Shades of a torrid time in Townsville ... Media inquiries about Dyse ... Competition for Kirbs ... Slater & Gordon's referral fees ... How Queensland dropped out of the national profession reforms
Law in FNQ
IT is the sixth anniversary of dramatic events in sleepy Townsville.
Lawyer Paul Gray was in bed "having a cuddle" with Claire Carey, when youth advocate and panel beater Mick Staines burst into the bedroom with a sawn-off .22 rifle.
Claire was Mick's former girlfriend and clearly he was unhappy she was in bed with a local solicitor.
He shot and killed Claire and then shot Gray in the head and dowsed him in petrol from a can of lawn-mower fuel, burning 40 percent of his body.
Mick then went to a nearby ice-factory and killed himself with the rifle.
Gray survived and is now the driving force behind Townsville's exciting law shop Shades of Gray.
It's worth looking at the firm's new website.
The mayor, Tony Mooney, provided the Courier-Mail with a moving description of Mick's psychological condition:
"He was a moving pebble on top of the table and when he got to the edge, he took others with him."
Paul (Shades Of) Gray described what happened:
"Not many people have stared down the barrel of a loaded gun, been shot in the head, set on fire, and survived.
I thought I was dead.
I saw him pull the trigger, and I saw the flash, and I turned my head and the bullet hit me behind the temple.
I must have lost consciousness.
And then I stuck my head up and I saw him aiming the gun at me again and I said: 'Please don't kill me mate, I've got kids'.
He said, 'Wait until you bastards see what is coming next' and that is when he walked out of the room and came back with petrol, splashing it around out of a mower can ...
I thought, I can't die like this [and went to jump out of the window, but Staines was waiting for him outside].
He was downstairs on the ground pointing a gun at me and he said: 'Come on you bastard, I'm waiting'.
I begged him: 'Let me live. Let me live'.
[Staines then disappeared around the front of the house.]
I thought he might have been coming back into the house to finish me off. I was stark naked. I dropped out the window, jumped over the front fence and ran up the street. I was pretty sure he took another shot at me."
In a former life Gray operated a Los Angeles' nightclub and advertising agency.
Maybe, he's Don Draper - popped-up in far north Queensland.
* * *
SOMEONE from the media is ringing around asking questions about my friend Dyse Heydon.
What on earth does this reptile think he is onto?
What sort of startling revelation can we expect about the soon-to-retire High Court personality?
* * *
NOT only is the NSW Environmental Defenders Office being sliced and diced by shortage of money from the Public Purpose Fund, but eight lawyer positions have been terminated at the central city office of Legal Aid and the Manly office has been shuttered.
This is not causing a flicker of trouble for the government, whose view is that poor people only have themselves to blame.
Staff have been offered redeployment or redundancy.
A duty lawyer will be sent from the central office to Manly each day, when the Manly local court reopens next year after refurbishment.
At the same time Legal Aid is working to establish a "community-based legal assistance outreach centre".
Attorney General Smif's spokesmodel told us:
"Maintaining a small, permanent office in Manly is no longer the most cost effective way of servicing legal needs of disadvantaged people in the greater Manly area."
* * *
Christ-like
THAT was a pretty peachy critique in Australian Bar Review of The Modern Contract of Employment.
The tome has been written by Ian Neil SC and David Chin and the review was from Stuart Wood SC (YarraBar) and Tony Saunders (Selborne).
Wood & Saunders had a few flourishes, such as:
"Despite the foreword having been written by Michael Kirby, it is our pleasure to review The Modern Contract of Employment ..."
They concluded by suggesting that Ian Neil is almost in the same self-promotional league as Michael Kirby:
"The senior author has a website, decorated like a Ted Baker sock, which describes him as 'a Modern Barrister'. It does not compare with Mr Kirby's website, depicting him as a Christ like figure standing amongst a sea of young(ish) disciples. But it is a start. The Modern Contract of Employment by a Modern Barrister. A scholarly work, promoted by the author on his own website, which included references to his own cases. Mr Kirby now has some competition."
Indeed, Neil's website is a bit of a skite-sheet, where you can "keep up to date with what's happening in Ian's world, both professionally and personally ..."
I was particularly drawn to his taut review of Haruki Murakami's novel IQ84:
"Read this book in a park late in the afternoon, and feel the connections all around, flowing like the the sun over the turf. There has to be a Nobel Prize in this ..."
* * *
IS Slater & Gordon, the mighty law factory, so hard up that it has to offer inducements to lure conveyancing clients?
Former customers have received a missive extolling S & G's skill at property transactions and offering "complete peace of mind".
It's like Bing Lee - if you find a cheaper price somewhere else, Slaters will beat it by five percent.
The spiel goes on ...
"If you are not currently in the property market, perhaps you know someone who is? If so, then, as a thank you to you, for referring them to Slater & Gordon Conveyancing, we'd like to offer you $50 (terms & conditions apply)."
But hang about, doesn't this come perilously close to running head-long into the incredibly brutal NSW solicitor's conduct rules?
"In the conduct or promotion of a practitioner's practice, the practitioner must not -
38.1.1 accept a retainer or instructions to provide legal services to a person, who has been introduced or referred to the practitioner by a third party to whom the practitioner has given or offered to provide a fee, benefit or reward for the referral of clients or potential clients, unless the practitioner has first disclosed to the person referred the practitioner's arrangement with the third party."
Of course, we assume S & G will be disclosing its $50 handouts to all the clients who have been referred.
The rule is suppose to discourage filthy lucre being the driver of legal work, rather than the quality or service offered by lawyers in the market.
The intrusion of backhanders also has the potential to create undesirable conflicts.
Never mind. The large law firm group has seen to it that the rule has been scuttled entirely from the new solicitors' national conduct code.
See proposed rules and commentary from the effix gurus at the LCA.
* * *
de Groot: prez of QLS - defeating national lawyers' scheme
FIELD agents in Brisbane have passed-on details of the political manoeuvres behind Queensland's departure last month from the national legal profession reforms.
The large law firm group confronted QLS supremo Capt. de Groot and demanded that Queensland sign-up for the national reforms or it's members would be withdrawn from the QLS - leaving a big hole in its budget.
The large law factories pull this stunt whenever they insist on getting their way.
It is the reason the LLFG has special status on the council of the LCA, where it has been allowed to get its paws all over the drafting of the profession's conduct (ethical) rules.
The QLS was flabbergasted by the threat because, with some reservations, the society accepted the national scheme.
Somehow the infant AG, Jarrod Bleijie-Petersen, got wind of the LLFG's threat and is said to have had an urgent pow-pow with the Captain.
Before you could say God Save Queensland, Bjelke announced that his state was pulling out of the national legal profession scheme.
The QLS saved its bacon and was able to "blame" the government for this premature withdrawal.