Complaint to OLSC about barrister Michelle Campbell

This is a complaint to the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner about barrister Michelle Campbell. Complaint has 9 steps, so I go one by one. Some information is hidden to protect privacy of involved people.

Complaint Details

Have you tried to resolve matter with the lawyer?

Yes.

If yes, how? If not, why not?

Note: an electronic form may lose text formatting, so I add the same information in a separate document as an attachment together with detailed info named “2023-10-29 Complaint to OLSC about barrister Michelle Campbell.pdf”.

Michelle Campbell provided counseling for solicitor Moya de Luca-Leonard. I have not contacted her directly only through Ms. Leonard. There is a tripartite agreement to have costs agreed or assessed, but Moya de Luca-Leonard is providing false information that her costs have been accepted. On 2023-10-24 I sent an email to Ms. Leonard offering to pay her and Ms. Campbell reasonable fees, but Moya has not replied to it yet.

If I understand correctly, the bill is not payable as the contract with Ms. Leonard. The bill becomes payable only after money is received from insurance. Same applies to Michelle bill. I have PTSD from the road traffic injury, and they represented me on a personal injury claim for this injury. It makes it very difficult for me to deal with anything related to the injury and I misunderstood the deadlines in the past. To avoid a similar situation, I am submitting a complaint while in my understanding there is still room for negotiations.

Please provide a summary of your complaint and include the following details:

• What happened? Who was involved?
• Details of significant events, such as dates of meetings and court hearings.
• What are your concerns?

I came to Ms. Leonard in June 2020 to help me with my personal injury claim after a road traffic injury on 2015-03-30. I have been scammed by a personal injury firm named Law Partners. Ms. Leonard promised to deal with exorbitant costs from Law Partners and to significantly improve my claim. Ms. Leonard included Ms. Campbell for counseling, but I am not sure what was the role of Ms. Campbell. I have met her only once at a zoom meeting that lasted about 40 minutes. She has prepared an update for my statement. However, I could have done it myself and maybe even more accurately if given instructions on what has to be included in the statement. Ms. Campbell wrote one piece of advice about the settlement proposal after I told Ms. Leonard that I am not interested in settling and I would like to have my claim assessed by an independent assessor. I had previously had a terrible experience with fake settlement negotiations and did not want to get involved with it again. I was shocked when I got Michelle's invoice for $13,090. I do not know where it comes from. To make it worse I think her advice about settling was negligent. It seems that she spent 5 minutes or so just glancing at my case. It did not take into account my qualification, work before the injury (on my own project) or later attempts to come back to work.

Ms. Campbell ignored information about errors in a report provided by insurer QBE written by psychologist Vanitha Moodley. The consequences for not dismissing the Ms. Moodley report were terrible. That report could have been easily dismissed as it has an enormous list of absurd factual errors (I counted 146) that would require a teleportation device, time travel, is completely insistent and so on. I cannot believe how lawyers can be this negligent or even worse intentionally did not want to dispute it. QBE used this report to complain about medical assessment and ask for review. Ms. Campbell should have prepared arguments to dismiss Moodley report and its arguments if Ms. Campbell did at least a small part of the work she claims to have done. Disproving Moodley's report was easy as it was full of obvious factual errors. Unfortunately nothing was done and review was granted. The PIC medical assessment panel took this into account and my chances to get anything more than a so-called buffer ($100,000) for the loss of income became minuscule. I have no income since the injury and future looks very grim. Before the injury I was a highly skilled software developer with a PhD in computer science.

Ms. Campbell grossly exaggerated her fees. I was informed about Ms. Campbell work by Ms. Leonard and it seems way less than claimed by Ms. Campbell. At some point Ms. Leonard informed me that Ms. Campbell retired from work and can not represent me. However, I still see her in the list of barristers. It may have been just a way to apply psychological pressure on me to settle without independent assessment to avoid extra fees for introducing a new barrister.

My experience with Ms. Campbell made me think that including the barrister in the claim is just a waste of money. She was not abusive like previous barrister Ken Pryde, she actually was polite, but I can not identify significant benefits for including her in the claim. Definitely does not match the bill she provided. I am not aware of the contribution to my claim she is stating in her bill. My claim did not go to independent assessment even if I was asking for it. Ms. Campbell's involvement felt like a barrier to it. Unfortunately this negatively affected my future decisions.

About preparing complaint

I am trying to describe everything as accurately as I can. Unfortunately many of these memories cause high levels of stress. It quickly triggers PTSD response and shuts down my ability to think. Often I have to take a long break or can continue only the next day. I do not know if I need to describe every event when I believe Moya Leonard acted unfairly in her own interests. I came to Moya asking help with scamming lawyers from Law Partners firm (Gillian Potts and Ken Pryde), instead I learned that all lawyers focus on inflating fees rather than your claim. She failed to include important information and lied about other things. This is the second time I am writing a complaint about a lawyer, but the previous one has not been processed yet and also due to my illness I may be missing important bits. If there is more information required please let me know. Previously I tried to fit everything into 1 application with 10 attachments. This meant that I had to merge many documents and I think it is not a good idea. I realized that you probably handle everything in electronic form and it would be much easier if every document is a separate file. So, I will attach the ones that I think are more important and send others later. This also makes it difficult to describe everything in detail. So, I hope the best way is to provide here a brief description of what happened and what I am complaining about and then provide more detailed information about specifics with attached evidence.

There were also other problems related to PTSD as some memories got blocked and I am at risk of missing some important information while writing a complaint, but it might come back later. Also when stressed I may not express myself very clearly, partially it is due to the fact that then I think in Lithuanian and may lose some meaning in translation. However, I do my best to be precise and I try to present facts accurately (actually I have many of them running in my mind, just struggling to put them in writing in a clear way). I am also tired all the time and I constantly have to push myself to exhaustion while still getting only several productive hours a week. I dedicate all my time and energy to solving my legal problems as it is also a way to get better.

I also do not know what to do with some attachments. For example there are some documents that were dozens of pages, but the information that I needed is only on one page. If I try to upload all the files I may reach file size limit, but if I take only one page from the document it might look suspicious. I hope to ask about this to the person who will be assigned to assess my complaint.

Before I got PTSD myself I never imagined how debilitating it is. It is hard to describe it and I would need to be telling it for a very long time, but I will try to provide information about it in a separate document.

How do you want us to help you to resolve your complaint?

Please note: One of our officers may contact you to discuss what we can and we cannot do

1. Her bill is grossly exaggerated, please help me to reduce it to reasonable sum
2. I have not signed agreement with Ms. Campbell and I believe regulated costs should be applied when all actions taken into account
3. By removing her self from claim without any reason given her fees should be affected too as to get barrister representation for independent assessment there will be need for extra work
4. I believe some of her actions unprofessional and at least negligent. I believe this should reduce her fees. I hope you will take an appropriate action.

What area of legal service does this complaint arise from?

Personal injuries

Are you disputing the legal costs you have been charged by your lawyer?

Yes

Notes

I have submitted complaint about solicitor Moya de Luca-Leonard who hired Ms. Campbell to provide counselling. However, I am still have not received email with complaint number.

Background

I was cycling in Sydney when a car from oncoming traffic made a right turn straight into me on 2015-03-30. I was sure I was going to die when I saw a car accelerating towards me. I survived, but among other things the fear stayed. Since then, I am struggling with PTSD.

I was frustrated with the way QBE (drivers insurance company) was managing the claim, so I initially contacted Law Partners to represent me. However, I was unhappy with their representation. I feel that they did not collect or submit important information about my health problems. At the end of April 2020, I got a report by Vanitha Moodley (a psychologist hired by QBE solicitors) that had a large number of absurd errors.

Due to concerns about Law Partners’ advice about this report, I contacted one solicitor whom I knew. He recommended to me Ms Leonard, who helped him in the past with one client who had a personal injury claim, as he worked in a different area of law. This is how I ended up with Ms Leonard.

Ms Leonard received information that set out my concerns, which were:

1. Issues with Moodley’s report;
2. Law Partners fees being exaggerated and well above what had been quoted;
3. PTSD had not been recognized, and;
4. Law Partners’ unwillingness to go to independent assessment or court.

Ms Leonard made me promises before I signed the costs agreement with her. These were the promises I got from Ms Leonard:

1. Moodley report is not a big problem. She deals with reports like these all the time and she will have it dismissed easily (will not affect independent assessment).
2. She has dealt with exaggerated legal fees in the past and has gone to court against other solicitors. She knows what she is doing. She will deal with it.
3. PTSD is classified as physical injury, not as mental one, because it causes long lasting changes in the brain. I can apply for it to be assessed. Law Partners misinformed me that there is nothing that can be done.
4. She will bring my claim to independent assessment or court if necessary and she is sure that I will have a much better financial outcome compared to what I can get now with Law Partners' offer. She said that my claim is relatively simple, but we need to move quickly in order to fix it.

Ms Leonard contacted Ms Campbell to counsel.

Ms Campbell work

I have not dealt with Ms Campbell directly. I know about her work only from what I got from Ms Leonard:

1. I was meant to meet barrister Michelle Campbell for first time in April 2021 (see "2021-03-25 email from Moya - appointment to see Campbell rescheduled.pdf"). I thought this will be the time to learn about her expected involvement, amount of expected work, fees.
2. QBE solicitor Ceballos sent appeal to independent assessment on 2021-04-14 (see assessment and appeal in attachments).
3. Ms Leonard cancelled meeting with Campbell (see 2021-04-15 email from Moya cancelling meeting with Campbell.pdf).
4. I wrote to Ms Leonard highlighting that Ceballos appeal is based on incorrect information (misquoted referenced documents to completely change meaning). An example: in my statement I wrote: "65. I had a similar demoralising experience back in 2016 in relation to a small job for a Swedish firm which my brother put me in touch with. That is something that should have taken a week or even less and which I was unable to complete within 6 weeks." Ceballos wrote: "The claimant obtained a role in Sweden in 2016, allegedly working for a period of 6 weeks – paragraph 65 of his statement dated 29 April 2019". I wrote long list of incorrect statements by Ceballos.
5. Campbell wrote reply submissions on 2021-04-29 (see "2021-05-04 lr client email 24 plus submissions - Campbell reply to QBE appeal.pdf"). Campbell submission does not dispute any incorrect statements by Ceballos. She only writes how assessor addressed them. However, it is inaccurate, these statements are factually incorrect and have been written by Ceballos after the assessment.
6. There has been more communication with PIC, but appeal was granted and review for assessment was assigned.
7. I have about 40 min zoom meeting with Ms Campbell.
8. She prepared statement based on information I provided. I previously provided all required information to Ms Leonard. Ms Leonard was critical of previous statement by Law Partners, but did not provide any info how it should look.
9. The PIC assessment review reconfirmed PTSD and impairment caused by road traffic injury. Unfortunately, in my understanding, it also took into account factually incorrect statements by Ceballos and Moodley (mentioned earlier) and added assessment that significantly damaged my claim.
10. Ms Campbell removed her self from my claim.

Attachments

1. Complaint details
2. Cost agreement
3. Itemized bills
4. Emails