Analysis

Step 1: How many complaints did the OLSC handle?

NSW has co-regulation. The OLSC receives every complaint, then keeps some and refers others to the Law Society and the Bar Council (the Councils). It doesn’t publish how many misconduct complaints it refers, but the Councils publish how many they receive. Take their figures away from the OLSC’s total, and the OLSC kept about 7,600 misconduct complaints in ten years, about 760 a year.

Year	Misconduct complaints received	Referred to the Law Society	Referred to the Bar	Kept by the OLSC
2015-16	1,055	448	63	544
2016-17	1,318	600	95	623
2017-18	1,386	481	74	831
2018-19	1,301	498	79	724
2019-20	1,311	450	79	782
2020-21	1,405	550	58	797
2021-22	1,528	606	74	848
2022-23	1,467	589	71	807
2023-24	1,561	654	102	805
2024-25	1,762	844	94	824
Ten years	14,094	5,720	789	7,585

Where to check: “Complaints received” in each OLSC annual report (disciplinary matters); the Law Society’s Legal Regulation Annual Report 2025, Appendix Table 1; each NSW Bar Association annual report, “complaints made during the year” (2018-19 from the Legal Services Council Annual Report 2018-19). The Legal Services Council’s own count is close: 1,772 NSW disciplinary matters in 2024-25, against the OLSC’s 1,762 (Legal Services Council Annual Report 2024-25, p 38).

A disciplinary matter is the OLSC’s own label when a complaint arrives: a complaint that “would, if the conduct concerned were established, amount to unsatisfactory professional conduct or professional misconduct” (Uniform Law s 270). It isn’t a finding. The Councils’ figures include some complaints they make themselves, so the kept figure is approximate.

Step 3: The Register of Disciplinary Action

Where to check: the Register of Disciplinary Action, filtered for actions by the Legal Services Commissioner from 1 July 2015; and NSW Caselaw, searching “Legal Services Commissioner v” in NCAT, Occupational Division.

That gives 35 penalties the Commissioner recorded and 9 tribunal cases the OLSC started under the Uniform Law. We left out matters that began under the old law (see the note under the table). These figures count matters, not complaints. W6 in Step 2 counts complaints, including private cautions, and one matter can cover several complaints, which is why it shows a bigger number.

All 44, in date order. From the Register (collected 2 November 2026) and the NCAT judgments. The conduct is the Register’s wording, shortened.

Left out: 18 matters that began under the old law, the Legal Profession Act 2004. The Commissioner’s entries for Lu, Hertz, Beazley, Cho, Tsolakis, Weller (2015), Levingston and Miskell use that Act’s wording (“a reasonable likelihood of a finding of unsatisfactory professional conduct”). The NCAT cases against Wen, Searle, Ge, Byrne, Miskell, Harb, Potkonyak, Paul, Darvill and Pierpoint began under it. The two Nguyens in the list are different lawyers.

A note on the count. We built this list by hand from the Register and the NCAT judgments. The Register doesn’t always say which law a matter began under, so we may be out by one or two. With numbers this low and penalties this light, that doesn’t change the picture.

Step 4: Too few to count

There’s too little here to analyse. Forty-four matters in ten years, from about 7,600 misconduct complaints the OLSC kept, isn’t a pattern of enforcement. It’s the absence of one. In 2024-25 the OLSC kept about 824 misconduct complaints and recorded one penalty, a course. NSW had 46,031 lawyers that year.

This is an office with about 30 positions on its organisational chart and a budget of $6.7 million a year (Annual Report 2024-25).

What the list leaves out says more than what’s on it.

Complaints the OLSC kept, ten years	Kept	On the Register
Negligence	4,400+	0
Overcharging	3,500+	0
Trust money	427	1
Fraud	156	0
Immigration	about 280	0

Kept complaints by subject: table W2 in each annual report. They include complaints that weren’t about misconduct, and one complaint can raise more than one issue. The one trust money entry is row 13.

Debt collection doesn’t exist. Not in the OLSC’s tables, anyway. Victoria’s regulator calls debt collection “one of the more frequently complained about areas of law” (Letters of demand: traps for lawyers). The OLSC doesn’t count it. Going by its reports, NSW has never had a complaint about a lawyer acting for a debt collector.

Victoria, same law. Victoria runs the same Uniform Law. In 2024-25 its regulator made 27 findings of unsatisfactory professional conduct and started 12 tribunal cases, from 632 disciplinary complaints. The OLSC kept about 824. It made 9 findings and started no tribunal cases (Legal Services Council Annual Report 2024-25, pp 38, 46). Most of what it did was private: 9 of its 12 disciplinary outcomes were cautions or apologies, and only one entry, a course, reached the public Register.

Note: the OLSC’s table W6 for 2024-25 also lists 3 complaints closed as “NCAT disciplinary proceedings”. Its report says no tribunal decision was delivered that year with the Commissioner as applicant, and the Legal Services Council records no tribunal cases started by the OLSC. The report doesn’t explain the three (Annual Report 2024-25, pp 7, 28).

No case fought on the facts. In each of the nine tribunal cases the OLSC started, the lawyer admitted it or argued only about the penalty, didn’t turn up, or a judge had already found the facts. Every other entry is a penalty the lawyer accepted, or took to NCAT and lost (rows 21, 24, 25 and 42).

$7,500

The biggest penalty in ten years (Yakenian, row 17). A District Court judge had already found the facts, and the OLSC took nearly two and a half years to file.

“The Tribunal imposed a fine without apparently troubling to consider why.”

Stephen Warne, Australian Professional Liability Blog, 2019, on Yakenian. The tribunal had found dishonesty, which would ordinarily mean striking off.

The penalties match the effort. Most entries are a reprimand with no fine, shown on the Register as “Reprimand | $0.00”. The tribunal itself has said a fine “perceived publicly as minimal or nominal” fails the public (Legal Services Commissioner v Cullen [2021] NSWCATOD 130, row 30).

Someone else cleans up. At least eight of these lawyers were later suspended, had their practising certificate cancelled or refused, or were recommended for removal, each time on someone else’s action. Youssef (rows 19 and 21) got two reprimands with no fine in 2019 and was convicted of fraud in 2024. Shen (row 42) was suspended the month after his reprimand was confirmed, over client money allegedly moved into his own account.

Step 6: What changed in the law

Where to check: the legislation, on legislation.nsw.gov.au and AustLII.

	1987 Act, as amended in 1993	2004 Act (Oct 2005 to June 2015)	Uniform Law (since July 2015)
Investigate	Councils “must” investigate each complaint referred (s 148)	“Each complaint must be investigated” (s 525)	“May” investigate (s 282)
Prosecute	Must go to the Tribunal if misconduct is reasonably likely (s 155)	“Must commence proceedings” if misconduct or unsatisfactory conduct is reasonably likely (s 537)	“May” prosecute (s 300)
In-house penalty	(not covered here)	Caution or reprimand only for lesser conduct, and only if the lawyer “is generally competent and diligent” (s 540)	Caution, reprimand or fine up to $25,000 for any unsatisfactory conduct (s 299)
Review of a Council decision	Commissioner “is to review” if the complainant asks (s 159)	Commissioner “is to review” if the complainant asks (s 544)	At the Commissioner’s “absolute discretion” (s 313)
Annual report	Number of complaints investigated (s 171N)	Numbers investigated, dismissed, reprimanded and prosecuted, plus age and time taken (s 691)	Only “information on the operation of the complaints process” (Application Act s 26(3))

The old law also allowed some complaints to be dismissed without investigation (2004 Act s 511), so that isn’t new. What the Uniform Law removed was the duty to prosecute, the limits on in-house penalties, and the reporting.

In 2001, under the old law, the Law Reform Commission counted 49 tribunal outcomes in one year across the whole system, including 5 removals from the roll (Report 99, Table 2.6). Its answer to the system’s problems was to give complainants more review rights. The Uniform Law went the other way.

Step 8: The Councils and 1993

Where to check: Report 70 (1993), para 2.107; the Council block of W6; the Law Society’s Legal Regulation annual report.

	Law Society, 1991	Law Society and Bar Council now	OLSC now
Closed without action	Two thirds dismissed (97 of 144)	Law Society 2023-24: 69% closed “no further investigation required” (501 of 725)	7,324 misconceived or no further investigation, of 17,976 (nine years)
Sent to a hearing	4.2% (6 of 144)	2.9% (148 of 5,023, nine years)	0.6% (45 of about 7,000 misconduct complaints kept, nine years)

The categories aren’t identical. The hearing figures count complaints, not cases. The OLSC’s 45 are complaints closed as NCAT proceedings in table W6; under the Uniform Law it started only 9 tribunal cases (Step 3). But the Councils look much as the Commission found them in 1993, so Parliament was right about the problem. The OLSC, set up to fix it, sends a smaller share to a hearing than the Councils do.

What it adds up to

Parliament set up the OLSC in 1994 because the Law Society was looking after its own. Thirty years on, the Councils look much as they did then, and the OLSC does worse. It keeps the public’s complaints, closes most of them before it can compel anything, and acts only when a judge has already done the work or the lawyer owns up. Every number on this page comes from published records, most of them the OLSC’s own.