SEARCH
Justinian News

Time's Up for Naughty Nathan ... Recommendation that horrible NSW solicitor be derolled ... Misuse of online funding campaigns ... Spraying ripe and abusive language ... Trolling Robert Beech-Jones ... So unfit and improper as to be beyond reeducation ... Anthony Kanaan reports ... Read more >>

Politics Media Law Society

Perils of the Defamatorium ... Lovely Linda Reynolds’ “victory” leaves her underwater … Politics, sex, law, and money … Injuries galore … The art of Tottling … Where’s the serious harm? … Trust me … Jurisdictional backwater ... Read more >> 

Free Newsletter
Justinian Columnists

Act of gracelessness ... Kathleen Folbigg's miserable ex gratia payout ... Comparable awards in other miscarriage cases ... Weasel words from the NSW Premier ... Need for a proper system of compensation assessment ... Procrustes in a lather ... Read more >> 

Blow the whistle

 

News snips ...


This area does not yet contain any content.
Justinian's Bloggers

Postcard from London ... Summertime - And the living' is easy ... Votes for 16-year olds ... Paralegal's theft by pen ... Spy helping British intelligence from his job at Border Force ... Super-injunction comes out of the shadows ... Feed them strawberries and cream ... Floyd Alexander-Hunt files from Blighty ... Read more >> 

"I actually never saw the President in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the President in any inappropriate setting in any way. The President was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects ... Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find, I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now."

Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell interviewed by Trump's former lawyer Todd Blanche, now Deputy Attorney General ... July 25, 2025. Interviews released by DOJ, August 22, 2025 ... Read more flatulence ... 


Justinian Featurettes

Schmoozing and Betrayal ... Judge Water Softener rides into Integrityville mounted high on his horse ... Judicial review of corruption finding ... Unprecedented assistance to morals monitor ... Plenty to think about ... Court reporter Ginger Snatch files ... Read more >> 

 

 

Justinian's archive

The Tamil Times ... The corruption wars ... Blitzkrieg from The Australian's legal affairs man ... Campaigns to sink ICAC and 18C ... Battles lost in the trenches ... Where are they now? ... Extravagant fulminations ... From Justinian's Archive, April 8, 2017 ... Read more >> 


 

 

« Bully for you | Main | Whirlpool's reverse cycle »
Wednesday
Nov202013

Spanking with wet lettuce 

Defenestration of Qld's independent legal profession regulator ... Powerless to administer decent spanks ... The system was designed to be half-baked ... Alix Piatek reports 

John Briton: frustrated at lack of effective powers

The Queensland Law & Order Society has received a stinging clip on the ear from the Bureau de Spank. 

In an action-packed annual report John Briton, the gutsy chef de mission of the Queensland Legal Services Commission, said he needs powers to compel lawyers to answer questions and produce documents if there are reasonable grounds to believe there has been improper conduct. 

Briton says he is troubled by being unable to further investigate a lawyer, or law shop, after finding a complaint of malpractice is made out. 

The legislative restrictions make it very difficult to pro-actively weed out  fee rorting. 

He says if a law firm or a lawyer is guilty of overcharging it is likely they overcharged other clients as well. 

"We are troubled by some of the apparently systemic billing malpractices we have uncovered which cause us to believe that potentially large numbers of unsuspecting consumers may have been short-changed in ways that could entitle them to refunds."

Investigating third party complaints also are problematic under the bureau's current powers. 

In his report Briton pointed to a complaint made by a Family Court judge about a solicitor who intentionally tried to deceive the other party and the court about her client's finances. 

The commission can't compel the lawyer to answer questions without consent from the client, and the client hasn't consented. 

"This is as serious and as prima facie credible a disciplinary complaint as it gets...Yet we face real difficulties getting the evidence we require to put the matter before a tribunal for decision." 

He says this is a "pressing legislative reform". 

He also revisits some old chestnuts that have languished at the bottom of the "to do" list:  

  1. Break the nexus between compensation for clients and a disciplinary finding; 
  2. A power to mediate consumer complaints and, where an agreement can't be reached, the power to decide a fair and reasonable outcome; 
  3. To define costs disputes as a consumer complaint and to have the commission deal with those complaints. 

Many of the things for which Briton is pressing already have been agreed to by the Law Council of Australia and the Standing Committee of Attorneys General and were included in the draft Legal Profession National Law. 

The Qld Spank-Meister reserved his most caustic comments for the solicitor's trade union. 

He points out that the QLS welshed on a deal to let the bureau handle all investigations and to hand over trust account probes. 

"Sadly the newly elected council of the QLS which took office in 2012 reneged on that agreement and reneged also on its previous support for the proposed National Law. 

The president [of the QLS] made a series of public statements to the effect that 'self-regulation is critical to a true profession'."

Bleijie: in the pocket of the QLS

The boy-wonder attorney general Jarrod (Dancing Queen) Bleijie is firmly tucked-up in the cot with the codgers from the QLS. 

The AG told a QLS knees-up that the bureau de spank's reforms are simply "empire building". 

Briton went to town on those assertions, pointing out that if the commission no longer had to refer complaints to the QLS it would save the public $740,000 each year or around 15 per cent of his annual budget. 

The Legal Services Commission inherited over 1000 complaints when it first went into business in the co-regulatory scheme.

By mid-2006 it was down to 470 and the number of complaints since have  remained at around that level each year. 

The commission has also overseen the return of  $378,00 to 203 clients from 34 law firms.

A tiny drop in the bucket of fees that have been unscrupulously trousered. 

See 2013 report of the Qld Legal Services Commission 

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.
Editor Permission Required
You must have editing permission for this entry in order to post comments.