Deadline: Burn City Legal rises from Coburg tyre shop to law firm

Their cars boast number plates like ‘GILTY’ and ‘BAILIN’, and their founder started out giving legal advice in a Coburg tyre shop. Burn City Legal is aiming for a flamboyant point of difference from traditional firms.

Burn City founder Younis Yehia cheerfully admits some parallels with Better Call Saul’s Saul Goodman. Picture: AP

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest crime buzz.

Better call Younis

There’s a perception the law is a stodgy enclave of ridiculous wigs and old school ties.

Enter Burn City Legal.

Deadline confidently predicts that BCL is the only legal firm in Melbourne that started from a tyre shop and sells its own branded merchandise such as hoodies and the like.

Lawyers on its website don’t pose up for headshots in front of packed bookshelves, instead relying on a boast of providing “no-BS” representation. And they aren’t hosing down fine food and wine in city men’s clubs and swanning around the legal precinct in Rollers or vintage Porsches like some tossers we could name.

Nup, this mob’s vehicles have Better Call Saul-style number plates, which say “GILTY” and “BAILIN’”, in the fashion of the LAWRUP of Jimmy McGill, AKA Saul Goodman.

Taking its cue from Better Call Saul, Burn City Legal is aiming for a flamboyant point of difference from traditional firms.

Burn City founder Younis Yehia, who’s 27, cheerfully admits some parallels with the hit US TV show.

Burn City Legal’s BAILIN car.

“We don’t believe in traditional means of marketing,” says the guy who started off as a law clerk at 17 with Zeno Lawyers in Camp Rd, Broadmeadows.

Younis has a keen interest in cars. A lot of his practice revolves around young people facing driving charges.

BCL runs stalls at legal street meets around Melbourne and dispenses free legal advice along with road safety gospel. They also sell their merchandise, the proceeds of which they say go to worthy causes.

The firm also delves into the criminal sphere and its website has a long list of case studies with colourful headlines like “vigilante drill-wielding offender chosen by police as victim in bizarre assault case.”

Another case study outlines its defence of a woman accused of choking her sister after finding out the sibling had an affair with her ex. (This reminds Deadline of the celebrated case of two jockey sisters having a punch-on at the races over the competing but fleeting affections of a scallywag jumps rider.)

There are other parallels between Younis Yehia’s true-life beginnings and the fictitious backstory of Saul Goodman.

The Better Call Saul version started off his own practice out the back of a nail salon in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Mr Yehia ran a tyre store on Sydney Rd, Coburg, and devoted some of its space to giving legal advice when he started out on his own.

Burn City Legal founder Younis Yehia started out giving advice in his Coburg tyre shop.

It was a twist to the wheels of justice which some locals liked.

“That broke the ice a bit. It showed we were normal human beings. They’re still clients from there who call us,” he says.

Nowadays, he and firm partner Mark Sehler have five lawyers on the books at their Queen St office.

One of their aims is to demystify the law and make it more accessible.

“We don’t want people to think that we’re better than them because we’re lawyers.”

We hope the comparisons with Saul end here, given that Bob Odenkirk’s character ended up in plenty of strife.

Caught by the Woolfe

There was kudos for former homicide squad detective David Woolfe after killer Paul Charlton was sentenced to 24 years in prison last week.

A Supreme Court jury found Charlton had bashed and strangled his girlfriend Joanne Howell at her Hughesdale home 16 years ago.

The sentence was the final step in a sad saga which started when the former Countdown singer was found with a fractured skull in 2007.

A Coroner found in 2011 that Charlton was likely to have been involved in the death. But that alone isn’t enough to put someone in the slammer.

A jury found Charlton had bashed and strangled his girlfriend Joanne Howell.

Paul Charlton arrives at the Melbourne Supreme Court during his trail. Picture: Aaron Francis

After several failed attempts to launch a prosecution, the case stalled until it was referred to Sen Sgt Woolfe when he arrived at homicide some years ago.

He believed there was a chance to get justice for the victim’s grieving family. Though it took a while, he was eventually able to marshall enough evidence to have Charlton charged and convicted.

The detective declined to comment when approached by Deadline last week. But Ms Howell’s sister Lisa Hennessy was not so reticent, praising his persistence.

“He could see right through the lies. He’s done the most fantastic job by looking at every piece of the puzzle,” she said.

Crossbows at 10 paces

If someone owes you money, don’t get cross — get a crossbow.

That seems to have been the approach of one creditor down in the Latrobe Valley involved in a money dispute with an acquaintance.

The main players in the drama are not your literary types. They’d think William Tell was a fancy name for a police informer called Bill.

As for their ongoing negotiations over money owed, let’s just say the debtor is nursing a nasty injury after being wounded in the dispute resolution phase by the other party. A good crossbow bolt will do that.

A gun for sale

Impeccably-sourced news that the late Ron “Big Red” Walker’s antique gun collection is for sale is interesting but no surprise.

Guns are one thing that old-time millionaires like Ron tended to be fond of but their kids and grandkids are often not so keen.

Kerry “Buckets” Packer always had a gun handy, even in his Sydney office, where underlings would get nervous when he pulled a heavy calibre pistol out of the drawer.

Of course, the big fella reputedly had a lot of gold bars and cash in the safe, just for emergencies. Interestingly, no one ever felt the overwhelming desire to rob the benefactor and Geelong Grammar old boy who paid for the school’s cricket ground grandstand, forever known by the kids there as the Goanna Stand.

A European flintlock pistol Circa 1800 from the estate of Ron Walker.

Up on his vast polo horse and cattle property in the Hunter Valley, Packer was known to keep a superbly-tuned hunting rifle upstairs so he could shoot the heads off his long-suffering wife’s roses. His idea of a joke, apparently.

Fellow billionaire Kerry Stokes has wide-ranging interests that include serious and notable art collecting and extraordinary museum pieces, but he also doesn’t mind the odd vintage Colt pistol that saw service in the Wild West.

Deadline was long ago told of the hiding place of a pistol used by one of the Walsh St killers, Jed Houghton, who apparently buried it in a shallow hole in the inner northwest not long before the Special Operations Group blew him away as he slept in a Bendigo caravan park in late 1988.

It would appear that roadworks to change the Calder freeway might well have buried that weapon forever.

Unless, of course, some gardener stumbled over it first, which is how police retrieved the stolen shotgun used at Walsh St. If so, it could still turn up some day.