The lawyer told the tribunal she and her children had been DV victims for years
The Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal has struck off a lawyer for taking at least $203,000 of her clients' money in order to fund attempts to flee her abusive husband, reported the NZ Herald.
The lawyer, whose name has been suppressed, skimmed the money from the trust account of the legal practice she ran. She had initially done so in error, but believing she would be able to repay whatever she took, she began making off with more funds, which she used to move from city to city.
"I understand how on the face this looks like a simple story of a lawyer who misused client funds. but this is a story of a long shadow of domestic violence", she told the tribunal in a statement published by the Herald.
She claimed that she and her children had lived in constant fear of her husband for seven years. The abuse was such that the lawyer said she truly believed that "we would have ended up as a news headline for a murder suicide".
"The term survival mode does not do justice to the psychological toll", she said in a statement published by the Herald.
She has since repaid part of the stolen funds, and while she acknowledged that she should have stepped away from her practice as she struggled to cope with the situation, she loved her work and said that it was "the one thing I was holding onto that made me feel like me".
Nonetheless, Standards Committee counsel Milan Djurich, whol filed the charges against the lawyer on the Law Society's behalf, pointed out that the lawyer's actions constituted "a high level of theft and a breach of professional standards".
The case was first brought to the Law Society's attention in 2023 when a client raised a concern about being unable to contact the lawyer following the payment of a large deposit. Investigators assumed control of the legal practice's trust account in December of that year after estimating that at least $200,000 was missing.
The lawyer had spent it on insurance, gym fees, relocation costs, school fees and books and payments on a deposit for a property purchase. She had also moved significant amounts to her personal accounts.
The tribunal ordered that the lawyer cover legal costs in addition to repaying the money she took. The lawyer surrendered her practising certificate willingly and accepted her strikeoff.
Having recently obtained a relationship property settlement from her husband in Family Court, the lawyer said she intended to use the funds for the repayment.