An Australian lawyer has been banned from practising law after fleecing clients for a total sum of over AUS$1.8 million.

The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal ruled that Russell Biddle, previously of Biddle Lawyers, stole huge sums from clients, including a massive AUS$1.1 million from the estate of a couple who had died in a vintage plane crash in 2012, and over AUS$500,000 from the estate of someone else who had died in the same crash. Biddle fraudulently took the money in 2012 and 2013 and used it partly to pay off his firm's whopping AUS$1.2 million tax debt, and spent the rest on personal expenses.

Biddle Lawyers was subsequently bought by Slater and Gordon in September 2014.

	The arrival of Russell Biddle (left) trumpeted by Slater & Gordon at the time

Biddle Lawyers on S&G's website. Aptly, the firm says it can help "if you have suffered an injustice".

The Queensland Law Society has had to pay out AUS$950,000 in compensation to the estates, as Biddle has only repaid about AUS$172,000.

President of the tribunal Justice David Thomas said that Biddle's conduct "violated and fell short, to a very substantial degree, of the standard of professional conduct". Judge David Reid also stuck the boot in saying that Biddle had a "major fall from grace" in grossly abusing his clients' trust, and was "king of sticking his head in the sand". The tribunal ordered that Biddle be struck from the roll of lawyers and pay the Legal Service Commissioner's costs.

Biddle is currently serving time in jail as part of a seven-and-a-half-years sentence, after pleading guilty to 10 counts of dishonest application of trust property.