Recently, the County Court’s Practice Court accepted that where a client admitted having received a bill given by email, service in accordance with the Legal Practice Act, 1996 had been effected, so that various deadlines which are counted from that date then commenced to run. That is so even though the commencement of the running [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Legal Practice Act'
Informal service of lawyers’ bills
June 22nd, 2009 · 2 Comments
Tags: Legal Practice Act · Legal Profession Act · Professional fees and disbursements
Links to the states’ and territories’ Legal Profession Acts
June 18th, 2009 · 4 Comments
What follows are links to the Acts which regulate lawyers in each state and territory, ordered by date of principal commencement, commencement details, and, where available, links to the predecessor Act. South Australia is yet to catch up with the rest of Australia, stuck with its Legal Practitioners Act, 1981. Everyone else has Acts in [...]
Tags: Legal Practice Act · Legal Profession Act
From when can solicitors claim interest on an unpaid bill?
June 7th, 2009 · No Comments
Under s. 95 the Legal Practice Act, 1996, interest was chargeable on bills of costs from the period from 30 days after payment is demanded until the bill is paid. But what does it mean? Does interest start to run 3o days after (i) the date of the bill, (ii) the day it was posted, [...]
Tags: Legal Practice Act · Legal Profession Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs
Nettle JA on sentencing thieving lawyers
February 2nd, 2009 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: Criminal liability · Discipline · Legal Practice Act · Trust money · mental illness
Applications to set aside costs agreements
September 24th, 2008 · No Comments
This post has been sitting around as a draft waiting to be finished. There is little chance of that for a long time. So here is my incomplete annotation to s. 103 of the Legal Practice Act, 1996. That is the provision which gives VCAT (formerly the Legal Profession Tribunal) jurisdiction to set aside costs [...]
Tags: Legal Practice Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Retainers · costs disclosure defaults · setting aside costs agreements
Latest word on burden of proof in professional discipline ‘prosecutions’
August 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment
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 [...]
Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Discipline · Legal Practice Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · Unsatisfactory conduct · VCAT Act · common law · procedure · prosecutorial failures · reckless disregard for rules · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules
Kylie’s one-time lawyer goes down, with a ‘disgraceful and dishonourable’ finding
August 28th, 2008 · No Comments
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 [...]
Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · Discipline · Legal Practice Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · Trust money · common law · conflicts · duty and interest · prosecutorial failures
Victorian Legal Services Commissioner’s 2006-2007 annual report
November 1st, 2007 · No Comments
The Legal Services Commissioner’s annual report went online today. You can download the pdf by clicking here. The big news is that she’s put 2 new blokes on the staff, but the blokes to sheila ratio has actually decreased (to 1 in 20).
In the year to 30 June 2007, the Commissioner’s staff of 45 [...]
Tags: Discipline · Legal Practice Act · Legal Profession Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Professional regulation · jurisdiction · procedure
The 60 day time limit for instituting VCAT proceedings under the Legal Profession Act
August 3rd, 2007 · No Comments
In Ralph Cosentino v MY [2007] VCAT 1319, Member Butcher continued a tradition of statutory interpretation of a little technical provision about when service of statutory notices is effective. That tradition, of the Legal Profession Tribunal and its predecessors, has always troubled me. Though it does not seem to have been cited by counsel, a [...]
Tags: Legal Practice Act · Legal Profession Act · Limitations of actions · VCAT Act
Unconscionability and legal fee estimates, again
July 14th, 2007 · No Comments
The law of unconscionable conduct has been rolled out again as a vehicle to adjust lawyers’ fees in the same way as they might be in a civil costs dispute under the Legal Profession Act, 2004, but in a case to which that Act’s regime did not apply. It has happened once before to my [...]
Tags: Fair Trading Act · Legal Practice Act · Professional fees and disbursements · Solicitor client bills of costs · VCAT · costs disclosure defaults · costs disputes

