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Two-thirds of lawyers disciplined for misconduct over the last 12 months were struck off, recommended to be struck off, or publicly reprimanded, exclusive data from Lawyers Weekly has revealed.
Just under half of the legal practitioners disciplined in the 12 months to September 2026 were found guilty of professional misconduct, and approximately 70 per cent of them were either struck from the roll or were recommended to the Supreme Court for strike-off.
This analysis of Lawyers Weekly’s reporting on the 82 solicitors and five barristers disciplined over the last year followed last October’s finding that four in 10 legal practitioners who faced a misconduct hearing were struck from the roll of their respective states.
This year, the data revealed that 29 per cent of disciplined lawyers were struck off/recommended for strike-off, 31 per cent were publicly reprimanded, and 21 per cent either had their practising certificates suspended or were refused an application to renew.
May 2026 saw the most disciplinary decisions with 12, followed by 10 in December 2025 and July 2026, and 9 in February 2026.
Queensland had the highest number of disciplined solicitors at 29, followed by 21 in both NSW and Western Australia, and 12 in Victoria.
Twenty-three were disciplined for conduct towards a client or another solicitor, 16 involved dishonesty, 14 were sanctioned for criminal offending, and 10 were due to supervision or practice management blunders.
Lawyers Weekly dives into the themes discovered in its analysis below.
Thefts, practice management failures behind strike-offs
Of the 26 lawyers who were struck off/recommended for strike-off, 30 per cent were due to theft or trust account misconduct.
Samantha Gow, the Queensland practitioner behind Gow Group Legal Services, was struck off late last year for stealing tens of thousands of dollars from an elderly client. Criminal defence lawyer Sanella Naumovski was removed from the roll for causing over $163,000 to be withdrawn from a trust account and paid into other accounts.
Ericson Tang, another Queensland lawyer, had his penalty upgraded from a reprimand to a strike-off for the theft of $10,000 from a client and the creation of false documents to cover his tracks. He claimed he had struggled at the time with an “unknown sexual addiction”.
The bench of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT) said Tang’s dishonest course of conduct struck at the heart of the trust the community “must be able to place in the legal profession”.
Last December, the NSW Supreme Court struck Sevag Chalabian from the roll for his part in the Plutus Payroll conspiracy, including the washing of just under $25 million through his firm’s trust account.
About 15 per cent of the strike-offs and recommendations were chalked up to practice management failures, including Brad Haden Frost, a West Australian sole practitioner who tricked an employee with fake emails. Those emails included praise of himself, including one that celebrated how “quickly you have started your own business”.
Veteran solicitor John Palermo was struck off for leaving the responsibility of his trust accounting to a non-lawyer; Braden Rodway Smith was punished for “walking out of his practice without looking back”; and Marilyn Arcega-Lariosa was recommended for strike-off for practising without holding professional indemnity insurance.
There was also strong condemnation of practitioners for their treatment towards clients, including Rhett Peter Williamson, who threatened to have a former client “bashed” in prison and then tried to have another client take the fall in exchange for manipulating his ex-partner.
In making the strike-off order, West Australian Chief Justice Peter Quinlan said Williamson “engaged in a range of disgraceful conduct that was wholly inconsistent with the privileges of legal practice”.
“That conduct was nothing short of treacherous. The protection of the public requires that it be denounced in the strongest possible terms,” Justice Quinlan said.
Another 15 per cent of the strike-offs concerned criminal offending, followed by conduct towards the legal practice board during the disciplinary investigations, and failures to appropriately handle matters.
Legal practitioners punished for criminal offending
While criminal offending did not always lead to a strike-off order, it did bring an end to the careers of at least four, including most recently sex offender Glenn Ashley Thexton, formerly of Thexton Lawyers. At the time, Victorian Legal Services Board CEO Fiona McLeay said the punishment sent a “strong message” about compliance with the law.
“The disciplinary action we take against lawyers is for the clear purpose of safeguarding consumers of legal services, and maintaining the trust and faith they have in the legal profession,” McLeay said.
In June, Gail Susan Hinschen was struck off following a five-year jail term for stealing over $1,000,000 from a real estate company she had set up with her two brothers. Lance Geoffrey Rigley was also struck off after serving time behind bars, having pleaded guilty to withdrawing just over $80,000 in excess of the legal fees he was entitled to.
In March, Justices Michael Lundberg, Matthew Howard, and Michael Gething of the Supreme Court of Western Australia struck off Clayton Steven Woodhouse, an in-house lawyer who pocketed more than $25,000 from his employer with a string of false reimbursement claims.
Woodhouse was sentenced in March 2022 to 12 months of immediate imprisonment – which was downgraded to 11 months and 21 days on appeal – after pleading guilty to a charge of gaining a pecuniary benefit with intent to defraud by deceit or fraudulent means.
“In our view, to allow his name to remain on the Supreme Court roll would undermine the public’s trust and confidence in the honesty and integrity of legal practitioners and, consequently, in the administration of justice,” the West Australian Supreme Court said of Woodhouse.
For Vladimir Shapkin, who served an 18-month community corrections order, his criminal offending resulted in a refusal to renew his practising certificate, according to a decision published on the Office of the Legal Services Commissioner’s register in late October last year.
Corey Wayne Cullen received a public reprimand for his failure to provide regular urine testing after earlier entering a written undertaking to do so. Cullen pleaded guilty to possession of a small quantity of cocaine in the Magistrates Court of Brisbane in 2019.
Discipline for lawyers misusing AI
In the last 12 months, three lawyers faced disciplinary action for AI-related misconduct, including Seham Rizkallah, who prepared her client’s opening submissions using generative artificial intelligence.
The submission contained four authorities the court was unable to locate. One was replaced by Rizkallah with the “correct citation”, another was written with the wrong title, and the other was non-existent.
The courts have strongly condemned the misuse of AI, particularly when it is used contrary to its practice notes and guidelines. For Rizkallah, her offending flew in the face of the Victorian Supreme Court’s guidelines, which insist that practitioners exercise their judgement and professional skills in reviewing final material.
In ordering Rizkallah be publicly reprimanded, Justice Steven Moore said her ignorance and non-compliance with the guidelines “constitutes a failure by her to deliver legal services competently and diligently as required by the relevant rules of professional conduct”.
A month later, a South Australian solicitor and two Victoria-based counsel were referred to their respective legal regulators for submitting material generated by AI. The solicitor, known only as Mr G, was also ordered to pay the $10,000 in thrown-away costs.
The solicitor and counsel conceded they had failed to verify the authorities they relied on were “both accurate and relevant”.
Justices Murray Aldridge, Catherine Carew, and Juliet Behrens of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (FCFCOA) said it was incumbent on legal practitioners to run checks on their AI use.
In March 2026, an unnamed Queensland solicitor was referred to the regulator for similar misuse of AI. Justice Kristen Walker of the Victorian Supreme Court said it was unacceptable for it to be used unless it is “independently and thoroughly verified”.
Two emails were sent by the court to the firm – including one that copied in the firm’s managing partner – but no answers were forthcoming. Justice Walker added a great many emails from court staff and opposing solicitors also went largely ignored.
“Even putting to one side the [AI] guidelines, reliance by a practitioner on authorities which do not exist, and on ‘quotations’ that are not in fact taken from the cases cited, represents a falling short of the standards of diligence that a member of the public is entitled to expect of a reasonably competent lawyer,” Justice Walker said.
Insight, remorse, and rehabilitation deciding factors
In one of the most recent disciplinary cases reported on in Lawyers Weekly, the West Australian State Administrative Tribunal (WASAT) declined a request by the Legal Services and Complaints Committee to have a practitioner recommended for strike-off.
The bench, headed up by Judge Henry Jackson, acknowledged Razaan Mosaval – who admitted to lying to Legal Aid WA – had demonstrated insight and remorse by making “very significant admissions” on the facts and characterisations of her misconduct.
Mosaval had also taken steps to bolster her practice to ensure the misconduct was not repeated, including hiring more people to help and engaging an external bookkeeper to conduct annual audits.
Given the extent of Mosaval’s insight and remorse, Judge Jackson said there was no “immediate need to protect the public” from her conduct, or a need to “bring home” to Mosaval the seriousness of the offending.
Andrew Brown, a former solicitor found to have engaged in legal practice when he was not entitled to do so, also escaped harsher penalties because he engaged in the disciplinary process and with QCAT “without any apparent attempt to minimise his conduct”.
In contrast, Senarath Bandara Chanaka Senanayake’s lack of insight into why his migration agent registration was cancelled was a key factor in the Law Society of NSW’s refusal to renew his legal practising certificate on a number of occasions between 2020 and 2025.
Acting Justice Michael Elkaim noted a “degree of arrogance” in Senanayake’s submissions, having made “no attempt to persuade the defendant of any failings in the above decisions, instead suggesting that prima facie deficiencies are enough to found success in his application”.
The NSW Supreme Court was also concerned about the serious allegations Senanayake had made against another solicitor.
“In my view, the overwhelming lack of insight displayed by the plaintiff confirms the correctness of the attitude taken by the defendant,” acting Justice Elkaim said.
