AUGUSTUS ERNEST LEE-STEERE

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

The State Administrative Tribunal of Western Australia found solicitor Augustus Ernest Lee-Steere guilty of professional misconduct for practising without a current practice certificate between July and October 2007, knowingly misleading the Legal Practice Board and Complaints Committee by falsely representing he had not practised while uncertificated, repeatedly failing over more than two years to comply with notices, summonses and a personal undertaking, and failing to properly maintain his trust account. The Committee sought removal from the roll, but the Tribunal, treating it as a borderline case and weighing his youth, inexperience, lack of prior contraventions, matrimonial stress and the absence of client loss, ordered instead that his practising certificate be suspended for three years and that he pay the Committee's costs fixed at $10,000 within three months.

Duties found breached:

• No improper communication with the court
• Not mislead third parties or opponents
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• Hold a current practising certificate
• Report serious misconduct of others
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report
• Honour professional undertakings

Aggravating factors:

• Conduct extended over a period of more than two years
• Repeated failure to cooperate with, and respond to, the regulatory body
• Knowingly misleading the regulator on three occasions and never correcting the false impression
• Ex post facto, self-serving and disingenuous explanations offered only at the penalty hearing
• Trust account misconduct in a significantly important aspect of practice with no explanation given

Mitigating factors:

• Practitioner was relatively young and inexperienced at the time
• No previous contraventions of the Act
• Under matrimonial/personal stress at the relevant time
• No evidence of dishonesty in dealing with clients' affairs and no monetary loss to any client from the trust account failings
• Breaches not at the most serious end of the scale