made.

“It seems to have reversed a presumption of innocence into a presumption of guilt for the purpose of assessing bail,” he says.

Similarly, Dowd is actively monitoring proposals the Government is making in response to consorting laws and anti-bikie legislation. He says both are getting close to offending the rule of law (ROL).

When it came to forming his own priorities for NSWLS this year, Dowd placed a focus on the ROL at the top of his list.

“We’re going to have a series of lunchtime seminars and other events that relate to [the ROL] and I’m in the process of forming a ROL committee that will monitor government legislation and highlight any breaches of the ROL,” he says.

A busy year

This year, Dowd admits, “there is no not working”. He is in contact with the management of his family law practice, Watts McCray, but rarely the clients.

“[The presidential role] is very challenging and it’s busier [and] more time consuming than I expected. It occupies a lot of nights and weekends but for all of that it’s very stimulating,” he says.

When he can steal a moment for relaxation, Dowd will read, garden, go boating or to the cricket, but his favourite pastime is playing with his three grandchildren aged four, one and “nearly one”.

“Family provides the reality check that family lawyers need and it provides the basis of your understanding of relationships, so it’s obviously critically important to happiness,” he says.

Working in family and criminal law, Dowd has dealt with “very serious issues” but says it has always proved rewarding.

One of the greatest feats he achieved directly through his work with the World Congress on Children’s Rights and Family Law was to see travelling to parts of Asia to engage in sex with children become an offence in Australia.

If what the late Honourable Mahla Pearlman once said to Dowd is true, that this year “would be the most exciting year of [his] life”, then there are many more feats to come.