{"id":606499,"date":"2026-09-20T19:58:26","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T19:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/606499\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T19:58:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T19:58:26","slug":"senior-lawyer-apologises-for-behaviour-but-disputes-it-amounts-to-misconduct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/606499\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior lawyer apologises for behaviour but disputes it amounts to \u2018misconduct\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A senior lawyer says she is “very sorry” about creating a work environment that triggered a mass “walkout” of her junior lawyers.<\/p>\n

She said that having “thought quite a lot”, she accepted it was her fault.<\/p>\n

“I feel that taking on too much work was something that I should not have done,” she said.<\/p>\n

She said she did not realise it was happening at the time, but could now see “how a whole lot of factors led to the events that led to the walkout and the real unhappiness by the staff”.<\/p>\n

The lawyer was found guilty of misconduct and unsatisfactory conduct by the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal.<\/p>\n

The tribunal found the lawyer had held herself out as the director of her firm, despite undertakings to the Law Society that she would practise only as an employed lawyer, and then had failed to supervise her junior staff, treating them in an “appalling” way at times.<\/p>\n

The lawyer pleaded guilty to a charge of misconduct relating to another client where she had failed to refer them for independent advice.<\/p>\n

Further details of that conduct cannot be reported because of non-publication orders.<\/p>\n

However, despite the apology delivered at the start of her penalty hearing, the lawyer is appealing the tribunal’s findings of guilt to the High Court.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, National Standards Committee prosecutor Timothy Bain questioned the lawyer about her expression of remorse.<\/p>\n

“Do you accept then that you didn’t adequately supervise the junior lawyers and law clerks who gave evidence in this tribunal?” he said.<\/p>\n

“Well, the tribunal will know there are certain points that I’m appealing,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I think that what the issue was is that they became really unhappy about the additional hours and I think that was related to my accepting work when I really shouldn’t have been.<\/p>\n

“I don’t agree that the supervision was inadequate, but I do agree that I should not have accepted all that work and I should have seen that they were becoming unhappy …”<\/p>\n

She said she should have taken steps to address their unhappiness, but instead she had written a “final email”, which invited a junior lawyer to resign if she wasn’t happy about the work expectations, including a proposed weekend roster.<\/p>\n

The senior lawyer now says the email was “arrogant and really not thinking about them at all”.<\/p>\n

But Bain asked the senior lawyer if she was trying to have it “both ways”.<\/p>\n

“By telling this tribunal that you’ve reflected on what you’ve done wrong and learned from your mistakes, whilst telling the High Court [in the appeal] you did nothing wrong and there was nothing to learn from because your practices were adequate?”<\/p>\n

The lawyer replied that it wasn’t inconsistent for her to say there were things she could have done better but still “have a position where I don’t accept that’s professional misconduct”.<\/p>\n

She told the tribunal she had changed the way she operates in her current firm, including by having three experienced lawyers employed who were “lead providers” on legal aid files and helped share the load and supervise juniors.<\/p>\n

She had daily meetings with team leaders, and the firm had a capacity checklist before taking on new work.<\/p>\n

Because she is appealing the liability finding, the lawyer’s counsel did not take a specific position on what the penalty should be but did object to a potential outcome that included suspension of nine to 12 months, an order prohibiting the lawyer from practising on her own account, and a significant contribution to costs.<\/p>\n

This would be overly punitive and “disproportionately severe”, and was the sort of outcome given to cases where there had been dishonesty, which was not the case here.<\/p>\n

The senior lawyer was also seeking permanent name suppression, arguing that the charges were “historical” and would negatively impact her current staff and practice, especially those who were on the cusp of being “directors” once they had completed the required Stepping Up course.<\/p>\n

However, tribunal chairman Dale Clarkson questioned the lawyer about whether it was appropriate for her to essentially benefit from delays that were caused by “steps [the lawyer] had taken” in applying for adjournments throughout the process.<\/p>\n

The lawyer said that not all the delays had been her fault – some had been due to other things, including Covid.<\/p>\n

“In my mind, they’re historic because so much has changed since then,” she said.<\/p>\n

When asked about how her firm’s attitude to employees taking sick leave had changed, she said if staff emailed in to say they were unwell, they would get a “hope you feel better soon” reply.<\/p>\n

According to their contracts, only after three days would staff be asked for a medical certificate.<\/p>\n

The lawyer said she regretted having made comments about illnesses being “psychomatic” in the lead-up to the resignations, and said that had been her “getting frustrated”.<\/p>\n

Overall, the lawyer’s position was that there had not been issues with her competence in the legal work, she had now improved her treatment of staff, and that any penalty should focus on rehabilitative factors.<\/p>\n

The lawyer’s counsel, Karen Feint, KC, asked the tribunal to take into account that her client was a “hardworking and dedicated practitioner dedicated to serving marginalised community”.<\/p>\n

“[Ms A] humbly asks for an opportunity for redemption to be granted by the tribunal that ensures [her law firm] remains as a thriving practice …”<\/p>\n

Feint pointed to affidavits filed by current staff in support of the lawyer, and the fact there were no current client complaints or issues being raised by the courts.<\/p>\n

Bain, however, took issue with a distinction between the treatment of staff and legal competence.<\/p>\n

“If a staff member is working when they’re sick because they’re too afraid to ask for sick leave, they are not doing a good job,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If staff are unhappy enough to resign en masse, that is not good for clients because there is a huge disruption …”<\/p>\n

He also said that standard-setting required consequences for misconduct, because the public would look and see a finding where the tribunal described the conduct as “appalling, disgraceful and dishonourable”.<\/p>\n

“[And the public] looks and goes ‘Okay, so you’ve found this practitioner has breached their professional obligations, how much does the system care?'”<\/p>\n

If the outcome appeared to minimise or condone the actions, then it “affects the confidence that members of the public have in the legal profession and in the disciplinary process”.<\/p>\n

That did not mean the tribunal should “throw the book” at every practitioner, but standard setting did require a “stern” response in some cases, and it was not only about rehabilitative and protective purposes.<\/p>\n

At the conclusion of the hearing, the tribunal declined to grant the lawyer name suppression, but Feint immediately indicated she had instructions to appeal that ruling.<\/p>\n

This meant interim name suppression has been continued, again, to allow for an appeal to be filed.<\/p>\n

The tribunal has reserved its penalty decision.<\/p>\n

Feint advised that once the penalty orders were made, it was likely her client would seek a stay of those orders pending the outcome of the appeal.<\/p>\n

* This story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Open Justice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior lawyer says she is “very sorry” about creating a work environment that triggered a mass “walkout”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-606499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606499","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=606499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}