Burton v Babb

[2023] NSWCA 242

The party challenging a legal practitioner’s retainer bears the onus of proving that the legal practitioner has not been retained. However, depending on the quality of the challenger’s evidence, an evidentiary onus may move to the legal practitioner in relation to particular factual issues: Hawksford v Hawksford [2005] NSWSC 463; (2005) 191 FLR 173 at [55] (Campbell J). The applicant has not adduced any evidence to discharge the onus apart from the internal CSO document, which revealed no more than that the CSO had been instructed by those entities.