Right at the moment, managing “clusters” is very much a top-order priority – so it is with caution that we approach last financial year’s report from the NSW government legal services panel on the “Cluster General Counsels’ Group”.
The cluster comprises 41 big, medium and small law shops across 35 different areas of practice. To the magic 41, the state shelled out $158.8 million in fees.
The major legal expenditure was born by the Transport and Infrastructure cluster which spent $86.2 million on the panel firms, followed by Premier and Cabinet’s outlay of $11.7 million, and $10.8 million by Health.
In the main categories of legal work we find the top three firms in the highest billing areas:
Then this, without the dollar information:
Norton Rose Fulbright looks particularly busy, while at the same time has recently had to fend off an increasing volume of online “frauds and scams that misuse out name and the names of our people“.
This includes fraudulent communications and fake invoices.
The state also monitors pro bono services and equitable briefing among its general counsel cluster.
There is an annual pro bono target of 35 hours per lawyer, which will increase this year. Unfortunately, 2018-2019 saw the target fall short with panel law shops providing an average of 30 hours of free services per lawyer, in total 361,272 hours. Still, it was up from the 29 hours in the previous year.
Panel law firms spent $8.3 million on barristers in the year under review, of which $6.1 million was trousered by male briefs (73 percent) and $2.2 million (27 percent) by female counsel.
Panel law firms are required to comply with the equitable briefing policy for women barristers.
“The Cluster General Counsel Group will be working more closely with panel law firms during FY 19/20 on initiatives to promote equitable briefing.”
The departmental and agency surveys on panel performance resulted in an average satisfaction score of 81.
In bad news, the report says that the NSW government is committed to reducing “operational legal expenditure” by 10 percent over four years.
The relevant bits of the report can be found here.
There’s been another unhappy stoush along the banks of the Torrens between Chris Kourakis CJ and Vickie Chapman AG.
The chief justice has resorted to a “citizen’s right of reply” in Hansard to correct misinformation provided by Vickie to two members of the Legislative Council, Mark Parnell (Greens) and Connie Bonaros (SA-Best).
The AG and the CJ are not strangers to simmering tensions.
It appears that after receiving information from Chapman and “some members of the legal profession”, the two MLCs weighed-in with some damning criticisms of the Supreme Court’s appellate performance, during debate on the Bill to create a SA Court of Appeal.
As Procrustes recently reminded us, the new court is perceived to be “a vengeance weapon in the feud between Chapman and the Labor appointed chief justice”.
Anyway, Kourakis had to painfully point out in his “citizen’s” reply that contrary to the information briefed to the cross-benchers, the SA Supremes are not laggards or poorly regarded by the High Court.
There is “not even a grain of truth” in the anecdote recounted to parliament by Parnell, that the High Court immediately grants special leave once it hears the case is from South Australia.
In fact, in the years 2016 to 2018, the CJ says the percentage of SA Supreme Court decisions overturned by the High Court ranges from zero to 0.65 percent.
“The percentage over the three years combined is 0.43 percent, which is the lowest of any mainland state or federal jurisdiction.”
On the basis of a document provided by Chapman, Connie Bonaros claimed that between 2004 and 2015, of the 30 matters appealed to the High Court, 19 judgments were overturned.
Kourakis was keen to provide some context. The measure should not be the proportion of successful to non-successful appeals after special leave has been granted, rather it should be the rate of judgments overturned by the High & Mighty to the total number of judgments delivered by the Supreme Court.
In 2016, according to the CJ, apart from NSW, SA’s full court decisions were the least likely to be overturned, with the greatest percentage of successful appeals in that year coming from the Full Feds.
In 2017 and 2018, the CJ claimed South Australia was the least likely Supreme Court to be overturned, compared to any other court.
Crow Eaters would also be delighted to learn that the the SA full court is not unusually slow in delivering judgments. According to the chief’s message to parliament, despite the court being under-resourced, “the average time for delivery of full court judgments after they have been heard is about three months”.
The CJ signed-off with a sharp kick in the shins (presumably the AG’s shins):
“It is important that statements made within the institutional arms of government should not disparage other arms of government unless, after proper investigation, there is good reason to do so.”
While in the murder capital of Australia, a missive arrives from a SA brief in response to Janek Drevikovsky’s story on damages for a customer who was assaulted, battered snd falsely imprisoned in a Sydney brothel. See Who Flung Fung.
Our man astride the Torrens writes:
“The brothel owners should have consulted those eminent Chinese solicitors Su Yoo Fook Yu. Expensive but false economy to go elsewhere. Your report (which made me blush) took me back to being a law student in SA.
The SALRs were full of cases where a Mr Samuels was the police prosecutor in a series of prostitute entrapment cases. Invariably the evidence was:
‘What do I get for $20?’
‘Well you get …’
‘You’re busted …’
Canny working girls would not quote until the ‘client’ had his underpants off, correctly reasoning that the policeman was unwilling to get them off.
Sadly, the de-criminalisation of prostitution killed off a lot of valuable work for the junior bar.
Wokka Soden the Federal Court’s former CEO and principal registrar was supposed to have a big farewell party after completing his long service leave in April.
The virus put paid to that, so Wokka will have to blow out the candle on his cake via Microsoft Teams while Chuckles Allsop and others look on.
The job hunt for his successor, which started in October last year, has concluded with acting CEO Sia Lagos being confirmed as Soden’s permanent replacement.
Oddly, the CEO position had been advertised on the Federal Court website under job vacancies – listed among openings for a range of relatively junior registry duties.
Meanwhile, there’s no indication when the Commonwealth Courts Portal will be fully restored after it identified around 400 people with pending applications for bridging visas or protection-related bridging visas. As of Monday, May 18, CPP searches for bankruptcy, admiralty and native title matters have been restored.
It is not known when the rest of the system will be back-up.
It seems that the court has breached section 91X of the Migration Act, which says that the High Court, the Federal Court and the Federal Circuit Court must not publish the identity of these applicants.
The court attributes the breach to a “systems failure”. Federal Law Search has also been disabled “until further notice”.
“Any ongoing public access to migration cases through CCP following rectification will be reviewed in due course.”
The court has appointed former Commonwealth Ombudsman and Inspector General of Intelligence John McMillan to do an independent review “into the issues surrounding potential non-compliance with section 91X of the Migration Act …” The terms of reference are here.
As a result of the CCP vanishing into the ether, reptiles of the press have been unable to find listings and new cases that have been filed. Innovatively, the court is now publishing weekly lists of new matters – registry-by-registry, each Wednesday. This includes information about judgments and case management hearings.
In other migrant data breach news, Guardian Australian is reporting that Peter Dutton’s Department of Home Affairs has revealed the personal details of over 774,000 migrants and aspiring migrants.
Partial names and personal details have been published online via the department’s SkillsSelect platform, which invites skilled workers and business people to apply for migration to Australia.
The platform is “currently undergoing maintenance”.
Actually, the Federal Court in Tasmania has been well ahead of the virus curve. In 2014 the Hobart registry was predicting what was to come in 2020 and started putting up signs about various sanitary measures that should be observed.
Justinian reported in December 2014 that the court’s restrooms were full of helpful tips:
Another sign gave excellent advice on the best way for litigants and lawyers to wash their hands:
And just in case the toilet-goer needs further assistance, the court provided smart diagrams of two hands being washed.
We’ve got a fresh entry for the Justice Peter Hamill Catchword & Citation Catalogue.
Here the judge refused an extension of time to appeal against a conviction of dishonestly causing a financial disadvantage by deception, but granted more time to commence judicial review in relation to a refusal of the Local Court to annul the conviction.
At paragraph 45, HH says:
“Civil law – high risk offender – riddled with acronyms … past media coverage – click bait – open justice – highfalutin observations – exceptional case – middle course steered.”
As a mark of respect to the HH’s efforts to “cut-through” the verbiage an anonymous contributor sought to refine Hamill’s style with this special offering:
