Lawyer Joseph Park censured, fined for making himself sole beneficiary of client’s will

Auckland lawyer Joseph Park has been fined and censured after being found guilty of misconduct. Photo / Jason Oxenham.

A lawyer who “clumsily” made himself the sole beneficiary of an elderly client’s entire estate, leaving the woman’s two daughters with nothing, has been ordered to stump up $22,000 for the blunder.

This week, the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal censured Auckland lawyer Joseph Boaz Park for what the authority labelled a “bizarre” and “clumsily drafted” will.

According to the facts of the case, an older Korean woman approached Park in January 2020 for assistance in obtaining a reverse mortgage for her property, and in drafting a will.

Park, also Korean, had limited experience in wills and estate law and primarily worked in conveyancing.

Later in March, the woman provided Park with a document of her wishes, written in Korean. The document detailed how she would like her estate to go to her two daughters.

Park then provided her with a will in English, with himself as the executor, which the woman signed. No copy of the will was provided in Korean.

The will states that the woman wished to “give, devise and bequeath the whole of my estate ... unto my said solicitor”.

After the woman died in April 2020, her daughters were suspicious of Park and accused him of engineering the will to favour him.

But after a hearing before the tribunal, in which Park defended two charges of misconduct, it was found that other than being inexperienced in drafting wills and being poorly supervised by his employer, Park had not intentionally set out to defraud the family.

The tribunal noted the complainants had filed 10 sets of allegations against him and the Standards Committee prosecuting him on behalf of the Law Society may have been “captured” by the complainants and the “wildness” of their allegations.

“Despite the multitude of allegations made against him, we find nothing to call into question Mr Park’s character as a practitioner,” the tribunal said in its liability decision, issued last year.

However, Park was still found guilty of unsatisfactory conduct in two respects; incompetence in drafting a will, and lack of courtesy towards a beneficiary in the estate he was administering.

This week, the tribunal issued its penalty decision in which it stated that despite Park’s incompetent drafting of his client’s will, his overall conduct suggested he was trying to carry out what his client wanted.

“In short, Mr Park clumsily drafted a will with the result that it appeared to give the entire estate to him,” the decision stated.

“Professional error is always a risk where a lawyer embarks on work in an unfamiliar area. A message in this decision is that lawyers must take care, seek assistance, even where the task may seem simple.”

The tribunal said in its ruling that overall Park was an honest and industrious practitioner but his conduct showed a degree of inflexibility and he was not willing to acknowledge his shortcomings.

It also noted that Park should have abided by his client’s request to communicate in English, rather than Korean, which was a language he felt more comfortable using.

The tribunal fined Park $5000 and ordered him to pay $17,000 in legal costs.

Park said in a statement that he respected the tribunal’s ruling and would follow the directions the panel made in their decision.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.