Step 1
Constitutional foundations and federalism
An introductory account of the constitutional structure of the Commonwealth, the states, and the federal relationships that shape Australian public law.
Open articleLearning path
Priestley 11 foundations
A recommended prerequisite-aware route through the shared articles covering the eleven prescribed academic areas for Australian legal admission.
This path is recommended guidance only. Canonical Markdown remains the source of truth for public articles.
This route helps organise shared Legal Learning articles around the prescribed academic areas. It is not legal-admission advice, does not certify competence, and does not replace a university programme or the requirements of an admitting authority.
Articles in this pathway 37
Step 2
What is administrative action?
Defines administrative action as executive decision-making applying existing law to particular facts, and explains why distinguishing it from legislative and judicial action determines how it can be held accountable.
Open articleStep 3
Procedural fairness
Explains the hearing rule and the rule against bias, when a duty of procedural fairness arises, and its practical content of fair notice, a genuine opportunity to respond, and an unbiased decision-maker.
Open articleStep 4
Judicial review of administrative action
Explains judicial review as supervision of the legality, not the merits, of administrative decisions, the general conceptual grounds of review, and the constitutional entrenchment of review of Commonwealth officers under s 75(v).
Open articleStep 5
Merits review
Explains internal review and tribunal merits review, where the reviewer stands in the shoes of the original decision-maker and can substitute the correct or preferable decision.
Open articleStep 6
Jurisdictional error
Explains jurisdictional error as the central Australian touchstone for judicial review, what makes an error jurisdictional, and why the concept determines the effectiveness of privative clauses.
Open articleStep 7
Offer and acceptance
How Australian law decides that agreement has been reached: what counts as an offer, what distinguishes an offer from an invitation to treat, and when acceptance takes effect.
Open articleStep 8
Terms and construction
Which statements become terms, how documents are incorporated, and how Australian courts construe contractual language objectively and in context.
Open articleStep 9
Breach
Establishing breach, anticipatory breach and repudiation, time stipulations, and why damages and termination are separate questions.
Open articleStep 10
Negligence: duty of care
Established categories, the salient features approach to novel duties, and why Australia rejected the English three-stage test.
Open articleStep 11
Negligence: breach and the standard of care
The statutory breach test, the calculus of negligence, the professional standard and the peer opinion defence, and obvious risk.
Open articleStep 12
Real property and personal property
The foundational distinction between real property and personal property, and between rights in rem and rights in personam, that organises the rest of Australian property law.
Open articleStep 13
Title
What 'title' means as a legal concept - the bundle of rights the law recognises as ownership - and how title relates to mere possession on one hand and to formal registration on the other.
Open articleStep 14
The equitable jurisdiction
What equity is, the exclusive, concurrent and auxiliary jurisdictions, the maxims, and why Australian law still insists the rules were never fused.
Open articleStep 15
Express trusts
What a trust is, how one is created and constituted, the formalities, and the beneficiary principle.
Open articleStep 16
The three certainties
Certainty of intention, subject matter and objects, the different tests for fixed and discretionary trusts, and what happens when each fails.
Open articleStep 17
Fiduciary obligations
Who is a fiduciary, why Australian fiduciary duties are proscriptive only, informed consent, and the remedies for breach.
Open articleStep 18
Tracing
Following, tracing and claiming, the rules for mixed funds, the lowest intermediate balance, and the defences to a proprietary claim.
Open articleStep 19
Damages
The compensatory principle in tort, the heads of personal injury damages, statutory caps and thresholds, and where tort damages differ from contract damages.
Open articleStep 20
Offence elements: actus reus and mens rea
How Australian criminal offences are broken into physical and fault elements, and the jurisdictional split between Code and common-law states that shapes how this analysis is done.
Open articleStep 21
Fault elements: intention, knowledge, recklessness, negligence, and strict liability
The mental states Australian criminal law uses to attach liability, and how strict and absolute liability offences dispense with proof of fault.
Open articleStep 22
The framework of criminal defences
The structural distinction between denying an offence element and raising a true defence, and a conceptual overview of the well-known defence categories in Australian criminal law.
Open articleStep 23
Separate legal personality
Why registration gives a company a legal identity distinct from its members and directors, and the narrow circumstances in which courts will look behind that identity.
Open articleStep 24
Directors' duties
The statutory duties of care, good faith, proper purpose, conflict avoidance and insolvent trading owed by company directors, and how they sit alongside equitable fiduciary duties.
Open articleStep 25
The stages of a criminal matter
The general path a criminal matter follows from investigation through to trial, and the presumption of innocence and criminal standard of proof that frame the entire process.
Open articleStep 26
Statutory compliance and regulation
ASIC's role as national corporate regulator, the company register, ongoing reporting obligations, and civil penalty proceedings as the primary enforcement tool under the Corporations Act.
Open articleStep 27
Relevance
Relevance as the threshold test for admissibility, and why Australia's evidence law is not uniform across jurisdictions.
Open articleStep 28
Admissibility
The general structure of an admissibility analysis, from relevance through the exclusionary rules to discretionary and mandatory exclusion.
Open articleStep 29
Hearsay
The hearsay rule, why it exists, and why a substantial body of exceptions means the rule rarely operates as an absolute bar.
Open articleStep 30
Pleadings
What pleadings are, how the statement of claim, defence and reply work together to define the issues in dispute, and the basic structure a cause of action must satisfy.
Open articleStep 31
Disclosure and discovery
Why parties must disclose relevant documents before trial, how disclosure obligations are scoped, and the real limits privilege and proportionality place on that obligation.
Open articleStep 32
Judgment and enforcement
What a final civil judgment establishes, and the mechanisms — writs of execution, garnishee orders and examination of the judgment debtor — available to enforce it when a judgment debtor does not pay voluntarily.
Open articleStep 33
Duties to clients
Sets out the core duties a lawyer owes a client — competence and diligence, following lawful instructions, keeping the client informed, and acting in their best interests — all exercised subject to the paramount duty to the court.
Open articleStep 34
Duties to the court
Explains why a lawyer's duty to the court is paramount over the duty to the client, and how that hierarchy is expressed through the rules against misleading the court, abusing its process, and withholding adverse legal authority.
Open articleStep 35
Conflicts of interest
Explains the three main categories of conflicts of interest a lawyer can face — between current clients, between the lawyer's own interest and a client's, and between a current and a former client — and the responses available to manage them.
Open articleStep 36
Confidentiality and privilege
Distinguishes the broad ethical duty of confidentiality from the narrower evidentiary rule of legal professional privilege, and sets out the limited circumstances in which a lawyer may or must disclose client information.
Open articleStep 37
Settlement and alternative dispute resolution
How most civil disputes end short of trial through negotiated settlement or mediation, why without-prejudice privilege protects those negotiations, and how offers of compromise create costs consequences.
Open article| Step | Article | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Constitutional foundations and federalismCommonwealth, AU-NATIONAL · 55-75 minutes | An introductory account of the constitutional structure of the Commonwealth, the states, and the federal relationships that shape Australian public law. |
| 2 | What is administrative action?Commonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Defines administrative action as executive decision-making applying existing law to particular facts, and explains why distinguishing it from legislative and judicial action determines how it can be held accountable. |
| 3 | Procedural fairnessCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Explains the hearing rule and the rule against bias, when a duty of procedural fairness arises, and its practical content of fair notice, a genuine opportunity to respond, and an unbiased decision-maker. |
| 4 | Judicial review of administrative actionCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Explains judicial review as supervision of the legality, not the merits, of administrative decisions, the general conceptual grounds of review, and the constitutional entrenchment of review of Commonwealth officers under s 75(v). |
| 5 | Merits reviewCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Explains internal review and tribunal merits review, where the reviewer stands in the shoes of the original decision-maker and can substitute the correct or preferable decision. |
| 6 | Jurisdictional errorCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Explains jurisdictional error as the central Australian touchstone for judicial review, what makes an error jurisdictional, and why the concept determines the effectiveness of privative clauses. |
| 7 | Offer and acceptanceCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 45-60 minutes | How Australian law decides that agreement has been reached: what counts as an offer, what distinguishes an offer from an invitation to treat, and when acceptance takes effect. |
| 8 | Terms and constructionCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Which statements become terms, how documents are incorporated, and how Australian courts construe contractual language objectively and in context. |
| 9 | BreachCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Establishing breach, anticipatory breach and repudiation, time stipulations, and why damages and termination are separate questions. |
| 10 | Negligence: duty of careCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Established categories, the salient features approach to novel duties, and why Australia rejected the English three-stage test. |
| 11 | Negligence: breach and the standard of careCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | The statutory breach test, the calculus of negligence, the professional standard and the peer opinion defence, and obvious risk. |
| 12 | Real property and personal propertyCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | The foundational distinction between real property and personal property, and between rights in rem and rights in personam, that organises the rest of Australian property law. |
| 13 | TitleCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | What 'title' means as a legal concept - the bundle of rights the law recognises as ownership - and how title relates to mere possession on one hand and to formal registration on the other. |
| 14 | The equitable jurisdictionCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | What equity is, the exclusive, concurrent and auxiliary jurisdictions, the maxims, and why Australian law still insists the rules were never fused. |
| 15 | Express trustsCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | What a trust is, how one is created and constituted, the formalities, and the beneficiary principle. |
| 16 | The three certaintiesCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Certainty of intention, subject matter and objects, the different tests for fixed and discretionary trusts, and what happens when each fails. |
| 17 | Fiduciary obligationsCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Who is a fiduciary, why Australian fiduciary duties are proscriptive only, informed consent, and the remedies for breach. |
| 18 | TracingCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | Following, tracing and claiming, the rules for mixed funds, the lowest intermediate balance, and the defences to a proprietary claim. |
| 19 | DamagesCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 35-50 minutes | The compensatory principle in tort, the heads of personal injury damages, statutory caps and thresholds, and where tort damages differ from contract damages. |
| 20 | Offence elements: actus reus and mens reaCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | How Australian criminal offences are broken into physical and fault elements, and the jurisdictional split between Code and common-law states that shapes how this analysis is done. |
| 21 | Fault elements: intention, knowledge, recklessness, negligence, and strict liabilityCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | The mental states Australian criminal law uses to attach liability, and how strict and absolute liability offences dispense with proof of fault. |
| 22 | The framework of criminal defencesCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | The structural distinction between denying an offence element and raising a true defence, and a conceptual overview of the well-known defence categories in Australian criminal law. |
| 23 | Separate legal personalityCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Why registration gives a company a legal identity distinct from its members and directors, and the narrow circumstances in which courts will look behind that identity. |
| 24 | Directors' dutiesCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 40-55 minutes | The statutory duties of care, good faith, proper purpose, conflict avoidance and insolvent trading owed by company directors, and how they sit alongside equitable fiduciary duties. |
| 25 | The stages of a criminal matterCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | The general path a criminal matter follows from investigation through to trial, and the presumption of innocence and criminal standard of proof that frame the entire process. |
| 26 | Statutory compliance and regulationCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | ASIC's role as national corporate regulator, the company register, ongoing reporting obligations, and civil penalty proceedings as the primary enforcement tool under the Corporations Act. |
| 27 | RelevanceCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Relevance as the threshold test for admissibility, and why Australia's evidence law is not uniform across jurisdictions. |
| 28 | AdmissibilityCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | The general structure of an admissibility analysis, from relevance through the exclusionary rules to discretionary and mandatory exclusion. |
| 29 | HearsayCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | The hearsay rule, why it exists, and why a substantial body of exceptions means the rule rarely operates as an absolute bar. |
| 30 | PleadingsCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | What pleadings are, how the statement of claim, defence and reply work together to define the issues in dispute, and the basic structure a cause of action must satisfy. |
| 31 | Disclosure and discoveryCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Why parties must disclose relevant documents before trial, how disclosure obligations are scoped, and the real limits privilege and proportionality place on that obligation. |
| 32 | Judgment and enforcementCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | What a final civil judgment establishes, and the mechanisms — writs of execution, garnishee orders and examination of the judgment debtor — available to enforce it when a judgment debtor does not pay voluntarily. |
| 33 | Duties to clientsCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Sets out the core duties a lawyer owes a client — competence and diligence, following lawful instructions, keeping the client informed, and acting in their best interests — all exercised subject to the paramount duty to the court. |
| 34 | Duties to the courtCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Explains why a lawyer's duty to the court is paramount over the duty to the client, and how that hierarchy is expressed through the rules against misleading the court, abusing its process, and withholding adverse legal authority. |
| 35 | Conflicts of interestCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Explains the three main categories of conflicts of interest a lawyer can face — between current clients, between the lawyer's own interest and a client's, and between a current and a former client — and the responses available to manage them. |
| 36 | Confidentiality and privilegeCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | Distinguishes the broad ethical duty of confidentiality from the narrower evidentiary rule of legal professional privilege, and sets out the limited circumstances in which a lawyer may or must disclose client information. |
| 37 | Settlement and alternative dispute resolutionCommonwealth, NSW, VIC, QLD, WA, SA, TAS, NT, ACT · 30-45 minutes | How most civil disputes end short of trial through negotiated settlement or mediation, why without-prejudice privilege protects those negotiations, and how offers of compromise create costs consequences. |