An English case has considered when instructions to put hopeless cases, or advance hopeless claims, may justify a solicitor terminating the retainer: Richard Buxton (Solicitors) v Mills-Owens [2010] EWCA Civ 122.  And here’s a useful case note from Barlow Lyde & Gilbert.  Of course this is the position in England; the position in Australia is [...]

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Justice of Appeal Macfarlan with whom Justice of Appeal Tobias and Acting Justice of Appeal Sackville agreed said this in Serobian v Commonwealth Bank of Australia [2010] NSWCA 181 at [42]: ‘Where, as here in the case of the respondent, a party is represented by competent and experienced lawyers and is opposed by litigants in [...]

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As a lawyer, I am often tempted to do the wrong thing.  It is a very desirable thing to win.  But I have never felt tempted to forge a judge’s signature.  It is thought that a lawyer in the Office of Public Prosecutions did exactly that.  He is charged with attempting to pervert the course [...]

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There is an interesting article by Ian Wheatley at (2008) 16 Journal of Law and Medicine 193.  Titled ‘The Criminalisation of Professional Misconduct Under the Health Professions Registration Act 2005 (Vic): How is a Fine of $50,000 Not Punitive?’. It compares the rights of alleged criminals and the maximum sentences in criminal law, with the [...]

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A warm welcome to the blogosphere for the Queensland Law Society’s Ethics Blog, which is in its first posts, but attracts an impressive callibre of comments.  The blog has a post about a recent, rare, decision about those rules about what to do in litigation if you discover your client is lying, or you find [...]

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The civil procedure landscape is changing fast.  A new Evidence Act.  The establishment of the Costs Court.  The Federal Court’s rocket docket.  The Supreme Court’s Commercial Court.  The abolition of the County Court’s Practice Court in favour of a managed list approach.  Early neutral evaluation.  The increasing use of Associate Justices and Judicial Registrars. The [...]

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In Lambert & Jackson [2010] FamCA 357, a Family Court judge sitting in Sydney made the following orders: ’1. There be a further listing before me on 24 May 2010… for the purposes of giving Ms Y an opportunity to make submissions as to why I should not send my prima facie findings to the [...]

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Senior Member Howell decided last year in Legal Services Commissioner v RMB [2010] VCAT 51 that there is a mens rea element to professional discipline offences under the Legal Profession Act, 2004, in that there is a defence of ‘honest and reasonable mistake’.  That fascinates me, since under the previous Act, misconduct and unsatisfactory conduct [...]

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Update, 8 April 2010: The full-text version of Ms Jones’ article is freely available here.  See also this article published on the Queensland Law Society’s impressive website. Original post: Nicky Jones has written a scholarly article about lawyers’ duty to remain courteous: Lawyers, Language and Legal Professional Standards: Legal Services Commissioner v Turley [2008] LPT [...]

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Solicitors and barristers are obliged not to make allegations of criminality, fraud or other serious wrongdoing in ‘court documents’ without an adequate factual foundation. The rule for Victorian barristers is rule 34. This post explores what ‘court documents’ are, what ‘fraud’ means in this context, and what an adequate factual foundation is, in part by [...]

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