COURSE CATEGORY
Professional Skills
Mental capacity and substitute decision-making
Reviewed 22 October 2025.
Australia’s aging population is leading to a rise in cognitive decline, creating an urgent need for lawyers (and other professionals), to understand and support clients facing diminished decision-making capacity.
In a legal context, knowing how to screen for mental capacity and cognitive decline is a vital skill that enhances the quality of legal service, strengthening the trust clients and their families place in their lawyer. Being competent is this space shows a commitment to an ethical and compassionate practice that empowers lawyers to be reliable advocates in critical moments.
This course will take you through:
- The ageing demographics
- Why lawyers should understand mental capacity
- Mental capacity – the basics
- The presumption of capacity
- POA from the client’s perspective
- ED from the client’s perspective
- The prudent practitioner
- Recent cases
Completion of this course will earn you 1 CPD unit
TARGET AUDIENCE
Solicitors in general practice.
CPD POINTS
1
TYPE
Video based interactive module
Professor Sue Field
Sue Field is an Australian Legal Practitioner who has worked both in practice and academe in the area of Elder Law for close to twenty years. During this time Sue has researched, consulted, taught, published and presented widely in this emerging speciality.
Sue is currently a member of the following NSW Law Society’s Committees, Elder Law, Capacity and Succession and Rural Issues; a member of the ALRC Elder Abuse Advisory Committee, a Distinguished Fellow at the Canadian Centre for Elder Law, a Research Fellow at UWA and a Lead Investigator in the Cognitive Decline Partnership Centre.
Sue is co-editor of the recently released text on ‘Elder Law – A Guide for working with Older Australians’ Federation Press, 2018. Sue is also co-authoring a lay person’s guide to elder law due for publication early 2019.
