6 June 2025
The Legal Practice Board’s investigation into the recent cyber incident, including its work to determine what information might have been accessed, is continuing. The Board has informed us that its website will be offline from 10pm this evening until 2am Saturday.
Late last week, we urged the Board to put in place a system to ensure practitioners can tell whether their practising certificate application has been received and is being manually processed. On Wednesday evening the Board announced it will be “directly acknowledging receipt to all practitioners who have submitted a manual application as soon as possible”.
We asked the Board about the timeline for this and, last night, the Board informed us that a team is currently working on it.
If you require proof of your application more urgently (for employment reasons, for example) you can contact the Board’s enquiries team on (08) 6211 3600.
The Board also provided more information on Wednesday about practising certificate fees, confirming that practitioners will be charged the fee that applied on the date their application was submitted. The Board said that any requests to amend fees would be considered on a case-by-case basis.
We sought clarification as to the criteria the Board will apply when considering requests from practitioners regarding late fees, to help members understand whether they will qualify for remission. The Board last night stated it will apply “reasonable judgement” in this regard.
As always, we will keep you updated as further developments come to light. You can keep across the latest information here.
5 June 2025
On Friday, we met with the Legal Practice Board to discuss the recent cyber incident. We urged the Board to put a system in place to ensure practitioners knew their practising certificate renewal application had been safely received by the Board and was being manually processed. Last night the Board announced that it will be “directly acknowledging receipt to all practitioners who have submitted a manual application as soon as possible”. We are seeking a timeline on this from the Board.
If you submitted a practising certificate application online prior to 11.29pm on 20 May, you should have already received a copy of your application confirming lodgement. If you didn’t, you should email enquiries@lpbwa.com.
Message from the Legal Practice Board:
Following our emails last week about the recent cyber incident and disruption to our online services, we wanted to provide you with a further update on our operational status.
First, we would like to take this opportunity to thank practitioners for their patience and understanding while we have worked to respond to this incident and implement temporary manual workarounds.
We understand that this disruption to our online services is not ideal, especially during the practising certificate renewal period, and our team are working to manually process applications as swiftly as possible.
On a positive note, we have already received more than 90% of anticipated applications to renew a practising certificate. This has been a wonderful response from the profession to our communications.
Secondly, we provide further information on how we are working through the applications.
Manual processing of practising certificate applications
While our online service portal is unavailable, we are asking practitioners who have not yet submitted their practising certificate renewal application to directly email it to the Board. Please:
- download and complete our Australian practising certificate application form from our website;
- the form can be found on the cyber incident webpage on our website: https://www.lpbwa.org.au/Cyber-Incident; and
- return it to us by email on enquiries@lpbwa.com as soon as possible.
First time or Grant applicants
We understand there are also individuals who are submitting their application for the grant of a practising certificate, either for the first time or following a break in practice.
We also understand that some individuals are providing documents for their admission.
Please flag your situation in the email subject line as ‘Grant of Practising Certificate’ or ‘Admission’ so the team can prioritise these for processing.
We would like to assure you that admission ceremonies are proceeding, with manual workarounds in place where needed.
If you’ve already submitted your application
Please note, if you submitted your practising certificate application online before 11.29pm on 20 May 2025, or if you have since emailed your application to enquiries@lpbwa.com, there is no need to reapply, and no further action is required from you at this time.
As mentioned above, we have already received more than 90% of applications and thank everyone who has submitted their application so far.
We are sure practitioners can appreciate there is a backlog of email applications to work through, and our team are working incredibly hard to manually process applications as quickly as possible. We are also prioritising new applicants and those being admitted.
If you submitted your application online you will have received a copy of your application confirming lodgement. If you did not receive confirmation of lodgement or have any questions about that, please contact us.
We will be directly acknowledging receipt to all practitioners who have submitted a manual application as soon as possible.
In the interim, please be assured that if you have submitted your application to renew your practising certificate, your current practising certificate will remain in force until your renewal application is finally determined.
Practising certificate fees
We are not able to issue invoices at this time. We will provide further updates about completing payment once our online systems are restored. Please note, the fee will apply that was in place on the day the application was submitted, not the day that payment is made.
The standard renewal period for practising certificates runs from 1 May to 31 May each year. After which, fees gradually increase month on month. The first increase to fees occurred on Wednesday, 4 June.
We do understand that the personal circumstances of each practitioner will be different, and we will assess any requests in relation to fees on a case-by-case basis.
In any event, we encourage all practitioners to submit their practising certificate application as soon as possible. We have outlined some further FAQs about practising certificate applications below, which are also available on our website.
Cyber incident investigation
We are continuing to investigate what has happened as a priority, with support from external experts.
We are aware a very small amount of data has been disclosed, containing some correspondence with limited contact information, internal operational and resourcing information, and banking information of the Board. A very small number of third parties have been directly notified.
We are aware that the unauthorised third party who disclosed this data has threatened to disclose more data on 15 June. We have sophisticated monitoring in place to detect any further activity.
At this time, we do not have any credible evidence to confirm that the unauthorised third party possesses any other Board data, but we are working to determine what information may have been accessed. Nevertheless, to ensure we are taking all available action in response to this incident, we have also obtained an injunction to prevent any access, dissemination or sharing of data impacted by this incident.
Further questions
We have a dedicated response team available to answer any other questions about the incident who can be contacted on our helpline on 08 7070 2413 or by emailing incident@lpbwa.com.
We have set out some general cyber safety guidance and FAQs. You can also review our FAQs on the website that you may find helpful.
The Board will continue to provide further updates as we know more – thank you for your understanding and patience as we work through this.
30 May 2025
As many of you will have seen, the Law Society yesterday sent out an update to members regarding the recent cyber attack at the Legal Practice Board of Western Australia.
We are liaising regularly with the Legal Practice Board’s leadership in the wake of the incident, and are endeavouring to keep you as updated as possible as the event unfolds.
First and foremost, we are urging the Board to be transparent and keep practitioners informed. In response, the Board has now published an FAQ page on its website, which you can find here.
The FAQs cover many of the questions we have asked, and the Board assures us they are working towards providing additional responses soon.
Importantly, the Board has now confirmed that the disclosed data contained a very limited amount of contact information but no residential addresses.
In relation to practising certificates, the Board is asking practitioners who have not yet completed their renewal application to do so before the end of the renewal period on 3 June. You can download the form on the Board’s website here and email it to enquiries@lpbwa.com. Payment can be arranged at a later date and you will be charged the fee that applied on the date you made your application, not the date of payment.
The Board has confirmed there will be delays to the issuance of practising certificates, due to applications being processed manually. We have asked the Board to confirm that it will not take disciplinary action against practitioners for practising without a PC where this is caused by the delays. The Board has not yet provided this assurance. We know this is a serious concern amongst members and we will continue to press the Board for a commitment on this issue.
We have offered to convene a Town Hall event to allow the Board and its advisers to address the profession and respond to common questions. We will update you as to the Board’s response on this in due course.
In the meantime, the Board has requested that any practitioners with concerns contact them directly via their 24/7 helpline on (08) 7070 2413 or their dedicated email (incident@lpbwa.com), which is being monitored by an incident response team.
We understand this situation is causing anxiety and distress to many in the profession. Law Society membership renewals (including renewal of your Professional Standards Scheme cover) open next week, and we want to assure you that membership renewals will not be impacted by this event. Law Society staff are here to make the renewal process as smooth as possible.
29 May 2025
The Law Society has been liaising closely with the Legal Practice Board’s leadership in the wake of the recent cyber attack.
The Board sent an email to practitioners last night, answering some of the questions we have raised with them over the past few days.
We note this information is not yet publicly available on the Board’s website and we are urging the Board to publish this information online as soon as possible.
If you have not received this correspondence, you can contact to Board directly at incident@lpbwa.com or call the helpline on (08) 7070 2413.
We will continue to liaise with the Board as the situation unfolds, and we are urging transparency and pace in terms of keeping practitioners up to date as developments arise.
We have heard from our members that there are three main areas of concern relating to the data breach.
First, that bank details and trust account information may have been compromised. Second, that residential addresses may have been compromised, including addresses of individuals working in sensitive practice areas. And third, that there will be delays in the issuance of practising certificates with unclear consequences for practitioners.
The Board has responded in relation to bank details and trust accounts, and this information is contained in the correspondence sent last night.
We have asked for more information in relation to sensitive personal contact details, and we are seeking assurances from the Board that any delays in the issuance of practising certificates will not have any negative regulatory impacts on those affected.
We will endeavour to keep you informed as best we can in coming days and weeks.
Enquiries: cchaffey@lawsocietywa.asn.au or 0410 979 827.
