Kernaghan, Aaron Noel
Allegation / charges
<p><strong>Professional Misconduct</strong></p><ol><li>Breached an undertaking to the Office of the Legal Services Commissioner</li><li>Breach section 137 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) - Certain trust money to be deposited in general trust account</li><li>Breached section 138 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) - <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span>Holding, disbursing and accounting for trust money in general trust account</li><li>Caused a deficiency in the law practice trust account</li><li>Breached section 146 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW) - <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </span>Intermixing money</li><li>Failed to comply with Notice issued under section 370 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW)</li><li>Failed to comply with fiscal obligations</li></ol><p><br></p><p><strong>Unsatisfactory Professional Conduct</strong></p><ol><li>Failed to comply with disclosure obligations under section 174 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW)</li><li>Failed to pay an invoice issued by an expert witness</li></ol> — Professional Misconduct Unsatisfactory Professional Conduct
Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision
The practitioner was found to have engaged in professional misconduct (breaching an undertaking to the OLSC, multiple trust account breaches under ss137, 138 and 146 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law (NSW), causing a trust account deficiency, failing to comply with a s370 notice, and failing to comply with fiscal obligations) and unsatisfactory professional conduct (failing to comply with s174 disclosure obligations and failing to pay an expert witness invoice). No express finding of dishonesty and no sanction, fine or costs details are stated in the provided text.
Duties found breached:
- No payments to witnesses on evidence
- Uphold public trust in the profession
- No conflict between current clients
- Firm governance, systems and compliance
- No baseless or threatened misconduct report
⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["extracted_from_register_summary"]
Duties engaged
Other decisions involving this respondent
Matched by respondent name — may include a different person with the same name.
Documents
Source: https://portal.olsc.nsw.gov.au/dasearchbn/daresultdetail?id=0a9c210a-718e-454b-80d3-00aa1bd7f3ce