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Welcome to the Legal Services Commission’s discipline register.
The Legal Profession Act 2007 (the Act) says the Commissioner must keep a register (the ‘discipline register’) of any disciplinary action taken under the Act against legal practitioners or law practice employees (s.472). It says the register must also include disciplinary action taken under a corresponding law elsewhere against practitioners who are or were admitted in Queensland or who were practising in Queensland when the conduct in question occurred.
The Act says the discipline register must appear on the Commission’s website (or on a website identified on the Commission’s website). It says the register must include the name of the person against whom the disciplinary action was taken, the name of the law practice that employs or employed them, and a range of other information including the particulars of the disciplinary action taken against them.
The Act says the requirement to keep the discipline register applies only in relation to disciplinary action taken after the Act came into effect (on 1 July 2007) but may include earlier disciplinary action taken under previous legislation. We have included disciplinary action going back to 1996.
The Act defines 'disciplinary action' to mean an order of a court or the Legal Practice Tribunal (or its predecessors) finding a practitioner guilty of professional misconduct (s.471). The Act neither requires nor precludes the discipline register including orders of a court, the Legal Practice Tribunal or the Legal Practice Committee finding practitioners guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct (ss.471 and 705). We have included orders finding practioners guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct but we remove that information from the register after five years from the making of the order (unless the court or disciplinary body made an order or orders at the same time finding the practitioner guilty of professional misconduct).
We have attempted to make the discipline register as easy to use as possible. We have listed entries on the register in reverse chronological order so that the most recent disciplinary action always appears at the top of the list followed by the second most recent, etc.
We have included several search facilities. You can search to see if someone's name appears on the register simply by typing in their surname. Similarly, you can search to see if the name of a particular law firm appears on the register simply by typing in the name of the law firm. You can also search by selecting from options identifying the different kinds of practitioners, the different courts and disciplinary bodies and the different kinds of orders they have imposed by way of penalty.
Finally, we have included a direct link for every person whose name appears on the register to the reasons for decision (the ‘disciplinary report’) of the court or disciplinary body that found against them including any reasons for decision on appeal. The disciplinary reports provide the full particulars of the allegations against them together with the disciplinary body's findings, reasons and orders.
We urge people who inspect the discipline register to read the disciplinary reports. That is because it is all too easy to assume, without knowing the reasons for decision in any particular matter, that the mere fact that a practitioner's name appears on the register implies some dishonesty on their part, or that they sought some personal gain to the detriment of a client. That assumption is entirely unwarranted.
We have included other search facilities too. You can search:
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the disciplinary reports as a whole. You can search them by keyword in the same way you can search judgements of the courts.
- the discipline registers in other states and territories that have made them available on the internet—New South Wales.
You can view the entire DISCIPLINE REGISTER (listed with the most recent case first) or you can search this register: