A huge legal conflict of interest
Stuff reports:
A prominent lawyer’s law firm was investigated over conflict of interest concerns relating to a company she and a colleague established to write cultural reports for clients.
Stuff understands Sumudu Thode’s law firm, Thode Utting & Co, received more than $350,000 for cultural and drug and alcohol reports produced by her company – Integral Reports Ltd (IRL) – through the taxpayer-funded Legal Aid scheme.
Thode and a senior associate at the firm, John Moroney, established IRL in 2020, with the pair listed as directors and 50-50 shareholders.
A King’s Counsel appointed by the Ministry of Justice after a formal complaint found no evidence that Thode Utting lawyers inappropriately influenced the reports, but did find there was a “potential” conflict of interest, the ministry says.
There’s nothing potential about it.
The job of a defence lawyer is to get the shortest possible sentence for their clients. So called expert reports are meant to be independent and dispassionate. When the defence lawyers own the firm producing the reports, then of course they are all going to say a variation of “This person had a terrible background, so they should get a shorter sentence”. It is entirely predictable, with the impact being the defence lawyers make heaps more money from taxpayers from getting shorter sentences for their clients.
Thode Utting, of which she is the principal, has offices in Auckland and Whangārei and is one of the top 10 Legal Aid firms in terms of payments received, earning around $2m a year in recent years, according to ministry figures.
That presumably excludes the $350k through the subsidiary company.
Thode said in a statement that she and Moroney had no role in writing the reports and did not influence the content of any report in any way.
You don’t need to influence the reports when you own the company. Those who write the reports know who the owners are, and sure as hell know if they write lots off reports saying “Actually there is not really anything in this background to justify a shorter sentence”, they won’t have happy bosses.
“At every appropriate opportunity, the IRL director and shareholder interests have been disclosed, including to the Ministry of Justice and other interested parties,” she said.
“We have always been open about our ownership of the company.”
Lawyers will find loopholes to make money. But the Government should change the rules so it is very clear that lawyers can’t own companies that produce independent expert reports that get used in courts. Huge conflict of interest.