How lawyers reminded the UK of its humanity…

The last seven days has seen, perhaps, the best and worst of what the legal profession has to offer. Two legal heroes have been stealing the headlines, while one villain, if not vanquished, will almost certainly be keeping a low profile for some time to come.

Sean Jones QC's billable hour appeal may have been a simple idea with modest aspirations, but it quickly snowballed into an avalanche of cash for the refugee crisis. In short, Jones created a donation monster that was enough to warm the heart of even the most cynical among us.

The number of lawyers willing to help some of the most desperate people on the planet has been astonishing. With over £160,000 donated to date, it was especially surprising to look through the ever growing list of donors and their messages, to see that those in the profession with the least to give - legal aid practitioners in particular - made up a large percentage of those willing to contribute to Save the Children.

They were, however, not the only ones to give so generously. It seemed at times that every sector of the profession - from government lawyers to in-house counsel, QCs to paralegals, locum solicitors to barristers' clerks, partners to trainees, and from City firms to high street practices - was represented in making a contribution to the appeal. One pupil barrister even donated an hour's worth of their pupillage award.

Jones, and his ever-growing cadre of big-hearted and open-pocketed legal brethren, even made the transition from featuring in the legal press to appearing on Channel 4 News, the Guardian, the Metro, and Sky News. The profession's efforts to raise money for refugees sat brilliantly juxtaposed with the government's less than inspiring plan to deal with the crisis, and, subsequently, received donations from members of the public, as well as spawning copycat campaigns, such as from UK accountants and Australian lawyers.

As SJ reported, the billable hour has so often been used by the populist press as a stick with which to mercilessly beat the legal profession. Stories of important legal challenges have repeatedly featured the hourly rate of a solicitor, or annual earnings of a barrister, before the practitioner's name, firm, or chambers is even mentioned. The legal fee and the profession's 'greed' usually becomes the story. How ironic that the going rate of a lawyer's time should start making headlines for all the 'right' reasons.

But of course, for every positive story, a negative one will surely follow. While Jones spent the last few days inundated with praise from colleagues, the press, and the public, another lawyer has been filling column inches in both the legal and national press for all the wrong reasons.

Brown Rudnick partner Alexander Carter-Silk certainly won the prize for biggest fool this week following disclosure of an 'unacceptable and misogynistic' email exchange between himself and barrister Charlotte Proudman.

To write, 'You definitely win the prize for the best Linkedin picture I have ever seen,' to any woman - let alone a highly-qualified and award-winning human rights barrister who happens to be undertaking a PhD into female genital mutilation - demonstrates at best a staggering error of judgement, and at worst a horrifically inappropriate view of women in law.

The claim from the intellectual property expert that his comment was aimed at the 'professional quality' of Proudman's photo on LinkedIn, which was 'unfortunately misinterpreted', doesn't hold much water when you consider he prefaced his 'compliment' (yes, those are sarcastic quote marks) to the barrister with: 'I appreciate this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture.'

The fallout from this social media debacle clearly does not reflect well on Brown Rudnick or the profession at large, let along Carter-Silk. No doubt he will be keeping his head down in his Mayfair office while his firm's PR team do their best to avoid the story spiralling out of all control. There may, however, be a silver lining to this whole squalid affair.

Thanks to the very public outing of the message to Proudman, women have been taking to Twitter in their droves to share their experiences of sexist behaviour in the workplace and on social media, and reenergising the debate on inappropriate gender attitudes.

Carter-Silk's 'objectification' of a fellow lawyer may be a watershed moment and bring about some real change within a profession that is still seen by many as an 'old boys club'. A major Bar Council report published earlier this year, for example, showed sexism was still rampant at the Bar.

Change is desperately needed, and if Carter-Silk's embarrassment is the catalyst for that change, then so be it. In the meantime, Proudman should be congratulated, not castigated, for having the courage to stand up to behaviour that should have already have been relegated to the last century.

John van der Luit-Drummond is deputy editor for Solicitors Journal

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