Overview: What This Petition Is About

The Victorian Legal Services Board (VLSB) is the statutory body responsible for protecting consumers of legal services in Victoria and maintaining public confidence in the justice system. It derives its powers from the Legal Profession Uniform Law Application Act 2014 (Vic) and the Legal Profession Uniform Law (Vic) (together, the “Uniform Law”).

This petition alleges that the VLSB has failed in that mandate. Rather than safeguarding the public, the petitioners claim the organisation — under the direction of specific senior officials — has turned its regulatory powers against the very lawyers and consumers it is supposed to protect. The petition identifies four officials by name: Fiona McLeay, Howard Bowles, Joanne Jenkins, and Matthew Anstee (together, the “Named Officials”).

Multiple Victorian lawyers support these allegations. They contend that while the VLSB aggressively targets independent sole practitioners who challenge its conduct, it has at the same time failed to hold to account lawyers involved in serious wrongdoing — the most prominent example being Nicola Gobbo, the barrister who secretly informed on her own criminal defence clients, a matter that became the subject of a Royal Commission. It is worth noting that the VLSB has not only failed to take any action against the lawyers who cooperated in Gobbo’s perversion of the course of justice, but has also actively impeded the enforcement of accountability measures against them.

Allegation 1: Targeting Lawyers Who Speak Up

What is alleged

The petition claims that when lawyers raise complaints about the VLSB’s conduct, or signal an intention to do so, the VLSB retaliates against them. These lawyers are described as “Targeted Individuals”. The alleged pattern of retaliation takes several forms:

1. Disrupting law practices through regulatory tools
The VLSB has the power to issue Management System Directions (MSDs) — formal orders requiring a law practice to implement specific management and compliance systems. The petition alleges that the Named Officials issue MSDs that are disproportionate, unwarranted, and in some cases, legally unauthorised, with the true purpose of disrupting the daily operations and commercial relationships of targeted law practices.

2. Seizing control of law practices
Under the Uniform Law, the VLSB can appoint external supervisors, managers, or receivers to intervene in a law practice’s affairs when it believes the interests of clients and the public need protection. The petition alleges that the Named Officials exploit these “external intervention” powers not to protect clients, but to confiscate the private property of targeted lawyers; breach their rights to privacy and legal professional privilege (the right to keep communications with their own lawyers confidential); override their privilege against self-incrimination (the right not to be forced to provide evidence against oneself); and destroy the goodwill and commercial value of their businesses.

3. Pressuring staff to turn against their employers
The petition further alleges that the Named Officials coerce or encourage the employees and agents of targeted lawyers to breach their duties of loyalty and confidentiality. The alleged purpose is to enlist these staff members in building cases against their employers using improper or fraudulent means.

4. Strategically timed suspension of practising certificates
The VLSB controls the granting, renewal, and suspension of practising certificates — the licence every lawyer needs to practise law in Victoria. The petition alleges that the Named Officials deliberately time their decisions to suspend or refuse to renew a targeted lawyer’s practising certificate at moments designed to cause maximum damage — for example, immediately before a trial — thereby stripping clients of their legal representation at the most critical moment. The petition claims this tactic is used especially when the lawyer or their client is pursuing legal action against the VLSB itself or against State agencies cooperating with the VLSB.

5. Bringing false criminal charges
The Uniform Law contains criminal offences (for example, practising without a valid certificate). The petition alleges that the Named Officials have maliciously prosecuted targeted lawyers under these provisions based on baseless, untenable, or fabricated allegations and evidence.

6. Colluding with Victoria Police
In the most serious allegation, the petition claims that the Named Officials work with corrupt prosecutors within Victoria Police to obtain criminal convictions against targeted lawyers fraudulently. This is allegedly achieved by sabotaging their legal representation just before trial and by unlawfully disclosing confidential, privileged information from files seized during external interventions to police — all in breach of the lawyers’ rights to privacy, legal professional privilege, and the privilege against self-incrimination.

7. Intimidating the lawyers who represent Targeted Individuals
Finally, the petition alleges that the VLSB takes adverse regulatory action against lawyers who agree to represent Targeted Individuals, either stripping them of legal representation entirely or pressuring their representatives to abandon their professional duties.

Allegation 2: Undermining the Courts and Due Process

What is alleged

The petition claims that the Named Officials exploit the VLSB’s institutional access to the courts — including state, federal, and administrative courts — to deny targeted lawyers a fair hearing. The alleged tactics include:

1. Preferential court listings and improper delays
Applications brought by the VLSB against targeted lawyers are allegedly fast-tracked, while applications brought by targeted lawyers are either improperly rejected at the filing stage or subjected to deliberate, extended delays.

2. Secret communications with judges and decision-makers
The petition alleges that the Named Officials make contact with judicial officers and administrative decision-makers through hidden, ex parte (one-sided) communications — that is, without the targeted lawyer being present or even aware that the communication has occurred — to obtain orders and decisions that would not have been made in an open, adversarial hearing.

3. Sharing confidential information with other government agencies
The petition claims that confidential and privileged documents concerning targeted lawyers are unlawfully shared with other government agencies, again breaching privacy, legal professional privilege, and the privilege against self-incrimination.

4. Media campaigns to prejudice trials
The petition alleges that the Named Officials feed false and inflammatory information about targeted lawyers to journalists and media organisations, timing the resulting publications to appear just before trials to prejudice judges, juries, and public opinion.

5. Introducing prejudicial material in court proceedings
The petition further alleges that the Named Officials improperly raise unsubstantiated or unfairly prejudicial allegations against targeted lawyers within court proceedings.

6. Abusing court procedure to exhaust targeted lawyers
The petition describes a range of alleged tactics used to frustrate and financially exhaust targeted lawyers during litigation, including:

• Misleading the court and exploiting procedural technicalities.
• Refusing to concede undeniable facts, forcing targeted lawyers to waste time and money proving matters that are not genuinely in dispute.
• Repeatedly changing barristers to justify requests for adjournments and to take advantage of the court’s indulgence toward new counsel who need time to become familiar with the case.
• Obtaining excessive costs orders with punitive enforcement terms that effectively nullify the targeted lawyers’ statutory rights to have those legal bills independently reviewed and assessed.

7. Obtaining court orders through fraud
The petition’s most serious allegation regarding court proceedings is that the Named Officials have obtained judicial decisions and orders through outright fraud — specifically, by suppressing documents that are critically relevant to the dispute and damaging to the VLSB’s own case.

Allegation 3: Employing Compromised Individuals

What is alleged

The Named Officials have deliberately caused the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner to employ individuals whose backgrounds make them susceptible to improper control. The alleged purposes are twofold:

• To have leverage over these employees and compel them to take unjustifiable actions against targeted lawyers.
• To exploit any compromising information these employees may hold about people in positions of influence in other government agencies or corporations.

The specific allegation concerning Joanne Jenkins

Based on the sworn evidence given by Thomas Flitner in court proceedings, the petition makes the following allegations against Joanne Jenkins, who holds the position responsible for overseeing the VLSB’s external intervention actions against law practices:

• Jenkins previously worked as an unregistered sex worker and leveraged connections formed in that role to secure employment with the Victorian Legal Services Commissioner and to advance rapidly within the organisation.
• Despite this background, Jenkins was placed in charge of overseeing the VLSB’s seizure and effective destruction of the law practice of Thomas Flitner between October 2023 and October 2024.
• Jenkins had previously solicited Flitner as a client while working as an unregistered sex worker, beginning in June 2019, initially through the website SugarDaddy.com and subsequently through phone calls, electronic messages, and in-person contact.
• On 4 June 2019, Jenkins sent Flitner nine unsolicited graphic videos depicting her engaging in sexual acts with multiple people in various locations.

The alleged cover-up

By early April 2024, both McLeay and Bowles were aware of Jenkins’ past and that she had sent the graphic videos to Flitner. Despite this, neither considered Jenkins’ involvement in the Flitner matter to be improper.

When Glenn Thexton raised these concerns with McLeay on Flitner’s behalf, McLeay reportedly dismissed them outright and, through her solicitor Alex Wolff, threatened both Thexton and Flitner with criminal charges for harassment and distribution of intimate images if they continued to draw public attention to the matter.

The alleged blackmail inference

Based on communications from Bowles to Thexton in or around April 2024, both Thexton and Flitner formed the view that Bowles may have been leveraging his knowledge of Jenkins’ past to pressure her into making improper decisions in her regulatory role.

This view was strengthened when Wolff, on behalf of McLeay, wrote on 10 April 2024 that both Jenkins and Bowles “have no ongoing role in any legal regulatory matters relating to you and Flitner and so regardless there is no potential for conflict moving forward” — notably acknowledging a potential conflict for Bowles as well, even though Thexton had only raised concerns about Jenkins.

When Thexton asked McLeay to investigate the potential blackmail concerns, Wolff responded on 12 April 2024 that “there is no conflict of interest” and “there will be no ‘further investigation’”.

Allegation 4: The “External Intervention Scam” — Unjust Enrichment of VLSB Associates

What is alleged

This allegation concerns the financial dimension of the VLSB’s external intervention power. When the VLSB appoints an external manager or receiver to take over a law practice, that appointee’s fees are initially paid from the Public Purpose Fund (PPF) — a statutory fund administered by the VLSB and funded largely by interest on lawyers’ trust accounts and practising certificate fees.

The petition alleges the following scheme:

• The Named Officials appoint their associates as external intervenors (described in the petition as “VLSB Cronies”).
• These appointees charge grossly excessive fees, which the VLSB approves without any genuine oversight mechanism and pays immediately from the PPF.
• Because the targeted lawyers or their practices are not the ones paying the fees directly, the appointed managers refuse to provide them with itemised bills of costs or any justification for the amounts charged.
• After the fees have been paid to the appointees, the Named Officials then pursue the targeted lawyers personally to reimburse the PPF for those amounts — effectively saddling the targeted lawyers with liability for bills they never approved, never received in detail, and cannot meaningfully challenge.

This process effectively strips targeted lawyers of their statutory right under the Uniform Law to have legal bills independently reviewed and assessed (a process called “taxation” of costs).

The alleged true purpose

The petition claims the external intervenors are entirely uninterested in serving the interests of the clients, employees, or owners of the practices they are appointed to manage. Their sole purpose, as alleged, is to destroy those practices and inflict maximum harm on the targeted lawyers.

The “Exorbitant PPF Bribes” (as the petition terms the excessive fees) are alleged to secure the cooperation of the appointees in:

• Seizing the targeted lawyers’ assets unlawfully.
• Destroying the commercial viability of their law practices and rendering them insolvent.
• Weaponising confidential and privileged information obtained through access to practice files, including by commencing disciplinary proceedings and inciting criminal prosecutions in breach of privilege against self-incrimination; disclosing confidential information to parties who are in conflict with the targeted lawyers; leaking personal and sensitive information to the media; and secretly distributing information to courts and tribunals where the targeted lawyers have ongoing cases, to prejudice judicial decision-makers without the targeted lawyers’ knowledge.

The petition further alleges that the Named Officials frequently deploy their associates without proper instruments of delegation — creating a superficial appearance of legitimate involvement that is difficult to challenge once formal appointments are in place.

Allegation 5: Abuse of Bankruptcy Proceedings

What is alleged

The petition alleges that the Named Officials routinely abuse the court’s bankruptcy jurisdiction as a weapon against targeted lawyers. The alleged purposes are:

• To cause direct financial ruin and personal harm.
• To prevent targeted lawyers from accessing accountability mechanisms, since a bankrupt individual faces significant legal disabilities in bringing proceedings.
• To deter other lawyers from attempting to hold the Named Officials to account.

Proposed Reforms

The petition calls on the Victorian Parliament to adopt eight specific reform measures:

1. Independent oversight body
Establish an independent commission with the power to review external intervention decisions before they are implemented, including the power to require notice to the affected lawyer, a hearing, and judicial review. This body should include non-lawyer public representatives to counteract professional insularity.

2. Procedural safeguards
Amend the Uniform Law to require that affected lawyers receive notice and a hearing before any external intervention, except in a narrowly defined, documented emergency. Provide for judicial review within 48 hours. Allow affected practitioners to seek Supreme Court injunctions before interventions proceed.

3. Financial transparency
Subject the PPF to an independent audit with detailed public reporting. Establish fee schedules or guidelines for external managers. Provide judicial review for charges exceeding specified thresholds. Grant affected law practices’ standing to challenge invoices, given that they are ultimately liable for the costs.

4. Protection against retaliation
Enact statutory protections against retaliatory enforcement following successful appeals or complaints about regulatory conduct. Create rebuttable legal presumptions of retaliation where adverse action follows protected activity within defined timeframes, shifting the burden of proof to the regulator to demonstrate legitimate grounds.

5. Broadened IBAC jurisdiction
Expand the jurisdiction of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) by amending the definition of “corrupt conduct” to include serious administrative misconduct that does not constitute a criminal offence — consistent with recommendations from the 2019 parliamentary inquiry into IBAC’s legislative framework. Clarify that IBAC’s jurisdiction extends to statutory authorities like the VLSB when they exercise coercive powers.

6. Enhanced Ombudsman powers
Grant the Victorian Ombudsman stronger powers to investigate complaints about regulatory procedures and establish expedited review processes for urgent matters such as external interventions.

7. Alternatives to pure self-regulation
Consider hybrid regulatory models with independent non-lawyer leadership, similar to structures adopted in other jurisdictions. At a minimum, ensure regulatory boards include substantial non-practitioner representation.

8. Comparative review
Commission an independent review comparing Victoria’s legal profession regulatory system to those in other jurisdictions — particularly New Zealand, England and Wales, and Canadian provinces — with a view to adopting best practices from systems with stronger accountability records.

Why This Matters for Consumers of Legal Services

The allegations in this petition, if substantiated, describe a system in which the body charged with protecting consumers has been captured by officials who use its powers to serve their own interests. The consequences for consumers would include:

• Loss of legal representation: When lawyers are improperly stripped of their practising certificates before trial, their clients lose their chosen advocate at the worst possible moment.
• Compromised confidentiality: When privileged information from law practices is unlawfully disclosed to police, government agencies, or the media, every client whose files were in that practice is affected.
• Destruction of viable law practices: When external interventions are used to destroy rather than protect, clients lose access to their lawyers, their files, and the continuity of their legal matters.
• Erosion of trust in the system: When the regulator itself operates outside the law, public confidence in the entire legal profession — the very thing the VLSB exists to uphold — is fundamentally undermined.

Additional Resources

For further information on the matters raised in this petition, the petitioners direct readers to the following published material:

https://www.ruleofflaw.com/p/vlsb-lawfare

https://www.ruleofflaw.com/p/vlsb-corruption

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZJqwhjmeUd6DNDMiX2iPIKgSd-0jgS8P

https://youtu.be/Fy1E5TSVUfA

https://youtu.be/7co_hNqWtuU

https://youtu.be/OSwjw3rsA7I