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Solicitor litigants’ entitlement to costs

Solicitors who are parties to litigation and don’t hire other solicitors to represent them are the only people who are generally entitled to claim legal costs from the losing party even though they don’t have to pay lawyers anything. Engaging in litigation involving themselves is therefore a profitable activity if they win. The principle dates back to London Scottish Benefit Society v Chorley (1884) 13 QBD 872. The Supreme Courts of the land are grumbling about the anamlous nature of the exception, but reluctantly applying it. The most recent case is Freehills, in the matter of New Tel Limited (in liq) (No 4) [2008] FCA 1085.

The leading Australian case is Guss v Veenhuizen (No 2) (1976) 136 CLR 47. The most recent High Court authority to touch on the question is Cachia v Hanes (1994) 179 CLR 403, though that was a case about a claim for costs of a self-represented consulting engineer who was successful in litigation, and the Court there doubted, in dicta, the cogency of the Guss Case‘s reasoning. A judge of the The Full Court of the Supreme Court of Western Australia refused to apply the exception in Dobree v Hoffman (1996) 18 WAR 36, but in the Freehills Case, McKerracher J of the Federal Court sitting in Perth decided to refer it directly to the Full Court of the Federal Court, without formally determining the case, commenting only that he would consider himself bound by Guss’s Case. Other cases to apply the exception include: Continue reading “Solicitor litigants’ entitlement to costs”

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It’s summer in England

and this is what The Times thinks lawyers should be reading on their summer holidays:

  • The Art of the Advocate, by Richard Du Cann, QC, Penguin;
  • Famous Trials, selected by John Mortimer, QC, Penguin;
  • The Tyrannicide Brief, by Geoffrey Robertson, QC, Vintage;
  • To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Pan Books;
  • The Firm, by John Grisham, Arrow.

An absurd proposition certainly, for all but the most tragic (and there are many law tragics who are yet to come out of the cupboard), but for some reason I like the article. So here it is.

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Zarah wins

Ms Garde-Wilson’s back in business. In fact she never went out of business, since following the non-renewal of her practising certificate, she held a deemed practising certificate pursuant to the Legal Profession Act, 2004, s. 2.4.5(3) pending her VCAT merits review application. The assertion that she had ceased to be a fit and proper person seems fundamentally to have been about her contempt of the Supreme Court of Victoria in refusing to answer questions on oath, and certain criminal charges which were pending against her. The criminal charges went away, and the Board obviously subsequently formed the view that the unusual circumstances of the contempt conviction were not such as to demonstrate her unfitness to engage in legal practice, and so gave her her practising certificate back. These things are determined at the date of a decision, and so the fact that the Board determined now that Ms Garde-Wilson was a fit and proper person does not necessarily suggest that its decision back then was wrong.

I suspect that Justice Bell commencing his decision in Garde-Wilson v Legal Services Board [2007] VSC 225:

‘The plaintiff, a young and intelligent solicitor, was working hard in a firm specialising in criminal law,’

must not have harmed her cause. So too Justice Harper’s reasons for not imposing any sentence on her upon finding her guilty of contempt of court, which began:

‘Zarah Garde-Wilson, you are a solicitor who, on the evidence available to me, is intelligent, hard working and determined to represent your clients to the best of your ability. These are valuable attributes in any legal practitioner. Another such attribute is that combination of learning, technical legal skills and common sense which, appropriately mixed, results in sound judgment. None of us get the combination exactly right all the time.’ (R v Garde-Wilson [2005] VSC 452)

The Age article alerted me to a Zarah decision I had missed, about the detail of which I will fill you in on soon. Here it is: Garde-Wilson v Legal Services Board [2008] VSCA 43. The Court of Appeal, led by Justice of Appeal Dodds-Streeton, overturned Justice Bell’s decision mentioned above, which had dismissed Ms Garde-Wilson’s application for judicial review of the Board’s decision to suspend her practising certificate. Justice Bell had said that Ms Garde-Wilson had a perfectly adequate alternative remedy in the merits review option in VCAT, and that is a good reason why judicial review should not be availed of. Not so, said the Court of Appeal.

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On “cowardly”

Stephen Witham (pictured) moved into Michael Flaherty’s flat. The relationship quickly soured when Witham assaulted Flaherty’s girlfriend, and stood over people for drugs and money. So Flaherty got some mates together, hit Witham about with baseball bats, hogtied him with ropes and cable ties, wrapped him in a doona, popped him in the boot, and drove him down Mirboo North way for the purpose of executing him in a pine plantation. Before shooting him, he had a chat with Witham and asked him if he had any final requests. Witham asked for a beer, and they each had one from a six pack. Then Flaherty kicked Witham so as to roll him down a hill, and acceded to his request not to be shot in the face, shooting him dead, in the back of the head. Afterwards, he boasted about the killing. It might have gone undetected but for an anonymous tip off to the police. He showed no remorse in his police interview, pleaded guilty at the first opportunity, and was not known to have been violent in the past. According to Justice Kaye, he did later come to realise the enormity of his offending and was genuinely contrite. Continue reading “On “cowardly””

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When will a professional discipline proceeding be stayed pending overlapping criminal charges?

Post updated 7 April 2013: See now ML v Australian Securities and Investments Commission [2013] NSWSC 283 (application to disbar liquidator not stayed pending related criminal proceedings which were ‘on the cards’: suggested that a secrecy regime could be imposed in respect of the disciplinary proceedings so as to protect the liquidator in the criminal proceedings).

Post updated 1 March 2013: See also Re AWB Limited [2008] VSC 473.

Original post: Dedicated readers will already have been following the saga of the misconduct prosecution of Kylie Minogue’s one-time lawyer. Casual readers can lap it all up here. Deputy President Dwyer’s reasons for refusing to stay the disciplinary proceedings have hit the internet: Legal Services Commissioner v MB [2008] VCAT 1341. For some reason, the lawyer adduced into evidence a letter from the Australian Crime Commission which said that there was no overlap between the subject matter of the disciplinary charges and the subject matter of the Australian Crime Commission’s investigation, ‘pulling the rug’, as Deputy President Dwyer put it, from the lawyer’s own case. Apart from some newspaper articles suggesting that up to 50 people might be prosecuted as a result of ‘Project Wickenby’, there was not a lot of evidence that the solicitor was going to be prosecuted imminently or otherwise. So it is not an especially interesting decision, legally. It is helpful to have a VCAT decision which rehearses the authorities on the question of stays pending criminal proceedings in their application to disciplinary proceedings, though. Continue reading “When will a professional discipline proceeding be stayed pending overlapping criminal charges?”

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Burden of proof in actions to cancel a practising certificate or strike a lawyer off the roll of practitioners

In Stanoevski v Council of the Law Society of NSW [2008] NSWCA 93, Justice of Appeal Campbell, with whom Justice of Appeal Hodgson and Acting Justice of Appeal Handley agreed, has provided important guidance on who bears which burdens of proof in cases where a legal regulator seeks to cancel a practising certificate or have a lawyer struck from the roll. (Cancellation by a legal regulator of a practising certificate lasts only as long as the practising certificate (i.e. until the end of the financial year), whereas striking off the roll lasts until an application for readmission succeeds, at which point, an application may be made for a practising certificate. To complicate things, though, cancellation of a practising certificate as a result of a disciplinary hearing by VCAT may result in a condition that the lawyer not reapply for practising certificate for a specific period. Being struck off the roll and having your practising certificate cancelled are not all that different really.) In summary, the situation is as follows:

  • applicants for admission have the burden of establishing that they are fit and proper persons to be admitted to practice and enrolled by signing the roll of practitioners: Re B [1981] 2 NSWLR 372 at 403; Wentworth v NSW Bar Association (Court of Appeal, 14 February 1994, unreported) at 5;
  • legal regulators who apply for an order cancelling a practitioner’s practising certificate have a civil onus of proving on the Briginshaw standard that the practitioner is not, at the time of the hearing, a fit and proper person to practise;
  • legal regulators who apply for an order striking off a practitioner, that is, for an order that their name be struck off the roll of practitioners, have a civil onus of proving on the Briginshaw standard that the lawyer is not a fit and proper person to practise, and that the likelihood is that they will continue not to be for the indefinite future;
  • lawyers who have either been struck off, or who have been found guilty of misconduct but rely on remediation during the time between the misconduct and the hearing so as to argue that they are now fit to engage in practice bear the burden of proving that the new leaf they have turned over is as green and shiny as they claim. Continue reading “Burden of proof in actions to cancel a practising certificate or strike a lawyer off the roll of practitioners”
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The costs disclosure provisions in statutes regulating the profession are not codes

In Nicholson v B&S [2000] VLPT 28, the Legal Profession Tribunal’s Registrar Howell considered whether the costs disclosure provisions of the Legal Practice Act, 1996 constituted a code which demonstrated an intention of the parliament to displace the common law. ‘Nope’, he said:

‘I have considered whether the provisions of Division 1 of Part 4 of the Legal Practice Act 1996 created a code for the provision of information to clients and thus relieved legal practitioners from their previous obligations to provide information. I have concluded that Division 1 is not a code because there is nothing in Division 1 which indicates to me that the legislature intended to change the position at common law or to relieve practitioners of their fiduciary obligations.’

Continue reading “The costs disclosure provisions in statutes regulating the profession are not codes”

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Message to Hullsey: That’s not a big fee…

In VCAT’s Legal Practice List the other day, defending a firm alleged to have charged too much at the rate of $230 an hour, I made the point in cross-examination that London tax silks were wont to charge £600 per hour. As I uttered the words, I was visited by self-doubt. The amount sounded wrong, too much. But hell was I out of date! They don’t charge £600 an hour anymore: they just charge £20,000 ($41,000) an advice. In fact top London firm partners charge between £600 and £1400 an hour. Or so The Times says in a feature entitled ‘Are Top Lawyers Worth Their Huge Fees?’ And the AFR reports today that each of Freshfields, Linklaters, Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance topped the £1 billion mark in turnover, more than half of it from outside London, including China and the Middle East. Victoria’s Attorney General, worried about my confrères’ wont* to charge $14,000 a day has just gotta take a chill pill. This is the most interesting bit of The Times’s article: Continue reading “Message to Hullsey: That’s not a big fee…”

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Seems the implied waiver hystericals were right after all

Lawyers Weekly has an article by some folk at Allens noting Justice Branson’s decision in Rich v Harrington [2007] FCA 1987, a mega anti-discrimination suit brought by Christina Rich, a former partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia against the other partners. There are so many privilege cases which come out, it’s hard to know which ones to read. This one would be a good choice: it covers implied waiver, the prerequisites to a successful assertion of privilege over communications with in-house counsel, and the common interest exception to waiver, namely most of the tricky bits.

Pricewaterhouse’s lawyers wrote to Ms Rich saying:

‘Our client has acted at all times with the benefit of external advice and does not believe that there has been any victimisation or other conduct for which compensation could properly be sought.’

That was held to waive privilege in the advice so as to entitle Ms Rich to a copy of it. I have always thought people have been overly hysterical about the dangers of waiver, and, living in fear of it as they do, forego forensic advantage that they might obtain but for their phobia.  Admittedly, this single decision does seem to add fuel to the hystericals’ fire. Allens’ people’s message is: never mention legal advice. To give them their due, they were writing for a national rag. Victorians in fora outside the Federal Court can probably relax a bit more than that because of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Secretary, Department of Justice v Osland [2007] VSCA 96, which the authors mention. Even Victorian Federal Court judges are likely to be influenced by that decision.

One aspect of the law of privilege about which lawyers are more comfortable and relaxed than perhaps they might be is the entitlement of the employers of in-house lawyers to claim privilege over their advice and work. This decision confirms that they are in fact more comfortable and relaxed than they should be.

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Victoria to adopt uniform evidence legislation

Update, 25 January 2010: The Act commenced on 1 January 2010.  See now this post.

Update, 13 January 2009: The Evidence Act, 2008 was assented to on 15 September 2008 and is to commence on a day to be proclaimed, probably no later than the end of this year.

Original post: The government has finally introduced the Evidence Bill, 2008 which, when passed, will make Victoria the 5th jurisdiction (after the Commonwealth, NSW, ACT, Norfolk Island and Tasmania) to adopt the uniform evidence legislation. It is a good development, because some of the common law rules of evidence, as amended by the Evidence Act, 1958, are so ridiculous that, according to a most experienced Supreme Court judge I heard speaking extra-curially, only especially irritating middle class unrepresented litigants ever dare to raise them.

It will also be good because the law clusters more efficiently around statutory provisions. Tracking the evolution of common law concepts is made difficult by inconsistency of language, whereas there is only one statutory text. Statutory text can have its own set of problems — the ad hoc series of amendments to the Evidence Act, 1958 which don’t hang together too well being a good example — but great care was taken in the drafting of the uniform legislation. Now to find all the cases about illegally obtained evidence in civil cases, we will be able to tap the relevant sub-section of the Act into Case Base, or even Austlii’s ‘Note Up’ function. A further advantage is this: the Federal Court and the Supreme Court of NSW are much better at publishing reasons for evidentiary rulings than the Supreme Court of Victoria. So Victorians will be able to make use of the many decisions of those courts which state the law relatively consistently and clearly by reference to modern cases, whereas evidence texts on the common law are replete with 19th century authority, and the common law states’ law of evidence is divergent because of different statutory modifications, but not sufficiently divergent to justify separate texts.

The Attorney-General’s media release is all about the millions which will be saved by the abolition of the best evidence rule, which requires the originals of documents, rather than copies, to be adduced in evidence. He obviously hasn’t noticed that no one takes any notice of the rule anyway. Indeed, one of Melbourne University’s evidence gurus says the rule no longer exists.

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Breakdown in the solicitor-client relationship: ‘good cause’ for sacking the client?

Update, 14 February 2009: A judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia said this in Everingham v Mullins [2000] SASC 448:

’12 The appellants maintain that Stanleys undertook an entire job and were not entitled to be paid when they were reluctant to continue the third set of proceedings. The Magistrate found: (par 28)

“There had been a complete breakdown in the solicitor/client relationship. Mr Bourne said that he could not get a simple task done by a junior solicitor without criticism from the Everinghams, and by then he felt that he was in a conflict situation because he had no enthusiasm to act in the third judicial review and therefore he was not any longer prepared to act. By offering the Everinghams the option of going to another solicitor he felt that the conflict would resolve. I should point out that the third judicial review was in turn discontinued, apparently on the advice of Caldicott and Co.”

13 The instructions came to an end by mutual consent. Mrs Everingham refused even to speak to a junior solicitor who was sent to a routine listing conference by Stanleys. In my opinion, the Everinghams were not entitled to avoid paying their solicitors by reason of the circumstances in which the relationship came to an end.’

Update, 13 July 2008: A commenter, ‘purplehazel’, has provided such a learned response that I repeat it below.  Let’s keep working on this problem people, and see what the readers of this blog can come up with:

I think asking for “authority for the proposition that a solicitor may terminate a client retainer where the relationship of solicitor and client has irretrievably broken down?” is too broad a question. You have to consider the reasons for the breakdown.

The solicitor can’t get rid of the client on a whim, but case law and practice rules would support it the following contexts; refusal to comply with discovery, committing or telling the solicitor of plans to commit perjury, potential ‘abuse of process’ scenarios that you can’t talk the client out of and situations where the client wants you to break the law.

As for case law that simply refers to the ‘breakdown of the relationship’ all I’ve been able to come across so far is this:

Para [105] of Ahmed v Russell Kennedy (a firm) [2000] VSC 41 (23 February 2000)

“[105] I do not see why the learned magistrate should not have concluded that each of the appellant’s refusal (or failure, in the circumstances) to pay any outstanding disbursements, and the breakdown in the solicitor/client relationship – in the context of what his Worship might have concluded was the appellant’s knowing misstatement of the terms of the retainer – gave good cause for the solicitors to terminate the retainer.”

But…reference to the ‘breakdown in the solicitor/client relationship’ does seem to be a consequence of the fee dispute and not a separate ground. It did however cause me to have a closer look at Underwood Son & Piper v Lewis [1894] 2 QB 306 [a decision of the English CoA] which Halsbury’s laws of Australia has as the leading case.

Underwood is authority for the idea that the retainer is an entire contract and can only be terminated by the solicitor on “good cause and reasonable notice”. It includes analogies about cigars and shoes from Re Hall & Barker ((1878) 9 Ch D 538 at 545):

‘If a man engages to carry a box of cigars from London to Birmingham, it is an entire contract, and he cannot throw the cigars out of the carriage half-way there, and ask for half the money; or if a shoemaker agrees to make a pair of shoes, he cannot offer you one shoe and ask you to pay one half the price.’

However, Underwood doesn’t just refer to a client’s failure to put the solicitor in funds to meet disbursements; to insistence by the client that the solicitor take some dishonourable step; and to circumstances where the client hinders /prevents the solicitor’s actions [the 3 instances related in Halsbury’s laws of Australia at [250-465] footnote 9] it also includes this obiter comment from AL Smith LJ:

“and many cases situations may be supposed in which the solicitor may be entitled to refuse to act for the client any further.”

Interesting that the cases citing Underwood seem less about what the solicitor may or may not do, and more about whether they can’t stop acting and still expect to be paid for what they’ve done so far (or to keep payments already received).

Relevant questions on the facts – is there one contract with the client or a series of separate ones? to what extent can a written costs agreement or other agreement that sets up the retainer simply take the relationship between the parties out of the realm of the ‘entire contract’ altogether?

There’s another passing reference (which doesn’t really help much) in R v Promizio [2004] NSWCCA 75 (31 March 2004) at [33].

Conflicts between self interest [the risk of disciplinary or other sanctions] and the duty to the client would arise in the examples I suggest in the second paragraph of this comment – but they are probably best seen as part of the duty to uphold the law/duty to the court.’

Original post: One of the solicitors I have done some work for has several times told me that she ‘sacked the client’. Though clients can terminate the solicitor-client relationship without notice and for whatever reason they like, there are limits on solicitors’ entitlement to do so; even non-payment of fees only entitles you to cease acting pending payment, at least until the situation becomes chronic. I am going through a phase of looking unsuccessfully for authority for propositions I thought I know to be correct, and not finding them. Hence this call to readers: can you point me to authority for the proposition that a solicitor may terminate a client retainer where the relationship of solicitor and client has irretrievably broken down? Or authority for the proposition that in that situation, a solicitor ought not to continue acting because to do so would involve a conflict between self-interest and duty to the client? Here’s a recent case from the Utah Supreme Court which discusses the US authorities on this issue, where breakdown of the relationship is obviously good cause for a solicitor terminating a retainer. What about in Anglo-Australian law? Anybody?

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Law Institute seeks 50 year ban for 62 year old solicitor

In Law Institute of Victoria v DSS [2008] VCAT 1179, the Institute sought in a misconduct prosecution an order that the solicitor not be allowed to handle trust monies for 50 years. Vice President Judge Ross described the submission as ‘somewhat excessive’.

The solicitor had stolen $75,000 from his clients and out of his trust account, lied to a trust account inspector, removed evidence so as to hinder his investigation, and involved a client in misleading the inspector by dictating a letter full of lies and having her sign it and send it to the inspector with a view to perverting the course of justice. These were ‘manifestly serious’ instances of misconduct. In a criminal prosecution, Justice Lasry had sentenced the solicitor to 18 months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended. The solicitor was suffering from a mental illness at the time when he committed the offences. A family law client had been murdered by her husband at the County Court more or less in the solicitor’s presence and he had not coped well. There was a psychiatrist’s report. The solicitor was remorseful and his remediation was well advanced. He had paid back all the stolen monies. He was working in a business which provided services to body corporates, and his employer was supportive. On his return to practice, he intended to confine himself to body corporate law.

In these circumstances, the Institute contended that an appropriate disposition for the disciplinary charges arising out of the same facts as the criminal charges was: Continue reading “Law Institute seeks 50 year ban for 62 year old solicitor”

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Kylie’s one-time lawyer before VCAT’s Legal Practice List

Update, 18 July 2008: Make that a $200,000, not $20,000, loan from rock impressario Michael Gudinski. I like the way he gave evidence to VCAT’s Legal Practice List by mobile phone from a US Billy Joel concert. Leonie Wood’s report for The Age is here.

Update, 15 July 2008: Apparently the Law Institute’s trust account inspector Ron Hall thumped the table while under cross-examination by the lawyer’s counsel. What drama! The Age‘s report is here. Mr Hall’s evidence provides a fascinating insight into the way trust account inspectors employed by the Law Institute think. Mr Hall said at one stage, he thought ‘right, I have enough here to put a practitioner up for alleged misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct’. Inspectors hold statutory office as individuals, and their job is to investigate compliance with the trust account regime, and to report their results to the Legal Services Board. The Legal Services Commissioner is charged with bringing prosecutions for misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct. Many trust account inspectors are employees of the Law Institute, and the Board delegates its functions in relation to trust accounts to the Institute. The Commissioner outsources the investigation of allegations of unsatisfactory conduct and misconduct to the Institute too. This is under the new simpler, more transparent, new and improved no-self-regulation-here! regime set up at such expense of paper and ink by the Legal Profession Act, 2004. According to The Age:

‘Mr Hall was asked if, during his investigation, he acted “at the express behest of the Australian Crime Commission”. He first said “yes”, adding he had been subpoenaed by the ACC. Asked again by VCAT deputy president Mark Dwyer, Mr Hall said the LIV investigation was his own work. But then he revealed that ACC officers gave him one of their documents.’

Update, 12 July 2008: The lawyer failed in his bid to have the Supreme Court prevent the Legal Profession Tribunal continuing to hear the disciplinary charges against him. And The Age reports on one of the transactions under scrutiny, a loan by Michael Gudinski to his then lawyer, of $20,000, said by the Legal Services Commissioner to be inadequately documented, and a breach of professional standards.Original post: The lawyer towards the centre of the regulators’ tax probe Project Wickenby, once Kylie Minogue’s and other celebrities’ lawyer, is again in the news as his VCAT Legal Practice List prosecution continues in his absence overseas. He has appealed Deputy President Dwyer’s refusal to adjourn the disciplinary hearing on the basis it would prejudice the hearing of what the solicitor claims are imminent criminal charges and the appeal will be heard in the Supreme Court on Friday morning. His barrister says he has no instructions in relation to the disciplinary matters. The Commissioner alleges the solicitor provided no cooperation with the investigation. I am not aware of Deputy President Dwyer sitting in the Legal Practice List before. He was the head of Freehills’s Environment and Planning Group and was appointed DP on 1 April 2007.

As far as I can see from Austlii, all of his decisions written reasons for which have been published on Austlii have involved local councils and I infer that they have all been planning matters. There is one exception: a real property list matter. A web profile of Mr Dwyer before his appointment says: Continue reading “Kylie’s one-time lawyer before VCAT’s Legal Practice List”

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Robyn Tampoe, Schapelle Corby’s solicitor

Update, 10 June 2009: Mr Tampoe has been struck off the roll of solicitors.

Update, 7 July 2008: Watch the video of Tampoe slagging off his client here.

Original post: Lawyers and their regulators should care about the Corby case, because at the relevant time, a lot of people loved Schapelle and Schapelle does not now much like her lawyers. One of them has hit back, calling the Corbys “the biggest pile of trash I have ever come across in my life”. People will think this is normal, or at least the tip of the iceberg. And much confusion seems to be going around about Mr Tampoe’s fabrication of a defence for Corby. For giving this interview, and saying this, I condemn Mr Tampoe, who is no longer a solicitor, with all my fibre. What I question below is whether the media have got their reportage of his claim to have completely fabricated the defence right — if he means what I imagine he means, I say — so what? Whether or not the media have got it right, I reckon his comments might well harm his former client. They could have been personally deeply hurtful, they could affect her treatment in jail, they could affect any claim for clemency she might in the future make, and they could affect the result of the prisoner exchange treaty negotiations underway between the Australian and Indonesian governments, or the speed with which they progress. Continue reading “Robyn Tampoe, Schapelle Corby’s solicitor”

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From the newspapers

Friday is definitely law news day. The Australian and the Australian Financial Review both have several pages of law news of a Friday. I might try to bring to the attention of you readers articles of interest from both on a relatively regular basis.

First though, some things from not-Friday. ABC Radio National’s The Law Report has the founder of Crimassist (which I mentioned here) tête-à-tête with the CEO of the Law Institute of Victoria. And The Age reported this week on a VCAT Legal Practice List case where a legal regulator is again alleged to have put illegally obtained evidence to use against a lawyer, this time the lawyer towards the centre of the tax fraud investigation, Project Wickenby. His bid to stay his disciplinary hearing pending what he said were imminent criminal charges failed, and the disciplinary hearing will proceed on Tuesday.

The Times has an article on a House of Lords decision which has put an end to what sounds like a relatively undesirable system in Old Blighty of allowing prosecutors to apply ex parte for orders anonymising witnesses in fear of their life if they testify. Better to preserve the common law rule that a defendant is entitled to confront his accusers than to risk some guilty folk walking free for want of evidence against them.  And the English are reviewing their system of no-win no-pay retainers. But unlike in Victoria, where the maximum success fee is 25% of the ‘normal’ fee (whatever that is), in England, a solicitor whose client succeeds can double their ‘normal fee’.

Le Oz has an article on a 34 year old Perth lawyer convicted of attempting to pervert the course of justice by convincing a witness not to give evidence against her de facto, who stood charged with conspiracy to commit a violent crime. The Western Australian Legal Practitioners Complaints Committee was meeting yesterday to consider her future as a lawyer. The comparison with that other case involving a 30 something female criminal lawyer and her late gangster de facto may be interesting. It also reports that the inter-state argy-bargy on a uniform national electronic conveyancing system in which Victoria has featured prominently has been resolved. A good thing too: this boring subject was clogging the Legal Affairs pages for too long. Meanwhile, the Conveyancers Act, 2006 (Vic.) came into operation on 1 July 2008. It repeals the bit in the Legal Profession Act, 2004 about conveyancers.

Amazingly, The Fin has a man with a barrister’s wig on its front page with the caption ‘Many barristers have grown frustrated with outdated practices’ as a hook to an article about the not especially newsworthy opening up of a new 18 room barristers chambers. It’s privately run you see, unlike the chambers owned by the Victorian Bar where 63 per cent of Victoria’s barristers are accommodated. I went and checked out Dawson Chambers today. They’re pretty flash, and house several of my mates, but sport views of the next door building. They’re set up by Stephen O’Bryan SC and David Klempfner. Stephen’s brother Norman O’Bryan SC is my landlord at Melbourne Chambers.

The Fin also reports on a NSW law which will make it a criminal offence for causing ‘annoyance or inconvenience’ to participants in World Youth Day. I wonder whether there is a Papal immunity which will immunise his Holiness from prosecution for the inconvenience of the sinfulness of contraception.