Attorney General seeking money from well-lined barristers … Feeder pond for the federal courts … Solicitor whacked with costs after long-winded communications break-down … Bye-bye Bluto … ANU’s online Juris Doctor brought back to life … Goings On with Theodora
Porter’s missive went like this:
“As a conservative inside Cabinet, I am facing a massive electoral campaign from the left union and Labor/Green aligned activists at ‘GetUp!’.
I need your support to help me with that fight. I … would love for you to join me for dinner.
This fundraising dinner with a limited number of places, is $2,500 per head and will be held in the Clayton Utz Boardroom overlooking Sydney Harbour.
The evening represents a unique opportunity for a small group to discuss Australia’s future with myself and other like-minded professionals.
I would be pleased if you chose to join the small number of guests invited to this private dinner and look forward to your company.
If you are able to attend please rsvp to christian.porter@wa.liberal.org.au. On confirmation of your attendance, an invoice will be issued by the Liberal Party – Pearce Campaign, along with further information relating to this exclusive event.
If you have any questions, please contact Annette Livesey at the above email … ”
The response must have been underwhelming, because the dinner never took place.
Porter is not the only AG to seek funding from barristers. His predecessor George Brandis did it with members of the Sydney bar at Beppis in East Sydney just prior to the 2010 federal election. The restaurant was later made famous as the venue for the “swearing-in” of Willy Alstergren as deputy chief justice of the Family Court.
The sort of blinkered law n’ order future for Australia that might be discussed with Porter probably doesn’t bear thinking about – and to pay $2,500 a head for the privilege would be enough to have sensible people choking on Clutz’s food.
Of course, tipping money into the pockets of attorneys general running for re-election probably does not harm the prospects of judicial appointment.
The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust continues to be a fruitful recruiting ground for the federal courts.
David Llewelyn, the acting director of corporate services and chief financial office of the harbour trust, is the latest to come onboard as the courts’ new property manager.
He’ll work alongside two other harbour trust alumni, Catherine Sullivan, ex-deputy executive director of harbour-side matters and Darrin Moy, the former director of people, strategy and community. Darrin also had a stint in HR at Sydney Ferries.
At the federal courts, Catherine is now the executive director, corporate services, while Darrin is the people and culture man.
What is the magic of the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust that makes it so alluring to the courts’ recruitment regime?
There’s no immediate answer to that question. The trust is a federal government agency created to preserve and rehabilitate Commonwealth land around the harbour, particularly defence facilities.
It manages landmarks such as Cockatoo Island, the Headland Park at Mosman, the former School of Artillery at North Head, Woolwich Dock, Macquarie Lighthouse, Snapper Island, the old marine biological station at Watsons Bay and HMAS Platypus.
There’s synchronicity and synergy in there, somewhere.
The Daily Smellograph helpfully advises that Sydney celebrity solicitor Zali Burrows is up for $54,000 in costs after a stand-off with the NSW Law Society.
Ms Burrows is a former candidate for the Clive Palmer “United” Party and a defender of various notorious clients, including former deputy mayor of Auburn Salim Mehajer and Islamic state enthusiast Hamdi Al Qudsi – both of who are doing porridge.
It all started in September 2016, when the Law Society received a complaint about Ms Burrows from a senior counsel. Justice Christine Adamson spelled out all the details and it’s easy to get lost in the dozens of times the Law Society emailed, wrote or telephoned the solicitor to get her to respond to this and other complaints.
Numerous times Burrows claimed to have responded, but the society said there was no record of her replies.
She had three email addresses, and later she added a fourth to the Law Society portal. Louis Pierotti, the society’s litigation manager, professional standards, emailed all three addresses numerous times, including one she provided to the society. Burrows claimed he should have used an additional address she added to the portal in October last year.
Her voicemail was full, so messages could not be left and on other occasions her office landline just rang out.
For her part, Zali said she couldn’t respond because of troubles with her laptop and her “frozen” computer.
Her first substantive response to the Law Society’s flurry of increasingly urgent missives arrived six months after the complaint was notified to her. She said “further details” would be sent that evening, but these details were not forthcoming.
She sent other emails with the relevant attachments missing. Documents she claimed had been sent to the society were not exhibited in her affidavit and the law society had no record of receiving them.
Trust account inspector Gavin Connor was having similar difficulty extracting information.
In October 2017 – over 12 months after she was notified about the complaint – Burrows wrote to Mr Pierotti giving details of her various commitments in trials and sentencing hearings, adding:
“I have evidence of emails delayed and issues, server cannot explain and correspondence of issues for over two years. I believe my emails are monitored due to the matters I am instructed in.”
On November 27, 2017 she emailed Pierotti from both her “old” and her “new” email address:
“It has come to my attention this morning that my emails are being rejected to email poor reputation, perhaps occurs with my pdf attachments. An email sent to a lawyer at legal aid last Friday returned to me just now that email rejected.”
The society still had no luck reaching her by telephone.
By December 13, 2017, more than 15-months after the ball started rolling, the society finally said it was referring her failure to comply with her “professional and legal obligations” to the senior prefects higher up the food chain “to consider the immediate termination of your right to practice”.
There was no response to that letter and on January 18, 2018 her ticket was suspended.
There’s nothing quite like a suspension to provoke a response. On January 22, Burrows filed a summons seeking to get her ticket back. She served an affidavit, out of time, of 229 pages.
On January 30, the society’s president, Uncle Doug Humphries, instructed his director of professional standards to seek a council resolution to revoke the suspension of the ticket and the decision to appoint a manager to her practice.
It then became a matter of who would pay the costs associated with the suspension and its lifting.
Robert Newton, for Burrows, submitted to Justice Adamson that the Law Society had been “discourteous … unreasonable [and] … unhelpful” to his client. He said the society should pay her costs because it “capitulated” and she was vindicated by having her suspension set aside.
Adamson was having none of it. Burrows was the author of her own troubles by not responding to the society’s requests. The systems she had in place to receive correspondence were “flawed” and she did not respond to the December 13 letter even though she had been told of its delivery. There was also no evidence of the relevant documents she claimed to have sent.
$54,000 to the Law Society, thanks very much.
Burrows v Council for the Law Society of New South Wales
Banana Benders are trying their hardest to cope with the bleak news that Justice Bluto Carmody is stepping down as a Supreme Court judge in 14 months time.
Fortunately, for the rule off law, he will remain as a supplementary member of QCAT until September 10, 2019.
This will give him ten years cumulative service and access to the judicial pension.
It’s fitting we enshrine for the record some of Timbo memorable quotes.
This from June 12, 2014:
“I’ve often said and I’m sure nobody will argue that I may not be the smartest lawyer in the room, and if you were in a room with me and I was the smartest lawyer it would be a good time to leave it. But there’s more to being a Chief Justice than a black letter lawyer. There are plenty of them already on the Supreme Court, and I don’t aspire to compete with them for intellectual rigour.”
This from May 7, 2015 as he released correspondence between the judges of the Qld Supreme Court:
“The disclosed correspondence comprises of private and ordinarily confidential exchanges between judicial officers. Robust – and sometimes strongly expressed – communications are essential to the efficient administration of the court.”
And in February 2015, this, directed at other judges during a meeting about who woulod sit as a judge in the Court of Disputed Returns:
“Scum.”
And we must not forget this from The Australian’s insightful legal affairs man, Chris (The Tamil) Merritt, who wrote in May, 2015:
“If the campaign against the Queensland chief justice succeeds and he is forced from the bench, it would undermine one of the core principles of the state’s constitutional arrangements.”
The ANU’s online JD degree has had a bit of a rocky ride. It was on, then off, now it’s back on.
The degree was announced in August 2015 as a way of “allowing students to gain a law degree from one of the world’s top law schools without having to relocate”.
It was offered alongside the the university’s existing on-campus Juris Doctor program “helping ANU to meet our remit to serve every part of Australia and expanding access to the best legal education possible” – said the blurb.
In late April this year, according to an internal staff email, the online JD, called the “JDO”, was to be canned. Law school insiders said the degree never lived up to the promoters’ promises.
Prof. Sally Wheeler, head of the law school at Queen’s University Belfast, was appointed in November 2017 as the new dean at ANU’s College of Law and she has been busy putting a broom through the place.
Existing students were to be folded into the on-campus JD. Then, lo-and-behold, a new announcement on July 10 comes from Canberra saying the law school at ANU “will reform its highly-regarded Juris Doctor degree in 2019 to make it more accessible and flexible for students in Australia and internationally”.
The JDO is back on again. Students can be full-time or part-time as well as on-line or on-campus.
The choice is too much.