Trust monies tempt gamblers.  Sometimes solicitors succumb.  Consider R v. Gabriel W [2006] VSC 397, where $1 million disappeared from a solicitor’s trust account. Justice Teague locked him up, and said in the process: ’16 I have read closely the reports of two psychologists who have examined you. They are Mr Beaton who saw you [...]

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Justice Pagone considered the Commissioner of Taxation’s invocation of a power to compel the production of documents and information (s 264(1)(b) of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (Cth)). In this case, the subject of the compulsion was the Law Institute, more used to flinging such powers around itself.  Legal regulators not infrequently list poorly [...]

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I like lawyers who state the law on the internet for free.  Australia is good at this in the sense of making raw materials available via Austlii.  What there is very little of is commentary, and exposition of the law. I have previously sung the praises of John Stratton’s NSW treasure trove of material about [...]

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The Building Practitioners Board is the Bureau de Spank for builders. It initiated an inquiry into whether a builder had breached a provision of the Building Act, 1993 (Vic.).  The provision prohibited builders from building without a permit.  Breach is a crime, but the Board is not entitled to prosecute offences under the Act, for [...]

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Update, 8 May 2009: The Westralians have been listening to Justice of Appeal Nettle.  Someone over there has thrown a 41 year old Margaret River solicitor into the slammer for almost 8, minimum of nearly 5.  He stole almost $900,000 from an elderly man who lived alone on a farm. Original post: A solicitor was [...]

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R v Maurice B [2008] VSC 254 records the sentencing remarks of Nettle JA apparently sitting in the trial division following a guilty plea by a solicitor who stole a quarter of a million dollars. The solicitor argued the state of his mind was relevant in two ways. First, he said his impaired mental functioning [...]

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In Australian Securities and Investments Commission v Mining Projects Group Limited [2007] FCA 1620, Justice Ray Finkelstein, aka da Fink, sowed a seed for future courts to take up and declare that regulatory authorities bringing civil penalty proceedings should have the same duties as criminal prosecutors. Having cited the authority to say that they do [...]

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Reproduced below is a blog post about ‘bill padding’ from the US site, Legal Blog Watch. That is where lawyers say work took them longer than it really did, and so charge commensurately more, or even make up the fact that they did work, and charge for it. Sometimes I read articles like this and [...]

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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 Bar [...]

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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 interesting to [...]

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