Legal Ethics

An appeals court has set aside findings of professional misconduct against a Perth solicitor who allegedly failed to pay a silk $23,000 in fees after finding a tribunal member had served on a chambers’ board with the senior barrister for eight years. 

Australian singer The Kid Laroi has failed to restrain solicitors who acted for his benefit in negotiating a record deal from representing his former manager in a contractual dispute, with a judge rejecting arguments the lawyers could be seen as “switching sides”. 

A solicitor who sought to frustrate a legal complaint body’s investigation into correspondence sent on his firm’s letterhead is not fit to practice, a state tribunal has found.

A Queensland man has prevailed in his case alleging Federal Circuit and Family Court Judge Salvatore Vasta unlawfully imprisoned him for contempt after he failed to comply with an order for particulars, winning over $300,000 in damages.

A disgruntled client who accused a Sydney-based law firm of running a “woefully prepared” case has lost his appeal of a judge’s rejection of his bid for a $225,000 personal costs order against the firm.

A barrister is taking a dispute over his $320,000 bill to the High Court, but a judge has cast doubt on the appeal’s prospects of success.

Walter Sofronoff KC, who led an inquiry into Bruce Lehrmann’s rape trial could face sanction or a probe by the ACT integrity commission after the territory’s chief minister said the former Supreme Court Justice breached his “good faith” by leaking his findings to the media. 

Tax advisers and firms promoting tax avoidance could face penalties of up to $780 million, as part of a suite of reforms the government is calling “the biggest crackdown on tax adviser misconduct in Australian history”.

A lawyer accused of wrongfully using information obtained via subpoena in a family law case has been hit with a $2,000 fine by the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, after he chose to appeal a reprimand from the NSW Law Society.

An appeals court has taken Pitcher Partners to task in its appeal seeking to throw out a lawsuit over the accounting firm’s alleged involvement in race car driver Max Twigg’s misappropriation of $127 million from his family.