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Perth lawyer reprimanded, fined $20k, ordered to pay $30k in costs

A Perth-based legal practitioner has been publicly reprimanded for conduct that fell “substantially below” a reasonable standard of competence and diligence expected.

July 22, 2025 By Kace O'Neill
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The State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia (SAT) has reprimanded and fined Perth legal practitioner Paul Andrew Hardie $20,000, finding that his conduct “fell substantially below a reasonable standard of competence and diligence expected of an Australian legal practitioner”.

The tribunal found Hardie guilty of professional misconduct for preparing, in April 2017, an enduring power of attorney (EPA), in which he failed to take instructions from the client and failed to assess the client’s capacity to make the EPA or ensure it reflected the client’s wishes.

 
 

After preparing the EPA, Hardie provided the EPA to a third party who had requested its preparation, after which time the client’s signature was forged onto the document.

The following month, the tribunal went on, Hardie acted for a lender/mortgagee in a loan transaction in circumstances where he was in a position of conflict, because the client for whom he produced the EPA was a mortgagor and guarantor to the loan agreement.

This loan agreement and mortgage relied on the EPA to bind Hardie’s client, putting Hardie in a position of conflict as he had “not yet discharged his professional obligations in respect of the EPA”.

On this count, the tribunal also found Hardie guilty of professional misconduct.

The matter was resolved based on agreed facts and penalties between the Legal Practice Board of Western Australia and Hardie, which the tribunal formally endorsed.

As a result, Hardie was publicly reprimanded, received a fine of $20,000, and was forced to pay for the LPB’s legal costs in the matter, in the amount of $30,000.

Since his admission in 1999 as a legal practitioner, Hardie has not been the subject of any disciplinary findings or proceedings and did not have any unresolved complaints, the tribunal noted. His acceptance of the orders avoided the need for a contested hearing on the ordered penalty.

As recently reported by Lawyers Weekly, Michael William Kemp, owner of Kemp Law, was also publicly reprimanded after he was found to have seriously breached his legal obligations by failing to make $291,572 in compulsory superannuation contributions to six employees.

One of the employees in the matter was cut short of $37,143 in superannuation contributions during their three-year tenure at Kemp Law.

“The consequence is that, by failing to remit those funds, the legal practitioner/employer is, in effect, converting the money that ought properly to go to the credit of the employees into funds available for the use of the practice,” said Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal’s Justice Paul Freeburn.

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