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Bizarre drunk emails to Chief Justice, Law Society see aspiring lawyer denied admission
An aspiring lawyer will not be admitted into the profession after she sent thousands of bizarre emails to a Chief Justice’s associate and a Law Society, including unintelligible rants about urinary tract infections, Valium, bottles of wine, and butter on toast.
Naomi Neilson
A Northern Territory woman, known only as XY for legal reasons, sent such a volume and frequency of emails to the Supreme Court and the Law Society that their systems crashed and they were left with no choice but to temporarily block her contact information.
In one sent earlier this month with the subject line “hearing listed”, the woman wrote: “Okay we all know I’m drunk? And I’m just eating butter on toast? Like who doesn’t like butter on toast?”
Given the conduct was occurring at the same time the court was debating whether she should be admitted into the profession, Chief Justice Patrick Grant said there was “no doubt” the woman is not currently a fit and proper person to be allowed to practise.
“This is not a case in which there has been some isolated lapse or lapses into inappropriate behaviours by the applicant, punctuating what is otherwise an appropriate course of communication.
“This is a course of perverse, inappropriate and entirely unprofessional conduct by communication which has persisted for in excess of a year … despite the fact she has been warned … that to do so would be inappropriate and potentially prejudicial to her application for admission to the profession,” Justice Grant said.
The Law Society submitted the volume of emails increased from April 2023 until she was blocked as a result of an account crash in October. The email address was unblocked in February and the Law Society received a further 958 emails in just a few weeks.
The court said it received 8,044 emails from the woman between March 2023 and April 2024, which also caused its accounts to crash.
A psychiatrist said the woman told her she sent the emails because grounds of appeal and delayed timetables “caused her frustration, and she believed that the emails might then trigger some response”.
The psychiatrist explained the behaviour raised concerns about her capacity to manage herself in a professional setting and is consistent with the current “impaired incapacity” to engage in legal practice.
Justice Grant added the woman sought to justify or explain her conduct to the psychiatrist on the “basis of frustration, honesty and anger at her circumstances, and also on the basis that she sent some of the communications when she was intoxicated”.
After the report was received, a directions hearing was listed for 16 November 2023. The woman did not appear but sent a chain of emails the previous night that ran to 85 pages in length.
In them, the woman wrote the following:
- Your honour,? Not fAir [sic] I’m drunk
- CJ please be nice! I’ll be drunk? But I’m passing out soon
- But after India? I realised dating was about charm
- Loving my drunk misygonist [sic] drunk rants?
- Your honour, I am dying! I haven’t vomited this much since a kid!!
- and yes you can laugh! I’m dying! But woke up at bottleshop opening time
In February 2024, the woman seemed to ask if she could have “wine and ciggie [sic] tonight” and later wrote: “I didn’t say gay! I say gayly! Okay okay he wasn’t acting gayly? Just weird eyes submissive?”
The court added emails sent between 31 March and 6 April 2024 continued to demonstrate she was “not currently of good fame and character”. In some of them, the woman wrote:
- Gosh I love love! Like you’re a very lucky person who wakes to two beautiful dogs cuddling you.
- I must laugh after she made weird s**t…who cares?..I actually need to pee?
- Anyway, slept so well last night and again had really good dreams – this dreaming thing is seriously so awesome
When Justice Grant told her it was “the least of your difficulties here”, it led to an unusual exchange about a stranger’s dog.
The woman bizarrely claimed she stopped a dog from attacking her own dog and then a woman and her partner yelled at her.
“At the moment, again, we have no evidence I’ve done anything wrong. So why am I in trouble? Why are you saying I need to watch my back – that’s the least of my worries. Because what have I done wrong?” the woman asked Justice Grant.
In response, he said: “Because your behaviour over the last period of time since you have made the application, including in your emails and your court appearances, makes it abundantly clear that at the present time, you are an unsuitable person for admission to practice.”
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
