Mills Kirin

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Sole practitioner Mills John Kirin, acting for a husband in domestic violence protection order proceedings, sent five discourteous emails to the opposing solicitor over 2022, including unsubstantiated and offensive language, and later threatened to report her to the ACT Law Service if she did not withdraw her complaint. The Commissioner sought a finding of professional misconduct and a $10,000 fine; Kirin admitted unsatisfactory professional conduct and proposed $1500. The Tribunal found the conduct amounted to unsatisfactory professional conduct (less serious than comparable cases like SYG), rejected the argument that the domestic violence context warranted a markedly higher penalty, and imposed a public reprimand, a $2000 fine, mandatory specialist DV training, and costs.

Duties found breached:

• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No improper solicitation or touting

Aggravating factors:

• Continued the discourteous conduct with apparent impunity
• Made threats to report the opposing solicitor to the ACT Law Service seeking withdrawal of the complaint
• Comment tending to diminish/minimise the impact of domestic violence
• Persistent lack of insight into inappropriateness of his behaviour

Mitigating factors:

• Co-operation in admitting the impugned conduct and not requiring witnesses to attend
• This was his first domestic and family violence matter
• Demonstrated insight and remorse via apology letter
• Steps taken by way of further education and self-improvement (completed ethics course)
• Correspondence not sent directly to the aggrieved
• No contravention of any protection order/no criminal offence
• Correspondence was private, not disseminated to others
• Unblemished 20-year career with no disciplinary history
• No further complaints since the conduct