Lawyer John O’Brien, principal of Box Hill North practice, appears before VCAT

A Melbourne lawyer weaseled himself into a $250,000 slice of an elderly client’s estate, then threatened the client’s family and claimed legal “gatekeepers” investigating him should be shot.

Lawyer John O’Brien appeared before VCAT. File image.

A Melbourne lawyer who conned an elderly woman into placing him in control of her will fired off a series of threatening emails to family and to the legal professionals investigating his dodgy behaviour.

John O’Brien, the principal of the Box Hill North practice John O’Brien & Associates has been found by VCAT to have engaged in professional misconduct, unsatisfactory professional conduct and misconduct at common law.

The tribunal heard Mr O’Brien became friends with the woman while he was dealing with estate matters following her husband’s death in 2012.

“(The woman) did not give Mr O’Brien any further instructions to carry out any legal work on her behalf … (and) did not express any desire to make a will,” the decision read.

However, in 2017, after learning the elderly woman was in hospital, Mr O’Brien drafted a will and placed himself as executor and trustee of her estate.

He then took this will to her, while she was lying in hospital, and received her signature.

Lawyer John O’Brien was before VCAT. Picture: Glenn Campbell

The tribunal heard the woman had a cognitive impairment at this point and had trouble knowing where she was or recalling relative’s names.

Mr O’Brien then drafted up a further section to the will, which granted him 20 per cent of her estate, and received her signature in hospital once again, despite her telling him she wanted to “think it over”.

The value of her estate was worth more than $2m and Mr O’Brien’s share was in excess of $250,000, the tribunal heard.

The tribunal further heard concerned hospital staff called security who asked the lawyer to leave the premises as the woman was signing the document.

Mr O’Brien visited the client in hospital. File image.

After the woman died in October 2017, Mr O’Brien reimbursed himself for legal costs for which he had already been paid. He also placed a $115,000 deposit from the purchaser of her home into his own trust account.

He even behaved in an “oppressive and threatening” manner towards her relatives when they expressed concern about the will, the tribunal found.

He further sent what Senior Member Elisabeth Wentworth, in her decision, labelled as “undoubtedly inappropriate, discourteous, gratuitous, and offensive emails” to the Supreme Court of Victoria over the course of estate proceedings.

In one of these emails, Mr O’Brien described a tribunal member who had presided over a guardianship hearing as a “b--ch” who he was going to “destroy”.

Mr O’Brien is no longer practising law. Generic image.

In a separate email to the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner, Mr O’Brien wrote: “The gatekeepers controlling entry to my profession have failed to keep out the trash and they should, each and every one, be shot, ideally with a small calibre pistol to the back of the head.”

He also wrote a series of bizarre articles on LinkedIn, including a set where he complained about the number of women who occupy “positions of responsibility” and are “moving from one high castle to the next, and contributing nothing but their prejudices”.

“Notably, no one who has thwarted Mr O’Brien, in his judgment, escapes the vitriol: judges, registrars, a VCAT member, the Commissioner, her staff, STL, the person who complained about him to the Commissioner, and for no obvious reason, the Board of Examiners,” Senior Member Wentworth wrote in her decision.

In 2021, Mr O’Brien acknowledged he should not continue to practice law and retired from the profession.

Senior Member Wentworth found a set of charges levelled at Mr O’Brien proven.

There will be a later decision setting out the subsequent determinations.