Professor Lawrance is a Professor in the School of Medicine and Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Australia, and a Gastroenterologist at St John of God Subiaco Hospital.

He is a leading expert in the management of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) patients. He has more than 90 peer-reviewed papers in the field of IBD, including in Nature, Nature genetics, Lancet, NEJM and Gastroenterology papers. He is on the editorial board of numerous scientific publications and the Genetics Section Editor for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

In 2000 he developed the Centre for IBD at Fremantle Hospital. In 2015, he created the first private centre for IBD at St John of God Subiaco Hospital. He is a member of the WA Drug Evaluation Panel (WADEP), a member of the Australian and New Zealand IBD consortium (ANZIBDC), a previous board member of the Australian IBD Association (AIBDA), a board member of Crohn's Colitis Cure (CCC) and co-chair of the IBD Genetics Consortium (IIBDGC).

He was Head of the Department of Gastroenterology at Fremantle Hospital from 2004-2007, Director of Endoscopic Services at Kaleeya Hospital from 2004-2007 and currently sits on the numerous pharmaceutical IBD drug advisory committees.