Family Court lawyer in Tauranga<\/a> when she made more than 1200 false claims in relation to 26 clients to the Ministry of Justice\u2019s Family Legal Advice Service (FLAS) between December 2017 and July 2022.<\/p>\nThe scheme, which sits under the legal aid umbrella, was meant to allow for two discrete claims per client, within a one-year dispute period, to give out-of-court advice in Care of Children Act matters.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s intended to assist parties in resolving their disputes without court intervention, with lawyers claiming a fixed fee from the ministry.<\/p>\n
Main would use details for people who\u2019d previously been her clients, but had never heard of the FLAS scheme.<\/p>\n
Many of those clients had obtained Main\u2019s contact details through Women\u2019s Refuge, where she advertised her services.<\/p>\n
One former client\u2019s details were used for 247 claims, and Main obtained $72,444.25 from the ministry for claims in his name.<\/p>\n
While most had been former clients, there were some people, for whom false claims were made, who she had never acted for, but they\u2019d been involved in a dispute where Main had acted for another party, or as a lawyer for a child.<\/p>\n
This meant she had access to their details, which she then used for the false FLAS claim.<\/p>\n
One woman who Main claimed services for said that, in early 2020, she was \u201cdesperate for legal guidance\u201d, and connected with Main while trying to get the care of her granddaughter.<\/p>\n
She met with Main at a cafe and had some discussions about the issue.<\/p>\n
Later, she learned her details had been used, including the names of people connected to her, whom she\u2019d never mentioned to Main, and who had never met Main.<\/p>\n
It had been \u201cincredibly distressing\u201d to learn that her name, her granddaughter\u2019s name, and her granddaughter\u2019s deceased paternal grandmother\u2019s name had all been used for fraudulent claims.<\/p>\n
She had approached Main in \u201cgood faith during a vulnerable time\u201d, and this had been a \u201cbetrayal of trust\u201d.<\/p>\n
Rickard-Simms described Main, during his submissions at sentencing, as having a \u201cdisorganised mind\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said she had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident in 1994, which claimed the life of her best friend, and had left her with unresolved issues related to her mental state.<\/p>\n
He said while working as a lawyer, there had been occasions where Main acted in court hearings and afterwards struggled to remember what had happened.<\/p>\n
He said she would attend court, and then wonder what she had just said and done.<\/p>\n
Rickard-Simms said it was \u201cpretty clear that there are some concerns about her mental health and welfare\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said that during the time of her offending, she was \u201cputting in invoices for things she had done, and things she hadn\u2019t done\u201d.<\/p>\n
He referred to clients who\u2019d remained supportive of her and the hard work she\u2019d done as a Family Court lawyer, but he said she accepted her life as a lawyer was now behind her.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has sensibly recognised she can\u2019t renew her practising certificate,\u201d Rickard-Simms said.<\/p>\n
Main had sought a discharge without conviction, but Judge Mason did not assess the consequences of a conviction as being out of all proportion to the gravity of the offending.<\/p>\n
Judge Mason noted Main\u2019s lack of remorse and shame over her actions.<\/p>\n
While accepting that Family Court lawyers worked under very trying circumstances, and Main had done some good work in her career previously, that did \u201cnot justify stealing\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Judge Mason\u2019s view, dishonesty was \u201cextra serious\u201d when someone was a lawyer and an officer of the court.<\/p>\n
Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tribunal found the \u201conly viable response\u201d was to strike her off the roll of barristers and solicitors,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,15970,97190,3561,20053,3120,111,43,139,69,6662,54105,20705,1227],"class_list":{"0":"post-297841","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-after","9":"tag-conviction","10":"tag-elizabeth","11":"tag-fraud","12":"tag-lawyer","13":"tag-main","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-off","19":"tag-paulette","20":"tag-struck","21":"tag-tauranga"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}