A lawyer who admitted a serious professional collapse, reported himself and left practice was formally censured and ordered to pay $12,219.02 in costs.

Days before that decision was reported, the New Zealand Law Society published a finding that another lawyer’s repeated aggression towards an employee amounted to bullying. She was ordered to apologise and pay $1,000 in costs.  The cases are not legally identical. They did not involve the same kind of conduct, the same disciplinary classification or the same decision-making body. 

Costs are not fines.  Even so, the comparison raises an uncomfortable question.  If the profession wants lawyers to admit mistakes, seek help and self-report before more damage is done, does its disciplinary system make candour visibly safer than silence?

The Lawyer Who Reported Himself

In A Standards Committee v Mr D, the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal considered the penalty for a relatively senior lawyer who had recently joined a firm and was assigned a civil litigation matter involving an unfamiliar High Court discovery process.[1]

Mr D felt unable to seek assistance. He failed to report properly to his client, acted without instructions and agreed to an “unless order” that ultimately led to the proceeding being struck out. In doing so, he unintentionally misled the Court by representing that he had instructions to agree to the order.  The conduct was serious. Duties to the client and the Court do not disappear because a practitioner is distressed, embarrassed or out of his depth.

What happened next is nevertheless important.  Mr D told his employer, reported himself to the Law Society and resigned. He did not seek another practising certificate. His former firm rectified the client’s position at no cost, and there was no client complaint. A review of approximately 40 other files found no concerns.

The Tribunal recorded no aggravating factors. It accepted that the incident was one-off and out of character. Mr D had immediately accepted responsibility, apologised, sought professional help and cooperated fully. His absence from legal practice had already cost him two years of income and professional advancement.

The Tribunal considered self-reporting “very important” because it demonstrated insight and reduced the risk of repetition. It declined to impose the fine of $8,000 to $10,000 sought by the Standards Committee. It permanently suppressed Mr D’s identity and encouraged him, when ready, to return to areas of practice in which he had previously thrived.

That was a humane result.  It was not a cheap one.

Mr D was censured and ordered to pay the Standards Committee’s costs of $6,438.02 and reimburse the Law Society for Tribunal costs of $5,781. His total liability was $12,219.02.  

The Tribunal had already acknowledged the severe personal and financial consequences of his immediate resignation. It also recorded that the prolonged disciplinary process itself had caused further harm to Mr D and his family.

The fine disappeared. The bill did not.

The Lawyer Who Bullied Her Employee

The Law Society’s recent bullying decision concerned three interactions between a lawyer, Ms A, and an employee, Ms B.[2]

Ms B complained after leaving the practice. She described the workplace as “unsafe” and “toxic”. The incidents involved swearing, raised voices and aggressive communications. The third interaction was recorded. The Standards Committee concluded that a reasonable person would be distressed by being “aggressively yelled at” by their employer.

Ms A said she was deeply embarrassed and ashamed. She referred to a busy, understaffed practice, personal difficulties and extreme business stress. She had since undertaken therapy and was working under supervision.  She did not, however, accept that the incidents formed a pattern of bullying.  The Committee did.

It found that the three incidents cumulatively amounted, “by a fine margin”, to bullying. Ms A breached rules 10, 10.1 and 10.3 of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act (Lawyers: Conduct and Client Care) Rules 2008. Her conduct therefore constituted unsatisfactory conduct under s 12(c) of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006.

The Committee called the third incident “inarguable in its seriousness”, but placed the cumulative behaviour at the lower end of the bullying spectrum. It found no continuing risk requiring deterrence. Ms A was ordered to apologise for the first two incidents and reimburse the Law Society $1,000.  There was no fine and no censure.

The Legal Distinction Is Real

There is an obvious lawyerly answer to the comparison.  Mr D accepted a charge of misconduct. Only the Disciplinary Tribunal can make that finding. Ms A’s behaviour was classified as unsatisfactory conduct, which a Standards Committee can determine itself.[3] 

Mr D’s failures jeopardised a client’s proceeding and misled the High Court. Ms A’s conduct was found to meet the definition of bullying only by a fine margin.

Tribunal proceedings are also more expensive than a Standards Committee inquiry. The $12,219.02 imposed on Mr D reimbursed regulatory costs. It was not a $12,219 punishment masquerading as a fine.

Those distinctions explain how the two outcomes were reached. They do not dispose of the policy problem.

Classification determines process. Process determines cost. If aggressive conduct by a person in authority is routinely treated as lower-level unsatisfactory conduct, while an employee’s avoidant professional failure proceeds to a full misconduct prosecution despite immediate self-reporting, the resulting incentive cannot be dismissed as mere arithmetic.

Nor is public protection confined to clients and Courts. Rule 10.3 exists because bullying within legal workplaces can damage employees, distort supervision, suppress reporting and eventually place clients at risk.

The profession cannot insist that asking for help is a public-protection obligation while treating the conditions that make asking unsafe as a secondary employment problem.

The Profession Already Knows There Is A Pattern

The Law Society’s own 2023 Legal Workplace Environment Survey found that half of respondents had experienced bullying in a legal setting during their lifetime.[4]

Seventeen per cent of the legal community had experienced bullying in the previous six months. In 60 per cent of cases, the person responsible occupied a position of employment authority. Reported effects included anxiety, loss of confidence, resignation, damaged career prospects and feeling ostracised, victimised or ignored.

Only 14 per cent of bullying was formally reported.  That is not a handful of sensitive practitioners misunderstanding robust management. It is a recognised professional problem with a pronounced hierarchy and a very low reporting rate.

Recent disciplinary summaries reinforce the point.  In 2025, a law firm partner was found to have engaged in unsatisfactory conduct after slapping a junior male colleague on the bottom, touching a junior female colleague’s lower back and commenting on her appearance. The Committee rejected his attempts to describe the first act as “blokey” respect and the second as an “innocuous courtesy”. No penalty was imposed.[5]

Later that year, a lawyer’s sexualised and derogatory comment about a former colleague in a lawyers’ group chat was found to breach rules 10, 10.1, 10.2 and 10.3(e). Following mediation, an apology and reparation, no further penalty was ordered.[6]

The system is capable of responding more forcefully. In 2024, a partner who persistently pursued an employee, initiated unwanted physical contact and continued after her lack of interest should have been obvious received the maximum $15,000 fine and an order to contribute to costs.[7]

The outcomes are fact-specific, as they should be. The concern is not that every offensive remark must become misconduct. It is that the regulator is repeatedly encountering workplace aggression, harassment and misuse of power while continuing to explain each matter largely as an individual episode.

The incidents are being seen. The pattern is harder to find in the decisions.

What Happened In Mr D’s Earlier Workplaces?

The most important sentence in the Mr D decision received little attention in the initial reporting.  The Tribunal said his inability to seek assistance became more understandable when viewed against “a series of experiences in previous places of employment”, together with psychological consequences described in medical evidence.

The decision does not say what those experiences were. Permanent suppression protects Mr D’s medical information and identifying details. It would be irresponsible to state that he was bullied, isolated or professionally abused.  It is equally irresponsible not to ask.

Did previous employers humiliate lawyers who admitted uncertainty? Was supervision punitive rather than supportive? Had Mr D learned that asking for help threatened his reputation or employment? Were unreasonable workloads, exclusion or bullying among the experiences that produced his avoidant response?

What systems existed at the new firm? Why was unfamiliar High Court litigation allocated to a recently engaged employee without an effective review point? Did his relative seniority create an assumption that he required no supervision?

A seven-page penalty decision cannot answer every institutional question. The Law Society, however, is not limited to reading each case in isolation. It holds complaints data, receives designated-lawyer reports and has commissioned profession-wide research identifying bullying as a common experience.

If Mr D’s avoidance was partly learned in legal workplaces, the profession may be disciplining the downstream effects of the culture it has already measured.

A Cautionary Tale For Whom?

LawNews described Mr D’s case as a cautionary tale about practitioners and mental health.[8] 

That account was accurate as far as it went. The Tribunal itself used similar language.  It is also the least threatening interpretation available to the profession.

The individual lesson is that lawyers should monitor their mental health and use productive coping mechanisms. The institutional lesson is considerably less comfortable:  What does legal practice teach lawyers will happen if they say, “I do not know how to do this, and I need help”?

Calling Mr D “shamed” intensifies the contradiction. Shame was not incidental to his conduct. The decision describes it as overwhelming. His fear of exposing difficulty helped turn a manageable professional problem into misconduct. The disciplinary process then confirmed that admitting the failure could still carry years of lost work and more than $12,000 in costs.

That does not mean Mr D should have received immunity. It means self-reporting must be more than a favourable paragraph near the beginning of a penalty decision.

Make Candour Predictably Safer

The Tribunal deserves credit for declining a fine and taking a rehabilitative approach. The Standards Committee’s prosecutor was also commended for acting fairly.  The next step belongs to the system.

Prompt self-reporting, full cooperation, absence of dishonesty, effective rectification and no continuing public risk should produce a clear and predictable reduction not only in fines, but in charging decisions, process and costs. Where a full Tribunal prosecution remains necessary, the regulator should explain why its costs should substantially fall on the practitioner whose conduct after discovery exemplified what the profession says it wants.

Disciplinary bodies should also examine workplace context whenever mental health, inability to seek supervision or previous employment experiences are relied upon. That need not identify firms or compromise suppression. Aggregated reporting could show how often workload, bullying, poor supervision or psychological safety appear in disciplinary matters.

Finally, power should matter. Aggression by an employer towards a non-lawyer employee is not made less significant because it does not immediately strike out a High Court proceeding. Conduct that teaches staff to remain silent creates its own public risk.

Mr D was accountable for what he did. Ms A was accountable for what she did. The question is whether the combined outcomes serve the behaviour the profession needs next time.

A profession in which half the legal community reports having experienced bullying cannot treat a lawyer’s fear of seeking help as purely personal pathology. It must ask who taught the silence.  If the law wants candour before catastrophe, candour must be made visibly safer than silence.

______________

References

1. A Standards Committee v Mr D [2026] NZLCDT 22, especially at [1]–[28] and the orders: Ministry of Justice decision. ↩

2. New Zealand Law Society, “Lawyer’s Cumulative Behaviour Towards Member Of Staff Amounts To Bullying And Unsatisfactory Conduct” (July 2026): decision summary. ↩

3. Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006, ss 7, 12 and 156: New Zealand Legislation; New Zealand Law Society, “When A Complaint Is Made”: complaints process. ↩

4. New Zealand Law Society and Kantar Public, 2023 Workplace Environment Survey In Brief (October 2023) at 4–5: survey summary. ↩

5. New Zealand Law Society, “Maintaining Professional Boundaries Remains Important For Lawyers, Including In The Context Of Social Team Functions” (17 July 2025): decision summary. ↩

6. New Zealand Law Society, “No Place In The Profession For Sexualised And Derogatory Language About Individuals In Work Group Chats” (13 November 2025): decision summary. ↩

7. New Zealand Law Society, “Persistent Unwanted Attention Towards Employee Is Unsatisfactory Conduct” (25 July 2024): decision summary. ↩

8. Neil Sands, “Shamed Lawyer Is ‘A Cautionary Tale’ About Practitioners And Mental Health, Legal Watchdog Says” LawNews (28 July 2026): LawNews report. ↩