On 7 May 1968, 25 legal practitioners met together (with proxies for five others) to form the Law Society Northern Territory.

Darwin lawyer Richard Keller convened the meeting. Mr Keller had been part of a steering committee formed the previous year to write to other Australian law societies to gain an overall picture of which direction the Territory’s law society should take.

He described the event as a milestone in the history of the Northern Territory, which until then was the only part of the Commonwealth of Australia which had no such body.

The Society and its membership has since grown. Currently there are over 500 members of the Society.

Mandatory Reading, Lawyers and Life in the Northern Territory (2018) is a 50th anniversary publication which covers the history of the Society and the Territory in great detail.