Search discipline register
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The Legal Profession Act 2007 (the Act) requires the Commissioner to keep a register (the ‘discipline register’) of all disciplinary action taken under the Act against legal practitioners and 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 requirement to keep the discipline register applies only in relation to disciplinary action taken after the Act came into effect (on 1 July 2004) but the Act allows us to include disciplinary action taken under previous legislation. We have included disciplinary action going back to 1996.
The Act says the discipline register must appear on the Commission’s website (or on a website identified on the Commission’s website) and must include the name of the person against whom the disciplinary action was taken, the name of the law practice where they were employed and a range of other information including the particulars of the disciplinary action taken against them.
Crucially, the Act defines 'disciplinary action' to mean an order of a court or the Legal Practice Tribunal (or its predecessors) that finds a practitioner guilty of professional misconduct (s.471). This means that the register does not include any decisions of a court or the Tribunal that find a practitioner guilty of unsatisfactory professional conduct but not of professional misconduct or that find a practitioner not guilty of any of the allegations against them.
We have included a direct link for every person whose name appears on the register to the written decision of the court or disciplinary body that found against them including any decisions on appeal. The written decisions provide the full particulars of the allegations against them together with the court’s or the disciplinary body's findings, reasons and orders.
We urge people who inspect the discipline register to read the written decisions. 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 is sometimes true but can’t be assumed and is often entirely unwarranted.
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 links to every published decision of the courts and the disciplinary bodies and selected other decisions of the courts that are relevant to the professional obligations of Australian legal practitioners under a separate heading – Disciplinary and other relevant regulatory decisions.
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.
We have included other search facilities too. You can search:
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the disciplinary and other relevant regulatory decisions 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 - interstate discipline registers
You can view the entire discipline register (listed with the most recent case first) or you can search it as follows: