Doctors and Lawyers: When Registration or Admission Is Your Skills Assessment

Most skilled visa applicants need a skills assessment from an assessing authority. Doctors and lawyers are treated a little differently. The Department accepts professional registration or admission as a suitable skills assessment, and it has specific policies on how their work counts for points.

Doctors

The Department accepts one of the following certificates from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) as a favourable skills assessment:

• full, unconditional or general medical registration; or
• conditional specialist registration, where it lets you practise in your specialty without further training or supervision requirements.

For employment points, the Department’s instructions say:

• work as an intern or registrar can be counted as skilled employment;
• Australian work as a medical practitioner while you held conditional registration can be accepted as skilled employment;
• a specialist’s earlier work as a general practitioner should be recognised, even though the usual closely related occupation rule is limited to one unit group.

The usual rules on hours and pay still apply. See what counts as skilled employment for points and closely related work and career progression. Our visa options for doctors page covers employer-sponsored and other pathways too.

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Solicitors and barristers

The Department accepts evidence of either of the following as a suitable skills assessment for solicitors and barristers:

• admission by the relevant state or territory Legal Admissions Authority; or
• admission to the Supreme Court of a state or territory.

Admission shows that you have been found suitable to practise in that jurisdiction. The 189 instructions add that you must still be on the roll at the time of invitation.

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Membership is not enough

Being a member of a professional association is not a skills assessment, and it will not meet the requirement to have a suitable skills assessment at the time of invitation. The registration or admission itself is what counts.

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The other skilled visa rules still apply

Requirement	Applies to doctors and lawyers?
Invitation and EOI score	Yes
Occupation on the relevant skilled occupation list at invitation	Yes
Registration or admission in place at the time of invitation	Yes
Competent English at invitation	Yes
Assessed score not lower than the invitation score	Yes

If you are still completing registration or admission, plan your EOI so the requirement is met before you could be invited. See what to do if you are invited but cannot prove a claim.

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What you should do now

• Doctors: make sure your AHPRA registration is the right type and in place before you could be invited.
• Lawyers: confirm your admission and that you will still be on the roll at the time of invitation.
• Both: check that your occupation is on the relevant list and that your employment claims meet the usual hours and pay rules.