A lot of people when they have been shafted by a lawyer feel helpless. Some make complaints to the relevent government bodies some do not. But even the ones who do make complaints rarely get resolution or even if they do the stress and hardship along the way has left them battle weary.
This post is about giving you another option that even if you do not get justice you should feel empowered and left with the satisfaction that you have least gotten payback. And the example we use is the below video of two corrupt lawyers from the law firm Freehills.
While the focus is on lawyers it is also applicable to other people who may have ripped you off like accountants, builders and all types of service and product suppliers.
Most of what I am about to write is nothing new nor complex but it good to see it in action so at least you know it can be done. Some people feel intimidated by lawyers, but if you have evidence of their criminal conduct they are the ones who should fear you.
Watch the below video then I will give a more detailed background to it. But briefly it is me interviewing two Freehills Lawyers in Australia outside the Sydney Law Courts building.
Brief background to the video
Most of my knowledge of the law has come over the last few years. I had an unlawful termination proceeding against Fairfax Media that lasted almost 3 years. It took almost 2 years to get to hearing which to my knowledge is an Australian record for the Federal Courts. This can only happen if you are up against corrupt lawyers and with them getting assistance from the judicial officers. Any honest lawyer will tell you that.
It was more than just an unlawful termination proceeding, it also involved criminal offences such as the fabrication of evidence by Fairfax Media. And that is where the above video comes in. It was taken on the 23 February 2009 after a directions hearing which was before Justice Moore. The two lawyers that I talk to are Shivchand Jhinku and Emily Wong who are both Freehills Lawyers.
Shivchand Jhinku helped fabricate an important document for the hearing. How do I know it was fabricated? Linda Price who was the Director of HR at Fairfax Media at the time emailed me the document. The problem being for them is that when she emailed it to me the mark-ups showed up in the document and I could see that a number of people were involved in writing the document and what they were saying between each other. This clearly showed they were deliberately lying about the content they put in the final document in an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
If you do not know what markups are in a word document are, they just track and show who made what changes when there are a number of people writing the document and what comments they are saying between each other and when those changes were made.
Using video
The video was filmed using a Canon digital camera that also has a movie mode and sound for recording short videos and cost $150. If you have issues with a lawyer (or Accountant, financial Advisor etc) you should think about buying one as they are cheap and do a fair job. Another option is buying a mobile phone that has this function as many of the new mobiles do. Have a look on YouTube to see if there are any demo’s on there to give you an idea of the quality before you buy. I had a look at the new iPhone 4s on YouTube and the video and sound quality seems very good.
Once you have a camera then it is time to plan the interview. You need to find a good time. I planned the interview after a directions in court. I had to leave the camera at the reception of the court as they did not allow cameras into the court. This may have changed as a lot of mobile phones now have cameras and they are allowed in court so it is pointless now to stop cameras.
By the time I got the camera they had left the building and as you can see from the video I looked to the right where the Barrister Kate Eastman was but she went into the building across the road where her chambers are. (her chambers are her office)
So I decided to follow the lawyers and interview them. When you are doing this there are some key things that you should try to obey:
- Keep calm and ask clear and concise questions. I did stumble towards the end on one question as I was standing on the road and worried about cars, which was a mistake.
- Keep at least 2 to 3 meters away from the person you are interviewing so they can not claim you where intimidating them. (Although Mr Jhinku perjured himself in an affidavit and said he was intimidated and harassed or words to that effect).
- Make sure you can back up any claims you make. Or just ask questions. They can not sue for defamation if you just ask questions. And if you can back up any claims you make they can not sue you as well. E.g. I say in the video Mr Jhinku helped fabricate evidence which he did.
Promote your video on sites like YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion etc.
Starting a website for free
Doesn’t matter whether or not your problem is current or not you should start a website (blog) which you can do for free or spend a few dollars if you wish. Two of the better ones are WordPress.com or blogger.com.
I have never used blogger.com but from what I can gather it is very easy to use and probably the best place to start if you are new to computers. WordPress.com is easy as well and has tutorials online but takes a bit of time to get familiar with.
With the blog you can document what has happened and add your video. This may or may not help you but will possibly help others not to go through what you have or at least warn them of what can happen. If it does well your site and/or video could go viral and thousands or even millions of people might see it.
If you are not in a position to do a video you can use a photo and put it on your blog. For further ideas you should read a previous post I did when Kerry Stokes, Seven Group Chairman, threatened me with legal action that was unfounded which is titled “Kerry Stokes threatens legal action against blogger.” (Click here to read)
Supporting websites and people on twitter etc
Try to support sites like mine and people on twitter like @fixnswlegal etc. This helps a lot and costs you nothing except for a five minutes a week or month. For websites like mine make sure you subscribe to the free email subscription which is free and use Facebook and email etc to let others know about the site and stories.
It is important to subscribe as a lot of people will go to a site a few times then forget but if you subscribe you get an email reminder each time there is a new post which is about once a week with my site.
One of the motivators for doing this post was the comment by Susan on my last post where she said “The things that go on in our courts leave most of us with a deep sadness and a desperate feeling of despair and confusion.” This is not uncommon and it is time to fightback.
Once again I will finish off how I finish all my posts and ask for your support. I can write as much as I want but without a few minutes of your time helping promote the posts they will achieve very little. On the other hand if enough people spend a few minutes promoting this post using Twitter, Facebook and email etc they can achieve a lot.
Categories: Attorney General Robert McClelland, Fairfax Media
Thankyou for this timely post.
My husband was badly injured in a car accident ,I had to ring builder to start work on a renovation before I had a chance to get quotes, but with him living opposite and knowing his wife I thought I could trust him.
To cut a long story short he has tried to get over 210k for work that should have cost less than a 120k. He still is trying to clam another 22k. However I have found he has no contract with me an in breach of Regulation,
We are in our 70’s and it has been very stressful but now I am going to fight back. And plan to get a camera for any future iconfrontation,
Ros, I wish you the best of luck in sorting out this problem.
Thank you for this information. Although I have no problem at present, one never knows what might happen when making comments, and I believe in freedom of speech!
The Lawyer does not work for you. The Lawyer works for the system, and the job of the Lawyer is to care for the system, regardless of what happens to you. That’s how it has always been.
Yes, but once a lawyer startes committing criminal offences to support their client then you have no system.
Hey Shane. We’d like to think we had a system of Law and in the past we probably did. I suggest though that if a Lawyer starts behaving as you say then, yes they are still protecting a system. It just isn’t the one we’d like to think it was. Am I being overly pessimistic?
No your right, I just misunderstood you. You’re not pessimistic, that it what this site is about. A lot of people still think we do have a legitimate system when the reality is we don’t.
Well said Paul , you are spot on ,
The lawyer does indeed work for the System ,
I found this out the hard way a couple of years ago and couldn’t believe what I was experiencing, I hope I never have to see or deal with a blood sucking leech of a Lawyer ever again .
Does anyone know of any other website that names and shames bad lawyers ?
try AVVO WEBSITE FOR RATING LAWYERS.
A V V O. Try googling A V V O (no space): AVVO
Feel free to respond to this.
I am a lawyer and am currently on stress leave. I have taken on the industry watchdog over corruption and their poor conduct.
I have little good to say about how ruthlessly unethical a large number of my “colleagues are!!)
I cant even begin to imagine what you have been through. I have had 16 years of battle against a lawyer who claimed to have given advice to a then (74 year old) illiterate man (now 80 yo). The lawyer never met him and played a key role in taking every dollar this man ever worked for, leaving him destitute. Its EXHAUSTING. I hope you have your health back, we NEED people like YOU.
What do you call a a baby vulture?
Answer:- A Law Graduate!!
And jeff,you will know what I mean.
Paul H.
Paul I wish I had seen this earlier. I love a good laugh!!
Hi Jeff,no disrespect to good honest lawyers,I know there are some who aspire towards putting things right in this corrupt world using the law as it was intended—for the resolution of differences of opinion in an honest way,hence swearing on the bible.
As was the intention of developing a police force to eliminate crime so that people could feel safe going about their daily lives.These guys were commonly called “Coppers”,but we all recognise that a lot of the copper nails are very bent also.
I’d like to see more honest lawyers (liars) post in this site. Which is it? i’m confused!
Hi Jeff, no disespect, maybe i should say, we need more people in your field, like you.
The AVVO site mentioned above does not include Australian Lawyers it seems. Maybe we should have a distinctly Australian Site dedicated to this…
Yep, before I retired two years ago, I made the mistake of innocently emailing a relevant Word document to a client, because our fax machine wasn’t working that day. The client kindly rang me on receiving the email, to say that there appeared to be unrelated material in the document – it turned out that I’d used a similar letter to another client as a template for this one & the Word ‘track changes’ function was ‘on’, meaning that everything that I’d deleted from the ‘template’ letter, while not appearing on the computer screen while I was typing the new letter, DID show up in the version received by the client! He cheerfully agreed just to delete what I’d sent him but it could have got nasty…
This is a cautionary tale! But I hope cheating lawyers don’t get wind of it…
Thanks for posting this buddy. The bloke Jhinku is currently running a case for Qantas against my union. It helps to know some background.
Absolutely agree Shane. What they (powerdealers and powerbrokers, big bosses, and politicians) do is typically recruit young opportunists and careerists, preferably ethnic, who are otherwise unlikely to have any meaningful career. This way they know that these young opportunists will leap at the opportunity and accept to do shady stuff because they know how to cover it up and they also get free assistance from senior lawyers whom those big bosses readily supply for the purpose of winning the case.
What is tragic is that far too many people succumb and they succumb because there are very few if any good lawyers who would take cases like yours for free, push as far as they can until they win, and strengthen the network available to decent citizens who have upset big guys one way or another, whistleblowers, truth-bearers and truth-pursuers, etc.
What has always been fundamentally wrong with capitalism is that money intellectually and inherently corrupts, and its sickly value of self-interest coupled with greed and individualsim manifests and spread the fastest. Once it proliferates it’s impossible to stop because being bad is easier than being good. Resisting temptations requires discipline and strong moral fabric.
When more than 30% politicians and senior figures of poor moral fabric were elected and comfortably secured in their seats, this intellectual and moral cancer took hold.
They continue to import cheap overseas labour with total disregard for Australians who need jobs or only hold casual jobs. They love asylum seekers only play it differently for the cameras. They hand out pittances to look like they care but our middle class is shrinking fast. I have worked at one of top three Melbourne universities and have personally observed how more than 80% of staff in international admissions are Asians by origin, and they have pushed their own through the uni door by any means. People were enrolled into full time study both UG and PG who can barely communicate in English. Once they were enrolled on study visas, they were assisted to get part time jobs at uni, ahead of Australian permanent resident students, and more than 90% of those who were enrolled never left but were assisted to stay until they obtained PR visas. This is ongoing. I spoke out, contacted VC to voice concerns for both the quality of student and their academic results, and the fact that Australian kids were missing on good jobs and guess what happened ?
It is not just the “legal” system that is corrupt, I have found that the Federal Senate is in the same boat, I submitted a 32 page document that was sent via registered post and the secretary acknowledged receipt of it but it “mysteriously” disappeared, one of the corrupt grubs I named is a good friend of John Hogg the “president ” of The Senate, I have written to most Senators but only ONE has replied, claiming it is Nicola Roxon responsibility but I have heard nothing in more that twelve months.
Some lawyers should be jailed for obstructing the cause of jusice and misleading the courts by telling lies and concealing evidence. Some Judges do not read documents, know lawyers are misleading the courts and do nothing.
I can agree completely, I have exposed a forged Statutory Declaration, the corrupt solicitors of the CJC/CMC whitewashed the matter with the excuse that it was ” just a lack of understanding” on the part of a Justice of the Peace who was the court “registrar”, it was done to pervert the course of justice, in a forth coming trial, nothing was done about the perpetrators, or those that tried to cover up the crime (some of the “poor dears” were sent on “Stress Leave”) I was defamed with false allegations by the scum to “deem” me as a person of ill repute and thus an “Unreliable Witness” the claims made about my character are “Criminal Defamation” but the Police have failed to act. I will eventually submit the full story but it will fill many pages.
I made a Public Interest Disclosure to an appropriate authority of Workcover in relation to inapproriate behaviour by a senior staff member of Workcover and his spouse. The matter was not investigated, my disclosure was provided to the senior member and Workcover released all my letters of complaints to the senior member and assisted him in taking out a malicious, false and defaming action for libel against me. The perjury involved, the concealingment of evidence to obstruct the cause of justice, is of no interest whatsoever to the Police, the law Society or the State Ombudsman. How dare they ask the public to assist them in reporting crime, when some lawyers are the biggest criminals. I am a litigant in person, I have been fighting for justice for the last 171/2 years, and will continue my fight for justice until my dying day. The president of the law society is counsel for Workcover, against a poor little unrepresented litigant. Lawyers should be named and shamed. Good luck to all who have had to deal with crooked lawyers.
I will never ever engage a lawyer, I have seen too much. Legal practitioners conduct in my opion is useless.
I made the mistake of making a formal complaint about 6 solicitors, to the Law Society of NSW in 2007. The Lawyer handling the complaint, allowed one solicitor to respond to a the complaints by another solicitor, (Her partner in crime), They forced me to withdraw my complaint by manufacturing evidence and losing the evidence I sent. It involved the CTTT. ACCC, 5 Solicitor Firms in NSW. I made a formal complaint to the local police and was informed ” We are forbidden to investigate solicitors”. I later found out that an investigation took place behind closed doors and one of the Solicitors committed perjury.. The icing on the cake was a letter from the ACCC. ” We will not investigate the matter as there are other avenues for your complaint”.
Unfortunately, lawyers are untouchable, they know that and therefore some abuse their clients left, right and centre. I have laid complaints to the anti-corruption branch of the SA Police ,in relation to perjury by lawyers and their clients, with no success. Very disturbing when lawyers conceal evidence and mislead the courts. These mongrels are evil to the core and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. I have been fighting for justice for the last 171/2 years. Hopefully, justice will be served, there still some very Honourable Judges. You are in my thoughts and in my prayers Steve, stay strong and God bless you.
We had a lawyer to gain our unpaid entitlements from being terminated from a role there were two of us we paid him over $60,000.00 in fees he never gained our permission to submit certain evidence, he then placed us in a terrible position of the supreme court he then suggested for us to pay him another $5,000.00 to gain guidance from a well know south Australian barrister, of which we were advised to not go to trial and we would walk away with a small amount and have no costs placed against us, however we never received this particular letter until this year our case was back in 2012, we were to go to trial on the 24th Oct 2012, he received the letter of advice from the barrister on the 17th Sept 2012, then took me to court to terminate representing me on the 19th Sept 2012 and withheld the letter from the barrister as mentioned, we then both had to borrow another $100,000.00 for payment for a two month period for another lawyer to stop the supreme court proceedings, now we not only are seriously in debt due to the negligence of the first lawyers misconduct and with holding and not submitting the letter from the Barrister we now are going to have costs placed against us from the other party we took t court for costs around $1 million dollars and now yesterday received a bill from the corrupt lawyer for another bill of $150,000.00 where is the justice and we have black and white evidence proving the original lawyer withheld important information and now he has financially ruined us plus caused so much stress on two families this happened in south australia
I would not advise anyone to have anything to do with a court case. I have been in court 3 times to support my daughter and that was fine.
I am writing in particular about the Eastman case. (Murder of senior policeman Winchester). The lawyer who led the prosecution in 1995 was the same person who accepted a NT government brief in 1988 to oppose the very weak findings of the 1987 Morling which said that the Chamberlains were not guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
The inference is that he is a “scumbag lawyer” who will tell any lies for the $500K per year he is paid.
we have been shafted by a solicitor, taking advantage of our elderly father with dementia… it has caused us more grief upon grief
You end up deciding to spend the money and going to a lawyer, then you get treated like this:
I found out that lawyers are subject to the Consumer Guarantee provisions of Australian Consumer Law, and as such are required to provide services with due care and skill.
Don’t need to prove damages, just go for a refund, sounds good.