The Law Society has today hit out at attempts to ‘scapegoat’ lawyers over the UK’s business links with Russia in the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion. Solicitors are ‘highly regulated’ and law firms responded to the sudden reversal of longstanding UK policy by swiftly severing links with Moscow, president I. Stephanie Boyce has stressed.

Boyce’s comments come in a letter to The Times, responding to a Monday leader column which declared that the Society has a ‘moral obligation’ to investigate solicitors ‘enriching themselves and their firms by defending the powerful against scrutiny’.

I. Stephanie Boyce, Law Society president

I. Stephanie Boyce

Source: Michael Cross

‘While it is right the horrors in Ukraine prompt fundamental questions about relations between the UK and Russia, it is dangerous to seek scapegoats and single out British lawyers,’ writes Boyce. ‘The reason UK law firms engaged with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union was because that was the direction of successive British governments as well as of business.’

She adds: ‘Thirty years of national policy have been reversed in a matter of weeks, and rightly so. Our law firms have responded quickly to the invasion. All Russian offices of the largest British law firms have closed or been separated from the parent firm.’

Boyce also warned that these issues should not be conflated with strategic lawsuits against public participation, where many lawyers agree there is a ‘good argument’ for reform.

 

This article is now closed for comment. 

Topics