For breaching the duty of candour, a former Northern Territory lawyer had her admission revoked and her name struck from the roll.
Justice Sonia Brownhill of the Northern Territory Supreme Court was satisfied Patricia May Petersen made “deliberately false representations” in her admission application, including the failure to disclose she had attempted to be admitted in Queensland first.
Given it only learnt of the disclosure failures after she was admitted in May 2020, the NT Law Society said Petersen joined the profession “by fraud and non-compliance with the rules for admission, which require full and frank disclosure of adverse or potentially adverse matters”.
In her decision, Justice Brownhill said Petersen’s deliberate lies and omissions were the “antithesis of her obligation of candour to the court in which she desired to serve as an agent of justice”.
“It cannot be doubted that the court would not have ordered that Petersen be admitted if it had been aware of the deliberately false representations. It follows that, prima facie, the order admitting Petersen to the court should be revoked,” Justice Brownhill said.
In addition to the revocation, Justice Brownhill said an order must be made to strike Petersen’s name from the roll of practitioners.
“On the basis of these matters, I am satisfied, on the balance of probabilities to the Briginshaw standard, that Petersen lacks the competence, temperament and character to perform the duties of the office of a lawyer appropriately, competently and effectively,” Justice Brownhill said.
Around December 2019, Petersen filed an originating application for admission to the legal profession with the Supreme Court of Queensland. In it, she provided a statement of eligibility and suitability, which included disclosure of 10 driving offences and several criminal charges she said she was found not guilty of.
After some back and forth with the Queensland Law Society over difficulties understanding the disclosures, Petersen advised the board she would not be moving ahead with admission the following April.
Although she told the Queensland Law Society she was hoping to seek admission after the April sittings, Justice Brownhill said Petersen had instead abandoned the application to apply for admission in the NT.
The originating motion was filed in April 2020, along with an affidavit that contained the following statement: “I have not previously applied for admission to the legal profession under the act or a ‘corresponding law’ or a previous ‘corresponding law’ or a ‘corresponding foreign law’.”
The NT Law Society argued Petersen made this application “to avoid the difficulties that had followed her disclosures in Queensland”.
Justice Brownhill was satisfied the statement in her affidavit “was deliberately and knowingly false”.
Petersen claimed that on 14 April 2020, she filed, or attempted to file, an originating motion, where all suitability matters had been disclosed.
Justice Brownhill found Petersen had lied to the Law Society and the court about attempting to file this affidavit.
Petersen also argued that applying for admission meant attending an admissions hearing or sitting, but this was dismissed as “nonsense”.
“As with court proceedings generally, a person seeking an order to be made by the court must first initiate a proceeding in which they seek some particular relief, and that initiation (i.e. that application) enlivens the court’s jurisdiction to hear and determine their application for relief.
“It would be nonsense to say that, until the matter is heard and determined by the court, the person has not commenced the proceeding or applied for the relief. It is equally a nonsense to say that, until the admissions hearing and the court’s decision to admit or not, the person has not applied for admission,” Justice Brownhill said.
The case: Law Society Northern Territory v Petersen [2025] NTSC 34.
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
