Professor Reinhardt educated me about litigation, twice, once at law school and then in my Masters.  He had a fondness for the ingenuity of debtors and used to say 'Hope springs eternal in the debtor's breast', a corruption of an Alexander Pope poem, very often. (His second most favourite phrase was 'sticks out like a [...]

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I spent a week on Magnetic Island just now. It is a good place: a big island with four little suburbs but mostly national park, where people live, go to school, the bakery, the chemist, and the doctor. It has good supermarkets. It has wonderfully hokey restaurants like Man Friday's, a Mexican restaurant which [...]

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Once a complaint form has been lodged by a complainant with the Legal Services Commissioner, she has decided that it constitutes a 'complaint' as defined, has heard the respondent lawyer on whether it should be summarily dismissed, and has decided against that course, the Commissioner may exercise any or all of her draconian powers under [...]

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When I started law school, I could not have told you the difference between a barrister and solicitor, and I was perplexed why all the judges' initials were 'J'. For some reason, I thought it was absurd that there was an Act called the Acts Interpretation Act. I was contemptuous but nonetheless attracted to [...]

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The fidelity fund is one of the areas of the legislation about lawyers I have never had much to do with. The basic principle is that when lawyers steal clients' money, or deal with it in breach of trust, a fund contributed to by all the lawyers in the state pays out the victims. We [...]

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and this is what The Times thinks lawyers should be reading on their summer holidays:

The Art of the Advocate, by Richard Du Cann, QC, Penguin;
Famous Trials, selected by John Mortimer, QC, Penguin;
The Tyrannicide Brief, by Geoffrey Robertson, QC, Vintage;
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Pan Books;
The Firm, by John Grisham, Arrow.

An absurd proposition certainly, [...]

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Dedicated readers will already have been following the saga of the misconduct prosecution of Kylie Minogue's one-time lawyer. Casual readers can lap it all up here. Deputy President Dwyer's reasons for refusing to stay the disciplinary proceedings have hit the internet: Legal Services Commissioner v MB [2008] VCAT 1341. For some reason, the [...]

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Registrations close on Wednesday for the Gold Coast conference on the following Sunday to Wednesday. The brochure is here. The list of speakers, sessions, and papers is here. Gino Dal Pont, Adrian Evans, Victoria Marles will all be there along with some interestate counterparts, and some Yanks. Maybe Robin Tampoe will keep them [...]

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A solicitor who did not know how to use a telephone when he started work in the law, and who describes himself as the last of the last old style family solicitors, has renewed his practising certificate for his 101st year. He has had some of his clients for 70 years. His name is [...]

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A 44 year old clairvoyant was today convicted of the 2006 murder of David Robinson, a Fairfield solicitor.

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