Stephen Warne on professional negligence, regulation and discipline around the world

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Entries Tagged as 'Misconduct'

Previous infractions of same rule not relevant to distinction between professional misconduct and unsatisfactory professional conduct

March 3rd, 2010 · No Comments

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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Tags: Discipline · Misconduct · Unsatisfactory conduct

Legal plagiarism cases: a non-exhaustive review

February 24th, 2010 · 1 Comment

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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Tags: Discipline · Legal writing · Misconduct · common law

Plagiarist solicitor suspended for 6 months

February 22nd, 2010 · No Comments

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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Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Discipline · Legal writing · Misconduct · common law

NSW Court of Appeal on difference between ‘professional misconduct’ and ‘unsatisfactory professional conduct’

February 8th, 2010 · No Comments

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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Tags: Discipline · Legal Profession Act · Misconduct · Unsatisfactory conduct · appeals · negligence as disciplinary breach

$19,500 fine for making complaint against lawyer without adequate evidentiary foundation

January 26th, 2010 · No Comments

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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Tags: Discipline · Ethics · Misconduct · appeals · litigation ethics

Commissioner’s obligation to charge dishonesty if he intends to allege it

December 4th, 2009 · No Comments

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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Tags: Discipline · Ethics · Legal Profession Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · Practising certificates · Professional regulation · Striking off · Trust money · amendment · appeals · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · duty and duty · jurisdiction · natural justice · procedure · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules

Disciplinary charges and intentional wrongdoing

October 29th, 2009 · No Comments

Update, 4 December 2009: see now Legal Services Commissioner v Madden (No 2) [2008] QCA 301.  What the Queensland Court of Appeal said there about Walter’s Case, the subject of this post, is reproduced at the end of the post.
Original post: Does a lawyer’s Bureau de Spank have to say in a charge in a [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Misconduct · Unsatisfactory conduct · natural justice · procedure · prosecutorial failures · prosecutors' duties · reckless disregard for rules · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules

Admission of allegations relevant in distinguishing between misconduct and unsatisfactory conduct

September 8th, 2009 · No Comments

In Legal Services Commissioner v PT [2009] VCAT 1603, Senior Member Preuss decided that a failure to respond to a demand by the Commissioner for information in relation to a disciplinary complaint was unsatisfactory professional conduct rather than the more serious professional conduct, for several reasons including that ‘he [the respondent solicitor] admitted the factual [...]

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Tags: Discipline · Misconduct · Unsatisfactory conduct

Doctors, psychologists, sex and former patients

September 7th, 2009 · No Comments

In Re a Psychologist [2009] TASSC 70, the Supreme Court of Tasmania quashed a decision of the Psychologists Registration Board of Tasmania to suspend a psychologist for 6 months for entering into a sexual relationship with a former patient fewer than 2 years after the end of the therapeutic relationship.  In fact he married her. [...]

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Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Discipline · Misconduct · amendment · doctors · natural justice · procedure · prosecutorial failures · prosecutors' duties

Double jeopardy and disciplinary proceedings

August 12th, 2009 · No Comments

Coke-Wallis v Institute of Chartered Accountants In England and Wales [2009] EWCA Civ 730 considered the application of principles of res judicata and autrefois acquit (the criminal version of the same principle, an aspect of double jeopardy) to disciplinary ‘prosecutions’.  It did so in the context of the disciplining of accountants.  The relevant scheme made [...]

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Tags: Abuse of process · Discipline · Misconduct · autrefois acquit · procedure