Rule O’Flaw (@ruleofflaw.com)

Oppressed and Vilified: Greensborough Lawyer as Case Study of Sole Practitioners Targeted by the Victorian Legal Services Board The case of Thomas Flitner exposes fundamental deficiencies in Victoria’s regulatory framework for the legal profession, revealing how statutory powers designed to protect consumers and maintain professional standards can be weaponised to destroy careers and livelihoods without meaningful oversight or due process. This report analyses systemic failures that enabled the Victorian Legal Services Board (VLSB) to dismantle a twenty‑year‑old law practice through external intervention mechanisms that, it is argued, violated core principles of administrative law, natural justice, and procedural fairness. Drawing on regulatory theory, administrative law precedent, and comparative analysis across Australian jurisdictions, this examination reveals patterns consistent with regulatory capture, retaliatory enforcement, and institutional corruption. The findings demonstrate how the confluence of three factors—unchecked regulatory discretion, financial opacity involving a $3.4 billion public fund, and captured oversight mechanisms—creates conditions enabling systemic abuse of power. On this analysis, the Flitner case is not an isolated incident but symptomatic of deeper pathologies within Australia’s system of legal profession self‑regulation. Since our discussions with Flitner, many other lawyers have reached out to us, complaining about the same or similar issues they have encountered with the VLSB. https://www.ruleofflaw.com/p/oppressed-and-vilified-greensborough-lawyer-as-case-study-of-sole-practitioners-targeted-by-the-victorian-legal-services-board