Lawyer should be struck off NSW's roll of solicitors after professional misconduct finding, ACAT says

A former ACT lawyer who “dishonestly misappropriated” clients’ money should be removed from the roll of solicitors in NSW, a tribunal says.

Last year, Gillian Claire Yeend was found guilty of professional misconduct, the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT) said in two recently published decisions.

In the 2010s, she was the director of a law practice and operated a trust account. She was the only person authorised to withdraw funds and sign cheques from the account.

Between 2016 and 2018, Ms Yeend transferred client funds in breach of trust account regulations 50 times, ACAT Senior Members Mary Brennan and Laura Beacroft said.

She “dishonestly misappropriated clients’ moneys, knowing she had no lawful entitlement to do so”, they said.

ACAT also found Ms Yeend failed to report 56 instances of trust account irregularities to the ACT Law Society.

In addition, she was found to have been dishonest during the Law Society’s investigation.

“This included providing invoices to the Law Society which were not the invoices sent to her clients,” the senior members said.

“The tribunal determined that she had taken this action to conceal her conduct from the Law Society.”

During a sanction and costs hearing, Ms Yeend told ACAT that she now works as an operations and HR manager, which doesn’t require any legal work.

She said her “failure to manage a trust account” in 2015 and 2018 was “a consequence of my naivety, incompetence and lack of diligence in maintaining my professional obligations”.

“During this period, I was hopelessly overcommitted in my personal and professional life and did not prioritise my obligations, which I recognise are a fundamental component of private practice,” she said.

Ms Yeend said she had admitted or partially admitted to some of the charges against her, then had also relinquished her practising certificate in November 2022.

“I will not at any time in the future seek to practise as a legal practitioner,” she said.

A psychological assessment Ms Yeend provided reported that at the time of her conduct, she had been under significant stress and was “unknowingly affected” by attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The Law Council argued that any remorse or contrition had occurred belatedly and that the stressors she described did not mitigate her wrongdoing.

Senior Members Brennan and Beacroft said Ms Yeend’s “dishonesty, over an extended period, in the transfers of client funds from her trust to her office accounts and in her communication with the Law Society, was extremely serious”.

She contested two charges. During her cross-examination at a hearing, many of her answers were found to be evasive or implausible, they said.

“It led the tribunal to find that she had demonstrated a complete absence of insight into the serious illegality of her conduct by submitting that her conduct could be minimised because it was just a payment timing issue, no clients had complained about the fees, and the sum involved was only $145,045.35,” the senior members said.

They recommended Ms Yeend’s name be removed from the roll of solicitors in NSW and ordered her to pay the Law Council’s legal costs for the proceedings.

Ms Yeend was admitted as a solicitor in NSW in 2002 and worked at a family law practice in Canberra in the early 2010s before becoming the sole director of Yeend & Associates.