In Legal Services Commissioner v R-MB [2010] VCAT 182, Senior Member Howell found a repeat offender had failed to comply with a demand from the Legal Services Commissioner for a written explanation of conduct the subject of a complaint.  The Bureau de Spank argued that the infraction should be regarded as professional misconduct rather than [...]

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‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’, a Melbourne lawyer’s criminal law blog,  explained the criminal law rule against duplicity here.  I am not much interested in it from a professional discipline point of view, and it seems the courts tend not to get over-excited about it either (though the lawyer made some progress with it in Law [...]

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I did a plagiarism case before the Board of Examiners last year, and looked up the cases then.  My colleague Patrick Over also reviewed them for his prosecution on behalf of the Legal Services Commissioner of the plagiarist solicitor in Legal Services Commissioner v WJK [2010] VCAT 108, and cleverly found a case from the [...]

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In Legal Services Commissioner v WJK [2010] VCAT 108, a sole practitioner who has written a legal text and published a number of articles succumbed to temptation when the pressures of life got to him and meant he did not have time to do a proper job of writing a 10,000 word research paper for [...]

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In Polglaze v The Veterinary Practitioners Board of NSW [2010] NSWCA 4, the NSW Court of Appeal did not seem to be impressed about an appeal reaching them in relation to a finding of unsatisfactory professional  conduct in failing to warn the owner of a dog-patient that a second sedating injection was going to cost [...]

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The distinction between ‘professional misconduct’ and ‘unsatisfactory professional conduct’ is usually elusive.  Guidance from an appellate court in relation to cognate legislation is therefore valuable.  It seems that one instance of ‘incredibly sloppy’ work involving innocent false representations being made to the other side, if it is comprised of a series of closely related bits [...]

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In AM v Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal [2010] NTSC 02, a Full Court of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory heard an appeal by way of rehearing into a decision of the Disciplinary Tribunal (see my earlier post on the case).  One of the grounds of appeal was that the Tribunal had not had [...]

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A Full Court of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory delivered judgment in AM v Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Authority [2010] NTSC 02 a week ago. The Darwin lawyer, AM, lodged a complaint with the NT Law Society alleging that a competitor firm, Cridlands, which used to act for her client, had acted in the [...]

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Rosemary Pattenden’s The Law of Professional-Client Confidentiality is one of those books which, until now, I would like to have but could not bring myself to shell out for.  Just now, I spent $134 on a second-hand copy, and here’s why. In a web-based update for the book is a reference to B v [...]

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Relatively recently, I posted on the question of whether a Bureau de Spank desiring to rely on a practitioner’s dishonesty or other form of conscious wrongdoing must expressly allege it in the charge, and discussed Walter v Council of Queensland Law Society Incorporated (1988) 77 ALR 228 at 234; [1988] HCA 8.  Now, in Legal [...]

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