Why controversial Melbourne lawyer Pat Lennon could lose his law licence
Melbourne lawyer Pat Lennon, whose clients have included Mick Gatto, is now fighting to keep his law licence while he is still under investigation.
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Controversial Melbourne lawyer Pat Lennon could lose his law licence following a News Corp investigation, a tribunal has heard.
The lawyer, whose clients have included underworld figure Mick Gatto and former jockey Danny Nikolic, has launched legal action to maintain his status as a lawyer after the Victorian Legal Services Board sat on its hands and failed to renew his practising certificate.
The board was supposed to make a decision within 90 days of Mr Lennon applying for renewal of his certificate but did not do so, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard on Thursday.
A 480-page dossier the board relies on to support its position includes a series of articles about Mr Lennon published by News Corp, VCAT was told.
VCAT heard that the dossier also includes articles published in The Age, court judgments, complaints against Mr Lennon, material relating to family violence and documents related to his intimate relationships with a former client.
The tribunal was told that additional elements of the dossier include material it has obtained from Mr Lennon under compulsion and confidential information related to ice charges against the lawyer that are currently before the courts.
It also heard that Mr Lennon remains under investigation by the LSB.
The lawyer was charged with attempted possession of a drug of dependence and trafficking after police allegedly caught him with 11 grams of methamphetamine in a car in South Yarra in 2020.
Earlier this year highway police in Shepparton also charged him with separate drug driving offences.
His practising certificate was due to expire at the end of June but VCAT heard that as a result of his legal action he will continue to be allowed to practise law until the case is decided, which will not be until August at the earliest.
In submissions to VCAT that were heard by the tribunal, Mr Lennon’s barrister, Stephen Warne, accused the media of running “an unprecedented and sensationalist campaign of denigration against Mr Lennon, and of Victorian legal regulators for allegedly having been too lenient towards him to date”.
The tribunal also heard Mr Lennon’s complaint that News Corp had a financial interest in diminishing his reputation because he is currently suing the company for defamation over an earlier article related to his drug charges.
Senior member Elizabeth Wentworth described the documents handed to VCAT by the Legal Services Board as “an information dump”.
She refused to allow News Corp access to most of the documents except for details of court judgments and media articles which were already in the public domain.
News Corp articles relied on by the LSB include reports published in December of judges criticising Mr Lennon and his wife, Jane Lennon, and referring the couple to the Legal Services Commissioner, Fiona McLeay, that also described his relationship with Mr Gatto and other people.
The LSB also relies on an article News Corp published in January detailing court allegations that Mr Lennon that he and two men in hazmat suits broke into a Melbourne home, bashing, robbing and kidnapping the disabled man who lived there, and another in February reporting a court finding that Mr Lennon gave plainly wrong legal advice to the former girlfriend of jailed drug kingpin Tony Mokbel.
In addition, it cites reports in The Age including one in November dealing with claims Mr Lennon’s jaw was broken in an assault in Melbourne’s CBD.
Mr Warne opposed release of any material, including the judgments and media articles.
“I’m pretty sure that some of these decisions are the subject of extant disciplinary investigations,” he told VCAT.
“Those cases are out there — what is not out there is that the board ascribes significance to them for the purposes of considering Mr Lennon’s application for a practising certificate.”
He said the materials would allow the paper to report that “things are moving on folks, this dreadful regulatory system we have here in Victoria has moved on, I’m pleased to say.”
“He will be able to report that the board has been taken to have made a decision to not renew Mr Lennon’s practising certificate, and folks, featuring prominently in their reasoning is the decision of such and such on such and such a date.”
However, counsel for the LSB, Megan Fitzgerald, said it wasn’t possible for the media to draw conclusions on how much weight the board put on the court decisions and newspaper articles from their presence in the document trove.
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