Clayton Utz's Sally Shepherd has a good article about a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Victoria's Justice Bell on judges' duties to assist unrepresented litigants, and whether change is to be wrought on that front by the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities which will really start kicking next year. It is [...]

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Speaking, as I was in the last post, about AILA's Geoff Masel lecture series, here is the 2006 lecture, delivered by Tony Scotford of Ebsworth & Ebsworth's Sydney office. It is yet another contribution to the much talked about but little done about problem of insurer-appointed defence lawyers in liability claims and their potentially [...]

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Professor Greg Reinhardt taught me civil procedure in my undergraduate degree. Then he taught me Advanced Litigation, Professional Indemnity Insurance, and Insurance Litigation, in a post-graduate degree I did. In the latter subject, I wrote an essay about, in part, plaintiffs' attempts to join defendants' liability insurers to proceedings for declarations that they [...]

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The Third International Legal Ethics Conference is to be held between 13 and 16 July 2008 on the Gold Coast. It costs $500 or $220 a day. Queensland's Chief Justice de Jersey, who has written at least a few disciplinary decisions which I happen to have stumbled across, is a keynote speaker, along with [...]

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I have a certain fondness for dentists behaving badly.  The illustration, stolen from Barista (a beautiful blog from Melbourne), is of a dental oxygen enema.  I understand that a Melbourne dentist was given a holiday for the rest of his life after losing his quixotic battle with the dentists' Bureau de Spank (see its recent [...]

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It took an awfully long time — almost 15,000 words — for Justice Hansen to state the bleeding obvious in Attorney-General for the State of Victoria v Shaw [2007] VSC 1148, but in the circumstances, I well understand why his Honour desired to appeal-proof his judgment. Mr Shaw, who as a newly annointed vexatious litigant, [...]

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I was already a fan of the first edition of Judge Stephen Walmsley SC, Alister Abadee, and Ben Zipser's excellent Professional Liability in Australia, published by Thomson, and had been waiting for the new edition with interest. I got myself a copy the other day. It's good, and there are substantial additions since [...]

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Update, 18 October 2007: What's more, major law firms are beginning to Vodcast. That's kind of like grown-up YouTube. Take this example, where 2 Clayton Utz partners emphasise the importance for successful litigation of keeping the originals of documents.
The Sunday Age has an article on law blogs, hot on the heels of a Lawyers' Weekly [...]

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In Huang's Case [2007] VCAT 1692, Senior Member Howell was presented with a case brought by a man who had initiated the Legal Profession Act, 2004's lawyer-client costs dispute process by lodging a civil complaint with the Legal Services Commissioner. The scheme of the Act is that the Commissioner tries to settle the dispute, and [...]

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In Anfuso's Case [2007] VCAT 1690, Member Butcher of VCAT's Legal Practice List gave summary judgment for a solicitor by reference to the principles of accord and satisfaction. The solicitor had sued for her fees in the Magistrates' Court. She got default judgment against her former client, and got an order that his employer pay [...]

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