Barristers who renounce their professional status are still subject to potential disciplinary proceedings, the Bar Tribunals & Adjudications Service (BTAS) has confirmed. The determination comes in a report explaining its decision to disbar climate campaigner Timothy Crosland for disclosing a draft Supreme Court judgment that had been circulated under embargo.
Crosland, called by Inner Temple in 1994, was disbarred last month. The BTAS has now published a report of its finding and sanction, revealing that Crosland and the Bar Standards Board disagreed over the regulator’s decision to bring proceedings against him.
Crosland informed the BSB last September and Inner Temple last October that he had renounced his status as a barrister. Responding to a request from the BSB to agree directions, he replied: ‘I am no longer a barrister and no longer subject to the jurisdiction of the BSB. I have formally renounced my barrister status and with it the Bar Code of Conduct. These proceedings are therefore unlawful. Specifically, they are ultra vires and violate article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (freedom of thought, conscience and religion).'
Crosland told the tribunal in an email last December that it was wrong for any regulator, let alone a legal regulator, to pursue proceedings against someone ‘while declining to identify their legal basis for doing so’.
The BSB submitted that Crosland sought to renounce his status as a barrister after the alleged misconduct and in response to it. The BSB said it was not in a position to remove his name from the register of barristers – only his inn could do that. However, ‘it was understood that an inn would not act to end his status while there were outstanding disciplinary proceedings’.
The BTAS rejected Crosland’s argument, stating: ‘Leaving aside the merits or otherwise of the charges against Mr Crosland in this case, it would be contrary to the promotion and maintenance of professional standards designed to protect the public if any professional who was subject to regulation could frustrate proceedings against him or her by unilaterally asserting that he or she no longer belonged to the profession concerned, particularly if the proceedings related to events at a time when that person clearly did belong to the profession concerned.'
