Mehajer’s lawyer Zali Burrows slapped with $54,000 legal bill
SALIM Mehajer’s high-profile solicitor Zali Burrows has been ordered to pay $54,000 after her own legal stoush in a week that was not good for either of them
NSW
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SALIM Mehajer’s high-profile solicitor Zali Burrows has been ordered to pay $54,000 after her own legal stoush in a week that was not good for either of them.
As the former Auburn deputy mayor was jailed for electoral fraud last week, Ms Burrows was handed a bill to pay the costs of the NSW Law Society after it temporarily suspended her licence to practise.
Ms Burrows, a former Palmer United Party candidate, is one of Sydney’s busiest criminal lawyers with clients including convicted Islamic State recruiter Hamdi al Qudsi and one of his two wives, Moutia Elzahed, who was banned from giving evidence in court while wearing a niqab and became the first person in NSW to be found guilty of refusing to stand for a judge. In September 2016, the Law Society began to investigate the first of three complaints against Ms Burrows from a senior counsel, a firm of process servers and another person, the Supreme Court was told. Judge Christine Adamson found last week that Ms Burrows took more than a year to respond “adequately or at all” to the society’s emails and phone calls about the complaints.
The judge found the society was justified in suspending her practising certificate in January this year because Ms Burrow’s actions meant the society had no idea if she was still working.
“Her repeated disregard of correspondence left (the society) in the situation where it was not sure whether she had abandoned her practice, to the detriment of her clients, or whether she was just ignoring the ... correspondence,” Judge Adamson said.
Ms Burrows’ suspension only lasted days as it led to her immediately answering all the society’s questions. She had variously complained that she had problems with emails, issues with retrieving files on her laptop, a frozen computer and that she was ill and in a terrorist-related sentencing hearing.
She accused the society of being “discourteous, unreasonable and unhelpful”. Judge Adamson rejected her claims and ordered her to pay the society’s $54,000 legal bill.