Junior lawyers will be exempt from a new professional obligation to report on anyone mistreating colleagues in the workplace, following a rethink by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. However, proposed changes to conduct rules that will give the regulator more scope to clamp down on bullying, harassment or discrimination have otherwise got the go-ahead.

Managers and firms will be required to treat colleagues ‘fairly and with respect’, and firms will have to ensure their employees meet this standard. But only managers will now be required to challenge aberrant behaviour.

Draft rules published for consultation in February required all individuals to challenge unfair treatment. But many respondents were concerned that this ‘would put an unreasonable burden on some people, particularly junior staff, and people who are victims of unfair treatment’.

The SRA has also dropped the parallel ‘challenge’ requirement for firms, because the rules already require firms to ensure managers and employees comply with the Code.

The changes are flagged in an SRA board paper approving rule changes on health and wellbeing in the profession. ‘Spelling out in our rules that treating colleagues fairly is a regulatory requirement will help to promote the importance of a healthy workplace culture in the profession,’ it says. ‘It will also reinforce our ability to take action against any case of unfair treatment that poses material regulatory risks.’

The Law Society had argued that the regulatory risks could be managed using existing rules and additional guidance. The Employment Lawyers Association (ELA), meanwhile, suggested rules about ‘fairness’ would be vague and difficult to enforce.

The new rules will also apply to behaviour away from the workplace, where that behaviour is ‘in the context of a relationship between colleagues’ rather than a purely personal relationship. According to the SRA, this proposal attracted most opposition. Several respondents, including the Society, ELA and Sole Practitioners Group, argued that there is no evidence to support intrusion into personal relationships. Some cited in support of their argument the Beckwith judgment, in which a former magic circle partner fined after being accused of sexual misconduct overturned a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal finding in the High Court. Beckwith had spent the night with a junior colleague.

The SRA was again unmoved, however, concluding that Beckwith ‘confirms that our regulatory remit can extend into private life’.

Separately, the SRA board also approved rule changes relating to solicitors’ health and fitness to practise. These include making it explicit that fitness to practise includes the ability to meet the obligations of a regulated professional, as well as to carry out work. There have been two recent cases where an SDT hearing has been stayed indefinitely for health reasons and yet the solicitor has carried on working.

Amid concerns about additional bureaucracy, the SRA stressed that it will not take action simply because someone has a health condition. Nor will there be any requirement for solicitors to prove their fitness to practise when renewing a practising certificate.

The SRA will now seek Legal Services Board approval for the changes.

Commenting, Law Society president Lubna Shuja said: 'We are pleased to see the changes to reporting requirements, following our feedback on their original proposals, particularly in recognising and removing the burden on junior lawyers. We would still like to see the SRA produce more guidance and communications to highlight good practice, particularly around speaking up and challenging behaviour in the workplace.

'Such guidance should be sensitive to how difficult it can be for some people to speak out, not just junior lawyers, but those in minority groups, or those who are in a less secure role within the business.'

 

This article is now closed for comment.