SRA conduct rules intrude into private life

Are we approaching the end times for alcohol-fuelled staff jollies benignly facilitated – or at least tacitly encouraged – by law firms? 

Because now it is official. The Solicitors Regulation Authority is making it explicit that conduct rules intrude into private life. Suggestions that the outcome of the Beckwith prosecution should give the regulator pause have been ignored. In fact, the Cube has doubled down. Beckwith ‘confirms that our regulatory remit can extend into private life’, it avers.

That is literally true, in the sense that the former magic circle partner was prosecuted. QED. We prosecuted him, it must be so.

But the SDT’s decision was, of course, overturned in the High Court, following a legal challenge that many solicitors of more modest means would not have had the resources to pursue. In different circumstances, that could have given rise to a career-ending miscarriage of justice.

Responding to the consultation, the Law Society was unequivocal. ‘Interactions between staff outside the workplace are not a matter for the SRA. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to be clear about where any line would be drawn.’

A warning was sounded in Beckwith, at paragraph 54: ‘Regulators will do well to recognise that it is all too easy to be dogmatic without knowing it; popular outcry is not proof that a particular set of events gives rise to any matter falling within a regulator’s remit.’

We must hope the SRA has at least learned from Beckwith, and will deploy its new power judiciously and without recourse to dogma.

Elsewhere, the regulator’s decision that junior lawyers are to be exempted from informing on the aberrant behaviour of colleagues is welcome. This is another tangible acknowledgement that solicitors at the start of their careers might, depending on circumstances, be treated differently in conduct matters.

Any junior would doubtless be fearful of the career-limiting potential of turning in a colleague – especially a supervisor. They are also likely to feel isolated and vulnerable.

Perhaps what we really need is more granular guidance on what good supervision looks like. By happy coincidence, the SRA told me this guidance was imminent as today's Gazette magazine went to press.

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