Reported to the Bar Standards Board

Perhaps a Professor went over the top this time and nearly killed someone with sadistic bullying. Or a Professor was a little too blatant this time and offered a female grad student a postdoc position in exchange for sex.

These kind of stories don’t play well for a university’s reputation. Donors don’t like them. So Human Resources will need to exonerate the guilty Professors as speedily as possible. As they say in many university HR departments, “The victims need to be isolated, stay isolated, and be made to shut the fuck up.” 

“Confidentiality” of the investigation helps a lot here.

It’s tricky if there is cast-iron evidence against guilty Professors.  It is then that an external investigator is called in. There are a number of companies that can churn out the standard exculpatory reports to order. If the Professors are senior and the charges are serious, then it is better to use a lawyer or barrister to dump on some innocent females.

As the Post Office scandal showed us, there are plenty of lawyers and barristers ready to bend the rules for their clients in return for a fat fee. Sure, it costs a bit more, but the report exonerating the misbehaving Professors will be all the more convincing. 

Typical of these jobbing barristers is Mr Pork-Pie. He charges universities upwards of £60,000 for an investigation. The stitch-up begins with a quiet ‘word in his ear’ or ‘some helpful guidance’ from the University’s Legal Department. However, in one of Mr Pork-Pies’ cases, one of the victims was suspicious and asked him, “Have you ever done this kind of work for the university before?” 

“No”, said Mr Pork-Pie robustly. “I have never worked for the university before. I have had no contact with the university since my undergraduate days at St Judas College”.

That was a stupid lie, easy to expose, not worthy of you

And so it came to pass that Mr Pork-Pie was reported to the Bar Standards Board. This is the regulatory body for barristers.

The behaviour of lawyers and barristers in university investigations has obvious analogies with their use by the Post Office. One of the rising stars of the Post Office Scandal, the barrister Flora Page, wrote in the Bar Council Magazine:

“Poor conduct seems to have been far too widespread among those who acted for the Post Office, both solicitors and barristers, both in-house and external. They cannot all be terrible people but somehow, with big or small steps, they have crossed lines … I suspect a myopic interpretation of acting in the client’s best interests, and not enough focus on integrity.

Being a bit sharp or tough may seem to get a good result but the lawyers acting for the Post Office would have been truly acting in their client’s best interests if they had advised them against actions which looked good in the short term.

The requirement to act with integrity would have been a good guide for when to give unpopular advice, because when lawyers are too cavalier with their integrity it poses a risk to their clients’ interests in the longer term too. There is the fear, always, that if you are too much of a stickler in this regard you will haemorrhage clients.”

Wise words.

The same applies to many of the barristers & lawyers (whether in-house or external) involved in investigations in the Higher Education sector. The challenge for any barrister is not to mirror and embody the worst characteristics of their client, but to guide them towards what is in their best interests.