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A LAWYER convicted of fraud has now been barred from practising.

Mr Tan Sok Ling, 41, was the first lawyer to be struck off the rolls this year.

He did not appear before the Court of Three Judges yesterday to contest the application by the Law Society to dismiss him from the profession.

Last November, Mr Tan, a lawyer since 1993, was sentenced to jail for 11 months for forgery and giving false information.

In March 2006, he had inflated the stamp duty payable for a Thomson Park house that his client bought by $5,400.

And in July 2003, Mr Tan lied to a police officer that he lived in Bukit Timah when he actually lived in Tanah Merah in order to secure a spot in a prestigious all-girls school in Bukit Timah for his daughter.

He is believed to be out of jail as a notice to attend court for yesterday’s hearing was personally served on him at his home on July 26.

Before his conviction, he had also been suspended from practising by the Law Society for a year in March last year for not keeping proper accounts as the sole proprietor of the now-defunct Tan S.L. Partners.

Following his conviction, the Law Society began proceedings to remove him from the Bar as his offences involved fraud and dishonesty - flaws which the legal profession does not accept.

The hearing yesterday took all of 10 minutes.

Another lawyer Low Yong Sen also faced the Court of Three Judges yesterday for allegedly overcharging a married couple for expenses incurred in a property deal.

He had allegedly charged his clients three times more than what was deemed by a disciplinary committee as fair when he billed his client $4,300 in expenses.

Mr Low, who represented himself, told the three judges that he was mainly a family lawyer who rarely did conveyancing deals.

The property transactions he handled mainly involved HDB flats and this was his case which involved a private property, he said.

Mr Low, a lawyer for 15 years, said he had engaged a legal secretary to help him with the work and had billed his clients that much based on that secretary’s claims.

He did not stand to benefit by overcharging the couple, Mr Low told the court.

His case was adjourned to a later date as the judges asked for a point of law in his case to be clarified.

Last year, two lawyers were disbarred - fugitive David Rasif, who has fled the country after allegedly pocketing more than $11 million of his clients’ money, and Mr Edwin Tay, who did not keep any books of acounts of his clients for the entire year of 2004 for the law firm he then owned.

Source : Straits Times - 31 Jul 2008