Unlicensed in Sydney … Brief expunged from the jam roll while licensed in Victoria and Queensland … Trying to get around bar exams failures … Main place of business was NSW … Tottering raft of constitutional arguments … Janek Drevikovsky reports
That sober truth was laid down by the NSW appeal court, which last week expelled barrister Julian Phillip Siggins from the legal profession for dishonest behaviour and breaching the lawyers’ rules.
The birching was delivered by justices Tony Payne, Lucy McCallum and Robert Beech-Jones, who found that Siggins had only ever held Queensland or Tasmanian practising tickets, despite plying the trade in Sydney between 2011 and 2017.
In NSW, wannabe-barristers have long undergone a battery of fiendish exams, where a mark of less than 75 per cent is an automatic fail.
Anyone who wants to practice “principally” in NSW must pass the exam.
Yet, until recently, Queensland and Tasmanian bar tickets were on offer to anyone who filled out the right form.
Siggins made full use of these interstate arrangements.
In 2008, after finishing his law degree at Western Sydney University, he took his first stab at the NSW bar exam.
He failed two papers “by a significant margin”. He did not even attempt the third. So down to Hobart he went, where he obtained a barrister’s ticket with ease.
Soon, however, he was back in Sydney, living in a rental property and lawyering out of Chalfont Chambers.
Philip Selth, long time NSW Bar director, caught wind of Siggins’ unticketed antics. In late 2008, he met with the unticketed brief and told him to pass the exams tout de suite.
Another attempt was made in 2009 and this time, Siggins failed all three papers.
This time, he trucked north, where his application for a banana-bending brief’s ticket was duly granted. He completed a Queensland bar practical course, but the bulk of his work was in NSW.
In 2011, the NSW Bar issued Siggins with a certificate, on the condition he pass the local exams within 12 months.
There was never a round three. Instead, Siggins stayed in Sydney, practising out of 7 Windeyer but renewing his Queensland certificate year-on-year.
Every time, he ticked a box saying that Queensland was his principal place of practice.
Siggins claimed that Philip Selth had told him that, because he had a full Queensland ticket, he was now exempt from passing the bar exam. Selth denied the conversation ever happened.
In 2017, after six years of unticketed practice, Siggins relocated to Victoria. But by now, the Bar Association had moved into top gear.
Proceedings were commenced, and the bar’s lawyers showed up with a trolley-full of documents, including 29 pages of submissions and 12 volumes of evidence that showed Siggins’ main place of practice was NSW.
The thrust of the Bar Association’s case was that Siggins had been dishonest in saying his main place of practice was Tasmania and later Queensland, when in fact it was NSW.
He replied with a “glib three-page submission” which argued he had no case to answer.
He said his applications for Tasmanian and Queensland certificates occurred in those states, and so, even if they were technically dishonest, they were not within a NSW court’s jurisdiction.
He also claimed the bar’s case did not clear the burden of proof.
The court rejected both arguments. It found there was ample evidence to suggest a course of dishonesty. And Siggins had clearly breached provisions of the Legal Profession Uniform Law, by failing to get a NSW ticket despite running a NSW practice.
The bench also swatted away the raft of constitutional arguments Siggins piled onto his case – that the NSW version of the uniform rules were an unjustified restraint on interstate trade; that they discriminated between people from different states; that they were inconsistent with Commonwealth laws; and so on.
Siggins had not shown remorse and there was no sign he had changed his ways since his dishonest behaviour. So the bench decided to remove him from the jam roll.
Evidently proud of the scalping it secured, the Bar Association has let Siggins’ case stand as a warning to other practitioners. President McHugh told the troops:
“It is also an important reminder in relation for the necessity for candour when applying for, or renewing, practising certificates generally and, in this matter, as to principal place of practice and not avoiding the requirements of the New South Wales jurisdiction in relation to bar exams and the bar practice course, particularly for personal benefit.”