The NSW Supreme Court has issued a practice note on forms of address that fails to invite parties to inform the court of their preferred pronouns, unlike two other state courts, one of which came under fire from ‘Harry Potter’ author JK Rowling last year.
Senior counsel for the banking royal commission Rowena Orr KC has been appointed as a judge on Victoria’s Court of Appeal, with class action silk Alistair Pound appointed to fill her shoes as the state’s solicitor-general.
A Sydney solicitor has lost his bid to summarily dismiss the legal watchdogâs case alleging he set up misleading crowdfunding pages seeking funding for class actions over government orders requiring mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, as well as another class action that was never filed.
A judgeâs refusal to recuse himself from hearing a costs dispute between MinterEllison and a former client has been overturned, with a court finding that a number of complaints made about the judge by the client created âa contestâ between them.
How to tell if a judge is buried under a mountain of outstanding judgments? Their mood will say it all. A sure-fire way to prolong that hearing with a vexatious litigant? Engage them in dialogue. Here, Lawyerly shares a High Court judge’s war stories and tips for new members of the bench. But what weight to give them? That’s a matter for you, he says.
A litigant in an estate dispute dropped his lawyers and filed a notice to the court naming Dentons Australia as his new firm of solicitors. Unhappily for him he made two mistakes: filing the notice himself, and apparently failing to tell anyone at Dentons he had hired them.
Victoria’s judicial watchdog has dropped its investigation of a complaint against Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Kerri Judd SC, who accused the judge of making comments attacking her professional integrity.
A judge’s decision to place little weight on the character reference of a defendant that read like the work of ChatGPT should make lawyers think twice before employing artificial intelligence to author material intended for the court’s eyes.
Former Supreme Court of Victoria Justice Lex Lasry served with the “highest standards of integrity”, and the circumstances that led to his resignation from the bench were “regrettable and extraordinary”, the president of Australia’s association of judges has said as reports emerge that the DPP has made a complaint about a second judge.
The DPP’s complaint to Victoria’s judicial watchdog that prompted the shock resignation of Supreme Court Justice Lex Lasry was an abuse of process, experts say, and the judge’s decision to step down was a “deeply saddening end to a stellar judicial career”. But the Office of Public Prosecutions has strongly rejected the claim.