A Perth lawyer facing removal from the roll referred to the inquiry into the Legal Practice Board in an adjournment application, citing the outcome may have a “significant impact” on the disciplinary hearing.
Appearing in the Supreme Court of Western Australia earlier this week, Perth sole practitioner Manraj Singh Khosa asked for his disciplinary matter to be adjourned until after a parliamentary inquiry into the state’s Legal Practice Board has handed down its findings.
The inquiry, announced last August, is set to examine “the operation and effectiveness” of the board and its role in regulating the West Australian legal profession, according to papers tabled in Parliament by public administration committee chair Kate Doust.
Major legal bodies have since provided submissions that have called into question the board’s excessive finances and cultural issues.
In his application, Khosa claimed the inquiry’s report “will have a ‘significant impact’ on the conduct of these proceedings, and it may contain ‘significant evidence’ that will be relevant”.
In February 2021, Lawyers Weekly reported Khosa was facing potential disciplinary action over allegations he provided false and misleading representations to the board as an attempt to “avoid liabilities of his law firm” by setting up a new practice.
The Supreme Court received an application from the Legal Services and Complaints Committee for Khosa’s removal from the roll.
On Tuesday, 3 February, Khosa said the limited published submissions received by the inquiry have “made it clear there are a number of significant defects in the Legal Practice Board’s overall conduct in discharging its role in regulating the legal profession in this state”.
“He submitted that this relates to not only the conduct of the disciplinary investigators but also to the conduct of disciplinary proceedings (which he contended would be relevant to the proceedings giving rise to the report made to this court),” the Supreme Court said.
Khosa said it would be “reasonable” to wait for the report to avoid any “unnecessary further applications” in the event it supports his position the board failed in its discharge of disciplinary responsibilities.
He added that an adjournment would “avoid any miscarriage of justice”.
The full bench of Justices Larissa Strk, Fiona Seaward and Terence Palmer said it was not apparent that the inquiry or its report were relevant to the matters they must determine in Khosa’s hearing.
“Khosa does not claim that the inquiry is investigating the Legal Practice Board’s handling of his case. It is not apparent to us that it is,” the full bench determined in their recently published decision.
To the extent the inquiry does consider the Legal Practice Board’s conduct of disciplinary proceedings generally, the bench said any findings would not seem to have “any obvious relevance” to the issues that have arisen in the present disciplinary application.
Even if it did, Justices Strk, Seaward and Palmer said the inquiry has no jurisdiction to disturb findings made by the State Administrative Tribunal. They added that the Court of Appeal would have jurisdiction.
“Even if it is accepted, as Khosa suggests, that the findings of the inquiry would have the force of Parliament, any findings or comments made by the inquiry would not be binding on this court.
“It is also difficult to understand how the inquiry’s findings could be material to whether or not findings made in other jurisdictions associated with these proceedings were correct,” the bench said.
Having considered Khosa’s submissions and the fact that there have already been delays and adjournments because of his actions, Justices Strk, Seaward and Palmer dismissed his adjournment application.
The case: Legal Services and Complaints Committee v Khosa [2026] WASC 20.
