Victorian lawyer loses defamation case

A Victorian lawyer has lost his defamation case against the state's legal services regulator which described his lies on a legal document as "creative accounting".

Quan Pham sued the Legal Services Commissioner over an article on its website with the headline "False declaration plus creative accounting equals professional misconduct".

The article detailed how Pham had been found guilty of lying about the hours he'd worked as a solicitor.

The Victorian Supreme Court on Friday ruled in the commissioner's favour and found the article did not imply Pham had engaged in financial misconduct, as he claimed.