That’s the question everyone seemed to be asking in a tiny courtroom in a top corner of the Auckland District Court this week as a disciplinary tribunal tried to unpick Benjamin Wong’s "bizarre" behaviour.
It’s a question Wong can’t answer because he claims he doesn’t remember forging a judge’s minute, the signature of a court registrar and another lawyer as well as invoices, submissions from opposing counsel and District and High Court case numbers, which are used to identify a case before the courts.
"We’re kind of left open-mouthed I suppose," deputy chairman of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal, Dr John Adams, said.
"There must be something that causes a person to do a thing. And our problem is we don’t know what it is."
On Wednesday, the tribunal convened to decide whether Wong should be kicked from the bar altogether or if he should be suspended for a lengthy period of time.
The majority of the hearing sought to unpick why Wong undertook such a prolonged and elaborate deception.
"If he doesn’t know why he did it, then we can’t know either. This is troubling," Adams said.
Even Wong’s own lawyer, Sara Cameron conceded that it was "extremely odd behaviour".
"It is difficult to conceive of an explanation that would make sense," she said.
"There was no benefit to him whatsoever, and it seems inevitable to him that he would be discovered."
‘…bit of a joke with the court system’
Wong strung his client along for a year about the progress of his case, creating false documents to justify the expenses and filing fees he was charging.
"No date yet, but I have sent the Court a follow-up this morning regarding this. Hopefully, it’s just a delay with the post," Wong told his client by email in July 2022 after they inquired how matters were progressing.
Then in August, Wong told his client over the phone that matters were under case management at the High Court and then gave him copies of submissions purportedly filed by opposing counsel, as well as file numbers he’d allegedly fabricated.
"I’ll be looking into this a bit more today as it has been a bit of a joke with the court system. I’ll be in touch shortly," Wong told his client in February 2023, a year after taking the case on.
Later the same month, after persistent unanswered questions from his client, Wong forwarded him a minute supposedly written by Judge Raymond Marshall stating: "I make orders to grant leave to discontinue proceedings."
Both the District and High Court confirmed that Wong had not filed proceedings with either court.
Counsel for the standards committee of the New Zealand Law Society, Paul Collins, said it was a "reasonably sophisticated forgery".
"The elaborate deception took as much effort as the real work would have taken," he said.
"This is probably the most serious client deception case the tribunal has seen in its existence."
Collins said it was extraordinary how much effort had gone into the deception, especially when it was unclear exactly what Wong stood to gain from it.
"The only explanation for what happened to be blunt about it is some sort of phobia in engaging with the courts," Collins said, conceding that he was forced to speculate on this because Wong had not given a reason.
As for Wong’s claim that he didn’t remember, Collins said this was concerning in and of itself, that a practising lawyer had memory blanks so severe he couldn’t remember filing submissions, but overall his explanation was not credible.
Given the hearing was to determine the penalty, Wong didn’t take the stand nor give evidence so the question of why he undertook his deception went unanswered.
The tribunal did ask Wong’s lawyer what his plan was if he were to have been discovered.
"I don’t think he had one," Cameron replied.
"Whether he had a plan or he didn’t, he was going to be found out.
"It really had one ending for him, which is where he is today."
That ending ultimately culminated in Wong being struck off, meaning he can no longer practise as a lawyer.
"This doesn’t mean to say that Mr Wong can’t do something productive in the future … but, not as a lawyer."
- Jeremy Wilkinson, Open Justice reporter
