Odtojan's Mirror Test: What Would Happen If We Did This to Them?
- Jun 1
- 13 min read
Updated: Jun 1
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
- George Orwell, Animal Farm
- Marie Odtojan
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Table of Contents
The Most Honest Test Anyone can Apply
"Take the process applied to two lawyers. Turn it around. Apply it to the people who applied it. Ask: would that be acceptable? This is the mirror test, and the reflection is revealing"
There is a test that can cut through every legal argument, every procedural justification, and every institutional defence faster than any case authority.
It is called the mirror test.
The mirror test is not a legal doctrine. It is a simple way for ordinary people to understand whether a process is consistent, principled, and capable of being applied equally to everyone.
Take the process that was applied to a person. Turn it around. Apply it to the people who applied it. Then ask would that be acceptable?
If the answer is no, if the process, when reflected back at its architects, produces an outcome that is plainly absurd, plainly unjust, or plainly incompatible with how a functioning society operates, then the process itself is wrong.
Not wrong for that person. Wrong. And unlawful. Full stop.
Let us apply the mirror test to what happened to two Australian Lawyers in NSW, Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl and to the law firm they built together.
Turn the Tables - What Happens When Power Faces the Mirror?
Imagine the following.
Ms Griswold, Director of the Law Society's Legal Regulation and Professional Standards Department, receives a referral. Alleging possible conduct breaches.
The referral is not a finding. No evidence has been tested. No tribunal has made any determination. The allegations have never been adjudicated.
The OLSC routes it, not through Chapter 5, the lawful pathway with NCAT safeguards and independent findings, but through Chapter 3. As a source of information.
Then they wait. Quietly. For Ms Griswold's next practising certificate renewal application.
When she applies, the Law Society activates the referral.
The letter that arrives does not say: we will investigate.
Instead, it says: you have misconduct, your practising certificate is placed "in force", here are fifteen conduct issues, (issues that stem entirely from her statement of claim in a tort damages case she brought against her former lawyers, whom she believed had wronged her, and in respect of which there has been no final determination by any court), now tell us what you have done to correct your conduct, and what conditions you propose.
She is already treated as guilty. In the opening paragraph.
She responds comprehensively, seventeen pages, twenty-five bundles, approximately 1,300 documents. She gives formal notice that the process is unlawful.
She demands the author of the letter recuse themselves.
She writes to Attorney General Michael Daley, the Minister responsible for the Legal Profession Uniform Law, giving formal notice of the alleged unlawful actions by the Law Society, and providing the relevant documents as attachments.
She writes to every Council member at their publicly listed emails.
She is met with silence.
Before the Law Society responds to her, the Attorney General's office responds first.
The letter, signed by MP Hugh McDermott, does not address the alleged unlawful process or actions. Instead, it reframes the Law Society's representation of "misconduct" as a typographical error, and introduces, for the first time, two phrases that appear nowhere in the Legal Profession Uniform Law:
"Alleged prior misconduct" and "Alleged prior conduct."
Terms that have no statutory meaning. Undefined. Invented. Carrying no statutory criteria or definition under the law, regardless of who uses them or how many times they are repeated, introduced to replace a word the Law Society had used as an established fact to undertake adverse actions against her, including altering her practising status. A term now rendered vaguer and less legally accountable. But no less damaging in its effect.
Shortly after her letters to the Council, she notices something. The Council members' publicly listed email addresses, accessible throughout all fifteen years of her practice, always there, a basic mark of transparency and accountability for a body exercising public regulatory functions, have been deleted from the Law Society's website and replaced with a generic Law Society email address.
All of them. Gone. No announcement. No explanation.
She then discovers her Law Society membership, held for fifteen years, has been cancelled. So has her husband's (also a solicitor, also subject to the same referral, and also subject to the same undisclosed internal process conducted by the Law Society, without notice, without decision, and without any communication to either of them). Despite the Law Society's own letters to each of them, stating that solicitor member services remained available to them
She cannot renew her practising certificate. She cannot access the professional indemnity scheme. She cannot comply with her obligations as principal. The foundation of her practice has been removed, silently, without her knowledge, while she was being told everything remained in place.
She writes again. Urgently. Asking for explanations. Asking for jurisdiction. Asking for the lawful process. Asking for decisions. Asking for particulars.
She is met with silence.
Ten months after the first letter, the Law Society responds. Here is what she receives after responding with seventeen pages and 1,300 documents: Thank you. Your correspondence has been considered.
One sentence. Then, new allegations. About public posts on her website. Outside the original referral. No particulars. No attachments. Just fresh allegations added to an already unanswered pile.
She asks again for clarification, jurisdiction, NCAT. She receives a short email, not answering anything, simply repeating the invented phrases borrowed from the Attorney General's office: "alleged prior misconduct" and "alleged prior conduct".
Then on 30 May a decision is issued.
Nothing answered. Nothing evidenced. Nothing determined through any lawful process.
Not fit and proper. Practising certificate refused. Name removed from the Law Society's public solicitors register.
Everything built, gone.
No NCAT. No findings. No tested evidence. No Chapter 5. No statutory basis for the phrases that founded the decision.
Just: we formed views"
But it does not stop there.
At the same time as the decision is issued, purportedly at the same Council meeting at which the decision was adopted, an adverse disciplinary record is placed on the OLSC disciplinary register.
No adjudication of the issues raised. No findings. No proven case. No NCAT process. No determination by any independent tribunal. No notice.
Just, a record. Placed. Publicly. Against her name. Against her husband's name. Against the legal practice they built together.
And then, after she files a judicial review summons to challenge the decision, the same officer who conducted the Law Society's undisclosed internal process serves her with a defamation concerns notice.
Threatening private litigation. Against a lawyer who acted lawfully and just exercised her lawful right to challenge a decision in the Supreme Court.
The referral that started all of this? No outcome. No finality. The conduct issues raised, never adjudicated, never determined, never resolved.
And so the same allegations are reused. Repurposed. Repeated. New allegations piled on top. Adverse actions compounding. A disciplinary record on a public register, for issues that have never been proven, never been tested, never been the subject of any finding by any independent body.
She cannot vindicate herself. The legal process that would allow her to do so, NCAT, Chapter 5, an independent tribunal with the power to hear evidence, make findings, and deliver a determination, is alleged to have been deliberately withheld.
This is not innocent until proven guilty.
This is: you are guilty, and you will never be permitted to prove otherwise.
Because the very process that would determine innocence or guilt has been blocked at every turn.
That is not regulation.
That is not the rule of law.
That is perpetual punishment without a proven case.
And it is still happening.
And if she, or her husband, ever attempts to apply for a practising certificate again?
The same allegations will be waiting.
Reused. Repurposed. Recycled.
Because by design, they have never been finalised. No adjudication. No determination. No finding. No outcome. Just allegations that sit permanently in a file, ready to be activated again at the next renewal application, and the one after that, and the one after that... what Ms Odtojan terms as a 'cycle of perpetuality'.
This is not a regulatory outcome.
This is a mechanism.
A mechanism designed to ensure that two lawyers, against whom no misconduct has ever been proven, no case has ever been determined, no finding has ever been made, can never return to the profession they built.
Not because they were found guilty.
But because they were never permitted to be found innocent.
Perpetual disqualification. Without a proven case. By design.
That, as Ms Odtojan says, is what their "formed views" actually means.
And that is what is revealed here in the application of the mirror test asks you to consider.
Would you accept that for yourself?
Apply it to the Law Society's Council Members
Apply the same process to every member of the Law Society's Council members who adopted Ms Griswold's decision she authored as evidenced in her Memorandum, a decision drafted on 23 May 2025, apparently adopted on 29 May 2025, and issued on 30 May 2025, but the decision document has a save date of 21 May 2025..
Apply it to each of them individually. Send each one a letter. Tell them allegations have been raised. Tell them they have misconduct. Tell them to explain what they have done to correct their conduct and what conditions do they propose on their practising certificates.
Render each of them not fit and proper based on those allegations, allegations that have never been tested, never been adjudicated, and never been the subject of any findings.
Watch what happens to the Law Society of NSW when its entire Council is rendered unfit simultaneously, without process, without evidence, without NCAT, on the basis of allegations and formed views.
Apply It to the Attorney General and MP
NSW Attorney General Michael Daley, the Minister responsible for the Legal Profession Uniform Law, and MP Hugh McDermott have been identified in Ms Odtojan's public disclosures as allegedly enabling or participating in the creation of a narrative built around the phrases "alleged prior misconduct" and "alleged prior conduct," phrases that appear nowhere in the Uniform Law, carry no statutory definition, meet no statutory criteria, and have no legal existence under the law that governs the regulation of the legal profession in New South Wales, regardless of who uses them, and regardless of how many times they are repeated.
Imagine a referral is made. Alleging possible conduct breaches.
It is routed, not through the proper investigative pathway, but as a source of information under a different chapter. It waits for his next renewal of practising certificate. Then it is activated.
A letter arrives: tell us what you have done to correct your conduct.
He asks for the process. Asks for the evidence. Asks for the jurisdictional basis.
The response: we formed views. We have discretion. You were aware your propriety was in question.
His career is gone. His livelihood is gone. Everything he has built, gone. On the basis of allegations. Formed views. Discretion.
No hearing. No evidence. No findings.
What Would Society Look Like?
If this process, the one applied to Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl, were applied universally, society would not function.
Because the process, applied universally, means:
Any person can be rendered unfit for any role, based on allegations alone;
The allegations need not be tested;
The evidence need not be produced;
The process need not comply with the statutory scheme;
The decision-maker need not give reasons consistent with the only relevant authority;
And the person subjected to it has no accessible, affordable review right, because the proper tribunal has been deliberately bypassed.
If that process were applied to lawyers, it would destroy the legal profession overnight. Every practitioner would be vulnerable to any referral, from any source, routed through any convenient chapter, activated at any convenient moment.
If it were applied to politicians, no parliament would survive a single term.
If such a process were capable of being applied to judges, politicians, regulators, lawyers, or any other public official, few would regard it as an acceptable foundation for decision-making.
That is because public confidence depends upon consistent standards, transparent processes, and accountability. A process that would be rejected if applied to those exercising public power cannot become acceptable simply because it is applied to someone with less of it.
That is the Rule of Law.
That is the Administration of Justice.
That is Natural Justice.
That is Democracy.
And when any one of those four pillars is removed, all of them are weakened.
The Principle That Must Follow
The reason we do not apply that process to the Attorney General, MPs, Law Society directors and council members, and judges is not because they are more important than Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl.
It is because that process is wrong and unlawful.
It is unlawful when applied to them. It is unlawful when applied to anyone else. It is simply unlawful. Full stop.
The rule of law does not have a tier system. It does not have a category of people to whom proper process applies and another category to whom formed views and discretion suffice.
Either the process is lawful for everyone, or it is lawful for no one. Otherwise it is what is decribed in George Orwell's Animal farm: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
What was done to Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl, if done to any those in positions of power such as Attorney General, any Law Society officer, any Supreme Court judge, would produce immediate, unanimous outrage. Royal commissions would be called. Careers would end. Accountability would be demanded.
The silence that has met what happened to Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl is not evidence that what happened to them was acceptable.
It is evidence that the people with the power to speak have chosen not to.
The Question That Cannot Be Avoided
If you would not accept this process being applied to yourself, if you would not accept being rendered not fit and proper on the basis of a referral, formed views, and discretion, without Chapter 5, without NCAT, without tested evidence, without findings, then you cannot defend its application to anyone else.
It is alleged that Ms Griswold cannot defend it. It is alleged that the Council cannot defend it. It is alleged that the Attorney General cannot defend it. It is alleged that Acting Justice Griffiths cannot defend it.
Because none of them would accept it for themselves.
And a process that is only acceptable when applied to others, but never to oneself, is not a lawful process.
It is an abuse of power. Exercised without accountability. Against people who had less of it.
That is not the rule of law.
That is oppression.
The Kafkaesque Reality
What happened to Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl, two New South Wales lawyers, was not just unjust.
It was Kafkaesque.
From Franz Kafka's The Trial, a story about a person prosecuted by a faceless authority for a crime never named, under a process never explained, toward an outcome never justified.
But Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl's situation is not fiction. It is real life.
The Law Society came with a wrecking ball of lawlessness on their lives and firm. Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl, two lawyers, a husband and wife, Ms Odtojan as the principal, while their professional existence was being dismantled, without notice, without process, without a single proven finding, they were still expected to honour their duties as solicitors, protect their clients, operate their practice, and comply with every legal obligation placed upon them as lawyers and as a principal of a legal practice.
Honouring their duties as solicitors;
Running and protecting their law firm;
Representing and protecting their clients;
Meeting every legal obligation placed upon them as principals;
And fighting, at every step, to understand a process that was never explained, never lawfully grounded, and never honestly conducted.
And, any lawyer will understand, that practising law, particularly in litigation and disputes, is a deeply contested environment. It is almost akin to a battlefield, fought on paper.
Every day brings demands, deadlines, and obligations to the people who depend on you.
So while the Law Society's Kafkaesque machinery was grinding away at their professional existence from the outside, they were simultaneously fighting legal battles, and doing what lawyers do.
Because that is legal practice.
They were the victims. And yet they were treated as the problem.
They were being destroyed from the outside, and expected to function perfectly on the inside.
That is the human cost that no legal submission can fully capture. The distress of not knowing from one day to the next whether you are still a lawyer. The weight of protecting your clients while your own professional existence is being dismantled without notice, without process, and without any proven case.
That is not regulation.
That is a wrecking ball.
That is the human cost of lawlessness.
And, the people swinging it have never once been asked to justify their actions, despite the fact that every administrative action must comply with the law.
Conclusion: Would Society Stay Silent?
Would society stay quiet if this happened to the Attorney General? To the entire Law Society Council? To Ms Griswold herself?
No. Society would not stay quiet. The profession would not stay quiet. The media would not stay quiet. Parliament would not stay quiet.
And yet society has stayed quiet about what happened to Ms Odtojan and Mr Bryl.
Not because it is acceptable. But because it happened to a woman of colour in law and her husband, two lawyers who built a practice together, who had the documents, had the transcripts, had the law and the case authorities, and had the truth, but did not have the institutional power to make themselves heard in the forums that were supposed to hear them.
This is not just the story of Odtojan and Bryl. This is an Australian story. A societal one.
It raises a poignant question we all must ask:
What is the true state of the rule of law , of democracy, in Australia, if livelihoods can be taken without a proven case and without any court or tribunal process?
A society cannot function if people lose their livelihoods on mere allegation.
That is not justice. That is not democracy. That is not a safe society.
This series exists because those forums failed.
The documents are here. The transcripts are here. The law and authorities are here.
The mirror test has been applied. And the reflection is revealing.
And it belongs on the public record.
The Odtojan Mirror Test
"If you would not accept this process applied to yourself, you cannot defend its application to anyone else."
© Marie Odtojan
This post is part of The Odtojan-Bryl Full Picture series by Odtojan Bryl Lawyers. This is a public interest disclosure based on the lived experience of lawyers Marie Odtojan and Artem Bryl, witnesses, victims, and whistleblowers who acted lawfully at all times. Information on this website is not legal advice.
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