Legal commentary

What sits in this category

Reported cases are how most people encounter the criminal law. A sentence gets a headline, the headline gets an argument, and almost nobody reads the sentencing remarks that explain the number. This category is where we write the boring half.

• Decided cases. What the court actually found, which provision it applied, and why a sentence that looks surprising in a headline is often unremarkable once you read the reasons.
• Sentencing. How the factors in section 9 of the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 (Qld) work, why a maximum penalty is a poor guide to a likely one, and what section 12 does about recording a conviction.
• Law reform. Amendments and Bills that change what a Queensland court can do, including changes to domestic violence law, youth justice and licence penalties.
• Appeals and error. What an appeal court is actually reviewing, and why an unpopular result is not the same thing as a legal error.

Every piece is written by a named solicitor at this firm, and it names the Act and section it relies on. If a piece cannot cite the provision, it does not go up.

The rules we publish under

These are not aspirational. They are the checklist a piece has to survive before anyone presses publish, in plain English.

1. Decided matters and law reform only. A case is fair game once judgment has been delivered and any appeal period has run. Until then it stays off the site.
2. No running commentary on live proceedings. No prediction of a verdict, no assessment of an accused person’s prospects, no opinion on evidence that a jury has not yet heard. This applies to social media as much as to the site.
3. No client matter without written consent. Rule 9 of the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules prohibits disclosing information confidential to a client, and the obligation survives the end of the retainer. Consent has to be specific and in writing, and a general clause in a costs agreement is not enough. Case notes on this site are anonymised.
4. No identifying anyone whose identity is protected. That covers complainants in sexual offence proceedings, children in criminal and child protection proceedings, and parties to domestic violence and family law proceedings. These are offence provisions, not editorial preferences.
5. Quotes attributed and linked, not reproduced. Where we rely on a news report we quote a short passage, name the publication and the journalist, and link to the original rather than republishing it.
6. No promised outcomes. Nothing here says what will happen in your matter. Rule 36 of the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules prohibits advertising that is false, misleading or deceptive, and a past result presented as a likely future one is exactly that.

The long version, with the provisions behind each rule, sits in our editorial policy. The short version is that we would rather publish less and be able to stand behind all of it.

Why nobody sensible comments on a live trial

Sub judice contempt is a common law rule, not a Queensland statute, which is part of why it catches people out. The test the High Court applies is whether the material published has, as a matter of practical reality, a tendency to interfere with the due course of justice. Intention is not an element. You can commit it by sharing something you did not write and did not read closely.

The risk period opens early. For a criminal matter it opens on arrest or charge, and on one view as early as the issue of a warrant. It closes when the proceeding is finally determined, which means after any appeal, not on the day of the verdict. A retrial reopens it.

The risk is highest where a jury is involved, because a jury is drawn from the public and reads what the public reads. It is lower before a magistrate sitting alone, who is trained and sworn to decide on the evidence. Lower is not zero, and the safe assumption is that anything you post about a pending charge could be put in front of the court.

For an ordinary person this matters most on social media. A post naming an accused, asserting guilt, or publishing material that will not be admissible is a publication in the same sense a newspaper article is. If your own matter is on foot, the sensible course is to say nothing about it anywhere, including in a group chat you think is private.

Using anything on this site

Quote a short passage and link back and we have no issue with it, including journalists, community legal services and other firms. Keep the section references intact, because a penalty stripped of its source is how misinformation about Queensland law spreads.

We apply the same rule to ourselves. Australia has fair dealing exceptions rather than a general fair use defence, and the ones that matter here are criticism or review under section 41 of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), the equivalent for audio-visual items under section 103A, and reporting news under section 42. Each requires the dealing to be fair and requires sufficient acknowledgement of the work and its author. Quoting two sentences from an article to discuss it is very different from reproducing the article, and we do the first.