A lawyer has crowdfunded more than $10,000 overnight to challenge a move to suspend him from practicing law after the lawyers’ professional association filed a complaint about his crowdfunding anti-vaccine legal challenges.
The Council of the Law Society New South Wales has moved to suspend the practising certificate of G&B Lawyers partner Nathan Buckley until the end of June 2022, according to part of a letter published to the firm’s social media accounts. The Law Society of New South Wales declined to comment on individual proceedings.
Last month, Crikey reported that the Council of the Law Society of NSW had made two complaints to the NSW Legal Services Commissioner about Buckley’s crowdfunded legal challenges and his statements on social media that were made after they had received a number of complaints from the public and other lawyers.
The grounds for the proposed suspension included in the letter were not posted, but Buckley claims on his GoFundMe crowdfunding page that it’s “for speaking out against unlawful mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, unlawful lockdowns and restrictions”.
So far, Buckley has raised $10,810 in the 13 hours since the GoFundMe page’s creation. This brings the total money he has crowdfunded for legal challenges to more than $850,000, including more than $100,000 sent directly to his bank account and not held in trust.
Buckley is one of a handful of lawyers and organisers who have collectively raised more than $1 million to challenge vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 public health restrictions, while also sharing COVID-19 misinformation. These online fundraisers, shared widely in anti-vaxxer and online conspiracy groups, have all been unsuccessful so far.
Last week, Buckley was involved with an unsuccessful legal challenge against NSW vaccine mandates. Justice Robert Beech-Jones rejected all of the plaintiff’s arguments, including noting that the challenge misrepresented supporting evidence and made claims based on research that weren’t from reputable scientific journals.
Following proceedings, the G&B Lawyers Twitter account falsely claimed that Justice Beech-Jones’s decision “basically said it is ok to kill anyone you like”, before responding in the affirmative to someone who asked if they could go on a rampage.
Buckley is set to appear before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal on Monday in an appeal against the Law Society of NSW after he was reprimanded in 2020 for acting unethically in the course of legal practice by sending correspondence which was threatening, abusive and/or discourteous.
As a lawyer I, like most other lawyers, have watched this guy and others of his ilk in equal parts despair and something approaching admiration at his sheer chutzpah.
The thing is that because of the sort of people he is dealing with, it doesn’t matter how he runs his cases. He can get law totally wrong. He can not submit documents pursuant to a court order. He can make outrageous, unsubstantiated claims. I am not, btw, suggesting he has or will do any of these things. But he could. And when he loses time after time he will simply tell his clients and crowdfunders that this because the system is rigged, everyone involved is corrupt, and that they need to keep in paying him to instigate more court proceedings in the hope that truth will prevail. Although I do wonder if his crowdfunding is actually up to covering costs, because they can be pretty hefty. I would love to see his costs agreements.
He does need to be stopped, and noone wants these cases clogging up courts, but part of me does love seeing these fools and their money parted!
Yes, that sums it up nicely. This is another example of Australia importing the worst of American trends. Buckley is just a mediocre imitation of the tribe of scoff-law lawyers infesting the legal profession there. There is some effort being made to rein is a few of the most egregious, such as Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell, once part of Donald Trump’s legal team, notorious for the claim her case would be a “Kraken” that, when released, would destroy Joe Biden claim to have won the US presidency. Slate magazine today has a piece on the California state bar considering whether to initiate disciplinary proceedings against lawyer John Eastman for his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election. There are many more there. It’s good to see some effort towards imposing normal professional standards on them, but it has taken far too long. The problem was obvious decades ago, when for example Dubya Bush was given atrocious legal advice by White House counsel Anthony Gonzalez with obviously spurious arguments claiming that torture was acceptable. This was enough to protect Bush from any claim he intentionally broke the law by authorising torture, and so torture was carried out on a massive scale. It is obvious these lawyers do not try to advise their clients objectively on the law, as they are required to do, but instead manufacture legal arguments as best they can, out of whole cloth if need be, to fit whatever the client wants. This brings both their profession and the law in general into disrepute.
As a Lawyer you should have enough brain power to realise you’re the experiment & you’re the one being lied to. Pleny of lawyers are working Pro bono to help fellow Australians escape this tyranny -obviously not you !
I hope you are strongly supporting Nathan Buckley’s dunderhead funder, James. You will are unlikely to ever see your cash again and it will change nothing but please do put your money where your misinformed mouth is.
It’s a shame Nathan can’t find a chimpanzee lawyer to do the work for free.
Oh my ears and whiskers’ I have erred! Automatically donate to any Nathan Buckley, because I loved him to pieces
during his footy career even with wonky teams. But a lawyer? False colours, sirrah. Can I have my money back? This charlatan couldn’t run on for an (ahem, joke imminent) ladies’ side without embarrassing itself. And Real Nathan Buckley I have most of a law degree so if you ‘mire your ;mirers I’ll get this bloke on “imposition”. Love you..
Stop taking the pills there meant for horses.