Tweet A decision of the Supreme Court is another lesson in the perils of self-representation. What started off as a failure to lodge income tax returns for a few years snowballed into a situation where the barrister’s intercourse with the judiciary and the Bar Association in relation to inquiries made by the Bar Association revealed [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Practising certificates'
How not to correspond with the person you’re seeking a practising certificate from
August 22nd, 2010 · 1 Comment
Tags: Admission · Practising certificates
Commissioner’s obligation to charge dishonesty if he intends to allege it
December 4th, 2009 · No Comments
Tweet 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 [...]
Tags: amendment · appeals · concurrent duties · conflicts · current client and past client · Discipline · duty and duty · Ethics · jurisdiction · Legal Profession Act · Legal Services Commissioner · Misconduct · natural justice · Practising certificates · procedure · Professional regulation · Striking off · Trust money · trust monies · wilful disregard for rules
More on Law Institute records and public interest immunity
May 14th, 2009 · No Comments
Tweet I have previously posted about Justice Pagone’s rejection of the Law Institute’s blanket invocation of public interest immunity to excuse production of documents required for production under a statutory power of compulsion available to the Tax Man. Now his Honour has decided the case based on the kind of specific arguments he considered to [...]
Tags: Practising certificates · Professional regulation · regulators' duties
Rehabilatory orders as professional discipline disposition
May 8th, 2009 · No Comments
Tweet In Victoria last year, a deal was struck between the Law Institute and a solicitor whose practising certificate it had cancelled. A retired solicitor was appointed as a mentor to the solicitor, who was allowed to return to practice subject to the Legal Practice Board’s supervision through the retired solicitor’s agency. Bitter litigation was [...]
Tags: Discipline · Practising certificates · Professional regulation
The lien and the solicitor who finds himself practising certificateless
November 27th, 2008 · No Comments
Tweet Update: More solicitors’ lien cases: Magnamain Investments Pty Ltd v Baker Johnson Lawyers [2008] QSC 245, and Stark v Dennett [2007] QSC 171, a case about who should be taken to have terminated the retainer and which sets out the law thoroughly. Original post: As I have already noted in these pages, Issac B [...]
Tags: Liens · Practising certificates · Professional fees and disbursements
The practising certificate suspension challenge that went wrong
October 21st, 2008 · No Comments
Tweet Update, 8 November 2008: When I wrote this post, the Court of Appeal had authoritatively answered another of the questions posed below, about the penalty privileges, but I had not yet read the case, CT v Medical Practitioners Board [2008] VSCA 157. Now I have, and I have posted here about it. Original post: [...]
Tags: civil-disciplinary interplay · costs · Discipline · Misconduct · Practising certificates · procedure · Professional regulation · prosecutors' duties · regulators' duties · VCAT Act
Issac’s holiday; plea bargaining in disciplinary charges examined
October 10th, 2008 · No Comments
Tweet Issac’s style of legal letter writing is legendary. There are some quite extensive private collections out there. I recall one letter said to have been penned by the man himself which began ‘Dear Sir, you are a petulant lunatic,’ and after some substantive words continued ‘You are a very small cog in a very [...]
Tags: concurrent duties · conflicts · Discipline · Fiduciary duties · Misconduct · Practising certificates · procedure · Trust money
The right to silence in disciplinary and striking off hearings
August 31st, 2008 · No Comments
Tweet 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 [...]
Tags: Criminal liability · Misconduct · Practising certificates · procedure · prosecutors' duties · Striking off
Zarah wins
July 29th, 2008 · No Comments
Tweet Ms Garde-Wilson’s back in business. In fact she never went out of business, since following the non-renewal of her practising certificate, she held a deemed practising certificate pursuant to the Legal Profession Act, 2004, s. 2.4.5(3) pending her VCAT merits review application. The assertion that she had ceased to be a fit and proper [...]
Tags: Criminal liability · Practising certificates · Professional regulation · regulators' duties
Law Institute seeks 50 year ban for 62 year old solicitor
July 11th, 2008 · No Comments
Tweet In Law Institute of Victoria v DSS [2008] VCAT 1179, the Institute sought in a misconduct prosecution an order that the solicitor not be allowed to handle trust monies for 50 years. Vice President Judge Ross described the submission as ‘somewhat excessive’. The solicitor had stolen $75,000 from his clients and out of his [...]
Tags: "disgraceful and dishonourable" · common law · costs · Criminal liability · Discipline · mental illness · Misconduct · Practising certificates · procedure · prosecutorial failures · Striking off · trust monies

