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:
- Break the nexus between compensation for clients and a disciplinary finding;
- A power to mediate consumer complaints and, where an agreement can't be reached, the power to decide a fair and reasonable outcome;
- 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.