Since 1980, Bruce has been intimately involved in observing, participating in, and studying the development of administrative law, especially as it relates to the veterans' law. The veterans' jurisdiction has been the largest of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal's jurisdictions since 1986. There have been over 300 Federal and High Court judgments in this jurisdiction since 1980 concerning administrative decisions.

From 1986 until 1989 Bruce was editor of the Veterans Review Board's bulletin, VeRBosity. At that time he was also editor of Volume 2 of Repatriation Pension Decisions, being reports of Court and Tribunal decisions concerning veterans' matters. He has written extensively in relation to veterans' law, in legal advice concerning particular cases and issues, in briefs to counsel, and in training material.

Bruce has been an active participant in administrative review for many years, from all sides of the process, for example:

• he was responsible for conducting legal research for Veterans' Review Board members;
• he was closely involved in the development of Tribunal and Board procedures as an executive staff member;
• he has been a member of the Veterans' Review Board;
• he has been responsible nationally for the legal policy and direction for Departmental advocates appearing before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal;
• he has appeared before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on many occasions as an advocate in complex matters;
• he has been responsible for training Departmental advocates, including preparing training manuals, and assisting in presenting post-graduate level advocacy training courses in conjunction with the University of Canberra and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (other presenters were Hugh Selby, Professor Eugene Clark, and Senior Members Lewis of the AAT);
• he has written the two Veterans' Law units for the Southern Cross University's Short Course in Veterans' Law, to be offerred in the 2001 academic year and is the unit coordinator for those units.

From 1991 until 1998, Bruce was responsible for the drafting of the Department of Veterans' Affairs responses to all Administrative Review Council and Australian Law Reform Commission inquiries and reports, and drafting delegated legislation under the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986.

Bruce was closely involved in developing the policy behind the creation of the Repatriation Medical Authority, which is a statutory body, unique in the world, whose function is to make legislative instruments that exhaustively state the causal factors for injuries and disease. He was responsible for producing the drafting instructions for that legislation in 1994.

Bruce is currently the Executive Officer of the Veterans' Review Board, responsible for the staff and the national operations of the Board, as well as being in-house counsel to the Principal Member.