Sloshed not sick?

The profession has certain stories it tells itself which are probably not true. One such is exposed by an interesting piece of US research by Listokin and Noonan (published here and available without a paywall, I think, here. That story is that, “lawyers are uniquely unhappy”, in particular that they suffer higher levels of mental …

Candour in Context: who’s activism should we spotlight?

The travails of Duncan Lewis, Stephanie Harrison QC and the rest of her team, in the R (DVP & Others) v SSHD[2021] EWHC 606 (Admin) [the DVP case] can be seen as grist to the Government's anti-activist lawyers mill. It's a toe-curling judgment. I am going to talk about the facts of the case at …

Discipline Data: women, the young, and the old, but in what order?

An interesting paper by Andy Boon and Avis Whyte has been published (paywalled I suspect) on SDT cases. the authors have painstakingly assembled data to be compared across three periods: 1994 to 1996 (collected by Davies), 2008 (with Boon, Whyte and Sherr) and 2015. They point to a strange failure of SDT case volumes to …

Something smelly at Barclays…

Amanda Stavely has had half a last laugh in her unsuccessful litigation against Barclays. She lost on causation but the court found material dishonesty on the part of her nemesis, Roger Jenkins, former Chairman of the Bank’s Middle Eastern business. The judgment is a monster (PCP Capital Partners v Barclays [2021] EWHC 307 (Comm) at …

Davies vs Greene: An analysis

As a follow up to my piece in the Times, you can register and get a free read I think, I set out the longer piece I prepared whilst thinking this case through. There is of course no substitute for reading the case in full if you can to make up your own mind about …

Ongoing competence: BS or 5750?

To those of you who get the reference in the title. Congratulations. You have come a long way. For the rest, BS5750 was a quality assurance system, all the rage in the 1990s, which came to mind, alongside legal aid practice management standards, and other joys, as I read the LSB's 'Ongoing Competence' report. This …

Lawyers for the Post Office Machine

The Criminal Cases Review Commission published its submission to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. For those of you unaware, in broad brush terms, this Inquiry relates to the prosecution of large numbers of sub-postmasters for failures which the defendants say arose out of the flawed Horizon accounts system run by the Post Office. The …

Hong Kong Questions

David Perry QC’s decision to act in the Hong Kong prosecution of nine defendants on two charges of unauthorized assembly has come in for a great deal of criticism. This includes the current (Conservative) Foreign Secretary, a former (Labour) Lord Chancellor, and other legal luminaries, politicians and lawyers. The press reports, and comments garnered from …

NDA, Redacted

The multiple ironies of what happened here, early in the Covid-crisis, will not be lost on many. The SDT have stayed the SRA's prosecution of Mark Mansell for professional misconduct. The case arises out of the NDAs negotiated for Harvey Weinstein against Zelda Perkins and Rowena Chiu. The saga ends, if it has ended, where …

In honour of Deborah Rhode

Steven and I have been moved by the untimely death of Professor Deborah Rhode. Deborah was one of the giants of legal ethics. She has shown great personal kindness to many legal ethics scholars, and written many great works. As it happens last week we were finalising a chapter on leading works on ethics for …