Cab Rank – Who’s rule is it anyway?

Jeremy Hopkins wrote this blog 10 years ago on the Cab Rank. For our purposes it's worth knowing he is a former clerk. This was his take then, he says it still holds good today and has allowed me to post it with permission... The recent LSB-commissioned report on the Bar’s “Cab Rank Rule” seems to have …

Lights out at the rank?

A gauntlet is being tossed down to the Bar and it is on an issue that has been making the wider profession nervous for some time: the rights of evil swine to have access to justice just like you and me. Ok. I'm kidding. Kinda sorta. What I really mean is the rising tide of …

Team Justice? Independent Reviews

The PO Scandal is marked by a number of supposedly independent reviews from lawyers and others. Those reviews did, or were used to, play up the positives and play down the negatives. The latest one to emerge into the public gaze was conducted by a leading KC, Brian Altman, in 2013. I have written a …

Thematic credibility

The SRA have published a very interesting document. A Thematic Review into In-House lawyers. You can read it here. And you can expect your heart to sing because the CEO of the SRA says the results are generally encouraging. Here is what the estimable Ben White, of Crafty Counsel, said about it on LinkedIn: Some …

Sexuality and the ‘Credible’ Barrister

In 2016, Marc Mason and I began a project looking to explore the experiences and attitudes of LGBT+ barristers. We launched a report on our research (a survey of 126 barristers and Bar students, plus 38 follow-on interviews) in September 2017. Last week, the academic paper from that study was published in the Journal of …

Continuing the conversation on SLAPPs

I have taken a closer look at the SRA’s thematic review on conduct in disputes, slightly oddly named as it centres SLAPPS. It is the first of at least two such reviews. Having spoken to 25 heads of department and 24 fee earners in firms dealing with “reputation management” matters, the central, but largely hidden, …

SRA on SLAPPs

The SRA's first SLAPPs thematic review is out. It’s not very convincing as a piece of work, but my sense if this is the first foray, and its good that the SRA tried it. "We spoke to a few lawyers about their own practices and said everything was super (save occasional rum behaviour from one …

Round up – Feb03

I thought it would be a good idea to try and round up interesting lawyers' ethics related stories from time to time. Pressure on NDAs, the BSB, and the SRA With the BSB receiving a very poor report card from the Legal services Board on its regulatory performance recently, the BSB indicated an independent review …

What may Zahawi’s lawyers have got wrong?

I hesitate to be another person to drawing attention to Dan Neidle's allegations about Nadim Zahawi, but it seems to me the finer, but important, points about what Neidle thinks the lawyers have got wrong have not been clearly identified in the commentary I have seen in several places. Lawyers and the legal press tend …

A lesson in conventional unfairness

In the light of yesterday's PO Inquiry hearings on compensation, I looked back at something I wrote in July, on my Post Office devoted substack, and thought the analysis there pretty much stands the test of time. The Post Office and Government have adopted an adversarial approach, containing a conflict of interest. When one side …