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TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
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MAGISTRATES COURT
THACKER, Magistrate
No MAG-73100/14
LEGAL SERVICES COMMISSION
Complainant
and
JACOB LAZAR REICHMAN
Defendant
BRISBANE
2.43 PM, WEDNESDAY, 27 AUGUST 2014
DECISION
Any Rulings that may be included in this transcript, may be extracted and subject to revision by the Presiding Judge.
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20140827/BMC/MAG/20/Thacker, Magistrate
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BENCH: Yes, good afternoon, everyone. Take a seat. Stand up, please, Jacob
Reichman. This is the sentence from this morning. You've been charged before the
Court and pleaded guilty this morning to two offences - first of all, under section 24
of the Legal Profession Act of 2007, charged with engaging in legal practice when
you were not an Australian legal practitioner. That was for the period between the
30th of January 2013 and the 10th of July 2013. You were also charged with a further
offence over a longer period of time between the 30th of January 2013 and the 7th of
February 2014 of having represented that you were entitled to engage in legal
practice when you were not, in fact, an Australian legal practitioner.
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The charges have been particularised, and those particulars have been accepted by
you, and it appears from those particulars that you engaged in legal practice on some
six occasions, principally to adjourn a matter before the Beenleigh Magistrates Court.
You told some three Magistrates that I – and, plus, in one email - either directly or
indirectly, that you were actually employed as a solicitor when you weren’t. You
were a law clerk. You purported before at least two of those Magistrates that you
were a solicitor and gave the name of a firm of solicitors on the Gold Coast, and,
indeed, spelt out their name, though you knew at that time that you were still
studying, you were doing some work experience only, and later on as a clerk, and
you were being paid by a barrister.
As it turns out, I think - if I correctly comprehend the ultimate appearance before
Magistrate Morgan - that the barrister did the right thing when the Magistrate queried
the situation, and that’s when it came out that you were not a solicitor. The breaches
against section 25 - the representations that were made in breach of section 25 were
made in a completely different context so the charges don't really parallel each other,
except marginally. Your breach of the section 29 part of the Act is caused by your
use of social media to advertise yourself or have people believe that you were a
solicitor. I know you say that you mainly did that for the benefit of your family, but,
clearly, the social media has a much, much broader reach than simply those people.
The seriousness of the matter is reflected by the maximum penalty provided for these
offences, a fine, or two years imprisonment - the fine maximum’s $30,000, and so I
take that into account.
As was said in the case which I thought most useful, Samor’s case, this legislation,
pursuant to which the charges have been brought, is protective legislation. It’s
intended to protect the members of the public from people who are not qualified as
legal practitioners in carrying out legal work. It’s designed to ensure that the
standard of the profession, as with most professions in Australia, is maintained in a
uniform way at a high level. Requiring qualifications to be completed is the best
way to achieve this and so the system is protected. At the time of the offending, you
were a second year law student at Bond University.
You commenced working, as I understand it, really for work experience, and then it
increased from there as you became more and more engrossed and keen to do the
job, and you ultimately stayed sufficiently long that the barrister decided to employ
you. I'm not quite sure at what precise point that came, but it is important to take
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DECISION
20140827/BMC/MAG/20/Thacker, Magistrate
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into account because I also take into account that it appears no damage was done to
the client by the activities that you undertook, and it appears that you didn't receive
any payment directly in terms of fees for the work that you did, but still, in all, those
factors must take second place to the other sentencing principles, which principally
have to be to deter you or other people from committing these sorts of offences and
make it clear that the community denounces this conduct. It cannot be that people
come in without the proper qualifications and pretend to be something that they are
not. I think you understand that now.
I can comprehend that you got swept away in the excitement of commencing what
you believed was going to be your career at an earlier point than you were actually
permitted to do. I also understand that you were diagnosed at some point with
attention deficit disorder and that you took it upon yourself once you were an adult to
accept some treatment for that and then stopped that treatment. I've read that short
letter from Dr Williams; however, to my mind at least, it does not go very far in
explaining why there is any connection between that condition - hyperactivity,
impulsivity – those sorts of behaviour attributes – I don't see a connection there with
your decision to deceive the Court in the determined way that you did.
You were asked direct questions by at least two Magistrates, and you could so easily
have explained your situation of work experience. That is a normal and – you may
well have even heard other law clerks doing that – “Yes, your Honour, I'm doing
work experience. I seek leave to appear.” I've – no doubt you would have heard
those words spoken by others, and yet you chose not to do that more than once.
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And then, on top of that, you did not appear when you were called upon. You left
the barrister to explain that you were doing exams. You didn't think it sufficiently
serious to make any other arrangement to respond to the call to appear before the
Court and explain yourself. I believe that that’s an indicator that you continued to
fail or to refused to accept the seriousness of the breach, and then you repeated that
attitude for a longer period on the social media, by utilising the social media sites to
give the impression to the world at large that you were a legal practitioner. That
makes the situation serious. You're not an Australian legal practitioner, and you are
still not, and you do now hold a law degree which you obtained mid last year. You
have now completed your practice requirements, I'm told, and I gather you still want
to be admitted to practice as a legal practitioner.
The things in your favour in that context is that you have no criminal history. You're
22 years old now, and you were 20 at the time of the offending. I've made some
considerations for that despite no connection was submitted directly, but I take into
account that you are young and perhaps mesmerised by eagerness at the prospect of
joining the legal fraternity, and, having heard of your background and that this whole
episode has occurred while you were living away from home – you left home at the
end of the school to come to the Bond University – a long way from home; you
grew up in Melbourne – and so I view you as perhaps rather isolated from mature
advice from those that would seek to protect you from yourself in your immaturity,
and I think that that should be reflected in the penalty as well.
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DECISION
20140827/BMC/MAG/20/Thacker, Magistrate
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I've read the case law, and I've made reference to the Samor case, in particularly. I
think it is close in some respects, except, seriously, you committed the breaches
before the Court, unlike Ms Samor, and you committed those breaches before the
Court when you were specifically asked by the Court on a number of occasions
whether you were a solicitor, and you said yes and spelt out the name of a nominated
firm. It was only because of the honesty and forthrightness of another legal
practitioner that the real situation was revealed.
Taking all of those things into account, though, I do agree with your counsel that a
fine is the appropriate penalty. You're capable of paying a fine. As I understand,
you're still working. I give consideration to whether or not a conviction ought to be
recorded against you. Given your age and what I've said about that, given your lack
of criminal history, no conviction, in my discretion, should be recorded against you,
but you should pay a fine – pay a fine of $1000, together with the costs, $83.50, and
the professional costs, $1000, and I will leave that at one month to pay and then
automatically without any further cost, it will go to the State Penalty Enforcement
Register, and you can make arrangements with them to pay it by instalments, should
you wish. That’s the end of the proceedings. You're free to go.
MS KIRKMAN-SCROOPE: Thank you, your Honour.
MS LANE: Thank you, your Honour.
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