Solicitor Michelle Crotty joined the Judicial Office last week as chief executive, fresh from a gig as ‘chief capability officer’ at the Serious Fraud Office. Over the last decade she has also held senior posts at the National Crime Agency, Attorney General’s Office and Sentencing Council.
Or do we mean ‘solicitor’? A reader writes in to scold the Law Society (and the Gazette) for celebrating the appointment because Crotty is not on the roll and therefore, they assert, does not merit the professional title. At least not without the inverted commas.
Hardly ‘hold the front page’ stuff, but worth a call to check.
Not so, we can confirm. Ms Crotty is indeed on the roll.
What is incongruous is the timeline of her career. While at the SFO, Crotty said she started practising law in 1994. Yet HM Courts and Tribunals Judiciary says her ‘career in law began when she qualified as a solicitor [in England and Wales] in 1999’.
Confusing. As is Crotty’s LinkedIn entry, which says she took a bachelor’s law degree at University College, Cork, from 2000 to 2002. Which means she completed her law degree three years after she became a solicitor. Eh?
Obiter is a stickler for a timeline, so we felt obliged to seek clarification from HM Courts and Tribunals Judiciary. The press office told us Crotty’s LinkedIn entry is ‘incorrect’ and will be ‘updated’.
That would certainly explain it. Another object lesson in not simply regurgitating what one reads on social media.
