I have previously posted about the QC who took his computer into work at the DPP only to lose his career when the tech found child pornography on it. It was a bizarre story, and of course there was a twist which has become clear from the disciplinary decision in Council of the NSW [...]

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In this post, I just reproduce what Deputy President Dwyer said recently about the burden of proof, right to silence, and inferences which may be drawn from the fact of the exercise by a solicitor of the right to silence. He said it in the context of a hard-fought hearing into the conduct of Kylie's [...]

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On 13 August 2008, Deputy President O'Dwyer found charges of misconduct at common law made out against Kylie Minogue's one-time solicitor, the man towards the centre of the government's Operation Wickenby investigation, Michael Brereton. See Legal Services Commissioner v Brereton [2008] VCAT 1723. Mr O'Dwyer found he had transferred more than $2.3 million of [...]

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I spent a week on Magnetic Island just now. It is a good place: a big island with four little suburbs but mostly national park, where people live, go to school, the bakery, the chemist, and the doctor. It has good supermarkets. It has wonderfully hokey restaurants like Man Friday's, a Mexican restaurant which [...]

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Once a complaint form has been lodged by a complainant with the Legal Services Commissioner, she has decided that it constitutes a 'complaint' as defined, has heard the respondent lawyer on whether it should be summarily dismissed, and has decided against that course, the Commissioner may exercise any or all of her draconian powers under [...]

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The Age has reported the conviction for drug trafficking of a 41 year old church-going Melbourne patent lawyer with a Master of Laws after a shoe box containing about $170,000 in cash and $300,000 worth of the drug ice was found in her apartment. She is yet to be sentenced. It will be [...]

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Costs have traditionally followed the event. Put up 5 reasons why you should get damages and win on 1 of them, and the starting point has been that you get the costs of the whole proceeding, including of the 4 causes of action which failed. Recent decisions of a Full Federal Court constituted [...]

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In a long-wnded way, I tentatively suggest that, so long as the applicant has the sense to invoke s. 108 of the Fair Trading Act, 1999, then penalty interest is available under the Supreme Court Act, 1986, just like in the Supreme Court, so long as the dispute is a consumer-trader dispute. That is, a [...]

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When I started law school, I could not have told you the difference between a barrister and solicitor, and I was perplexed why all the judges' initials were 'J'. For some reason, I thought it was absurd that there was an Act called the Acts Interpretation Act. I was contemptuous but nonetheless attracted to [...]

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The New South Wales Court of Appeal overturned a trial judge's order that the plaintiff's solicitor personally pay costs of joining a particular party against whom leave to discontinue was successfully sought in the first days of the trial. The order was made under s. 348 of the NSW Legal Profession Act, 2004, in [...]

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