Recognising Ethical Standards

In the normal course of things, these column inches are given over to consideration of knotty ethical issues confronting solicitors, either in their day-to-day practices or more broadly. However, given the ongoing high rates of enforcement activity by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) against firms and solicitors of all stripes – not to mention the recent overhaul of the professional conduct rules and increased emphasis on personal and professional ethical standards – there have been (and remain) good reasons to focus on the practical issues around conduct and professionalism. There has been a definite uptick in recent years in ‘bad news’ stories, particularly in relation to some sanctions imposed on solicitors and firms by the SRA and the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT). In some cases, those stories are down to overtly unacceptable conduct that clearly has no place in the profession. In others, however, the issues are less clear cut. Coupled with a widespread lack of financial resource (particularly insurance cover) among firms and individuals to properly defend an SRA investigation or prosecution, cases can lead to yet more negative coverage about solicitors and their work.

This month, however, rather than explore one of the plethora of burning ethical issues facing the profession, I have decided to take a different tack and to celebrate the high ethical and professional standards already pervasive in the profession. What follows is a nod, shown through the prism of a single high-profile case, to the many thousands of ‘good news’ stories out there about solicitors, and lawyers more broadly, conducting themselves to the highest ethical standards. Every day practitioners are considering and weighing up their professional conduct obligations to achieve the tightrope-walk of duties involved in upholding the proper administration of justice. Often in the most trying circumstances, they assess the interests of their clients and the reputation of the profession in a way that will be familiar to thousands in their daily practice.

THE EVIDENCE

The trade press recently carried coverage of judicial praise from the sitting judge in the trials to the legal teams who acted in four separate criminal trials of serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga. The trials, for which reporting restrictions have only recently been lifted, began in the summer of 2018, with sentencing hearings concluding in January of this year. Sinaga was convicted of 136 counts of rape, eight counts of attempted rape, 14 counts of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration against 48 victims and sentenced to 30 years in jail. His modus operandi was to lure his victims to his flat in Manchester, drug them using drinks infused with the drug GHB (or similar) and then to use his mobile phone to record himself carrying out the sexual assaults, attempted rapes and rapes. In sentencing, the judge in the case, Her Honour Judge Goddard QC, said she was “unaware” of any other case of sexual offending “of this scale or magnitude”. She recognised the work of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service on an investigation that “involved hundreds of hours of viewing footage of a most unpleasant nature and the painstaking tracing of the victims”. She then moved on to “thank all counsel and the legal teams on both sides for their executive assistance throughout”, specifically thanking “the defence case worker who has assiduously attended to her duties in representing the defendant throughout.”