A Sydney lawyer who claimed her ex-husband and a former client were behind the wheel of speeding cars has been found guilty of professional misconduct and struck off the roll of solicitors.
Jinhi Kim, who worked at several law firms in Sydney, pleaded guilty to using her ex-husband and former client’s details without them knowing to cover up offences actually committed by her son and father.
She was found guilty last August and at a Court of Appeal hearing on November 15, the court agreed it was ‘likely that the respondent is permanently unfit to be enrolled as a lawyer, so that an order for removal [from the roll] rather than suspension is appropriate’.
Ms Kim claimed her ex-husband and a client had committed speeding offences (stock image)
Ms Kim was arrested in October 2015 after police searched the law firm at which she was then working at.
She falsely claimed in a statutory declaration, that her ex-husband was the driver of a car responsible for speeding – so a new penalty notice was issued to him.
But the court discovered: ‘Upon receiving a substituted penalty notice in relation to the offence, the ex-husband obtained online a still photograph from the relevant speed camera and concluded that it was the son who had been the driver,’ the court said.
‘He then contacted [Ms Kim] … who told him not to worry about the penalty notice and that she had used his identification particulars because the son did not have many demerit points left and needed his driver licence for his job.’
The court also heard that Ms Kim named her courier driver client as the man behind the wheel – when it was her father that was issued with an infringement notice for running a red light.
She also named the client again when her son and one of his colleagues were issued with speeding tickets.
The ex-husband was issued a new penalty notice for the lawyer’s son’s offence (stock image)
The client subsequently met with police and made a statement that he was not behind the wheel at the time. Ms Kim pleaded with him to change the statement, to no avail.
The Court of Appeal said Ms Kim had ‘engaged in a pattern of knowingly dishonest conduct’ to protect her family and ‘it was not an isolated lapse or a mere error of judgment’.
‘It was dishonest and criminal conduct that would be regarded as disgraceful and dishonourable by professional colleagues,’ the court said.
Ms Kim is now studying part-time for a Graduate Diploma in Divinity – a court which aims to better equip Christians to know, understand and explain the Bible on a higher level – at a Theological College.
‘She hopes one day to apply for readmission [to the legal profession] but, as she says, ‘not until sufficient time has passed for that to be a possibility’,’ the court said.
Ms Kim named her courier driver for her father’s offence of running a red light (stock image)