Professor Richard Moorhead

Lawyers are aiding irresponsible decisions and there is abuse of confidentiality and legal professional privilege, according to Professor Richard Moorhead. There is a need for “concerted action” to tackle system-wide failures.

The independent commission should work with government, the professions, the courts and regulators.

The proposal was made as part of this year’s Hamlyn Lectures by Professor Moorhead, of the University of Exeter Law School.

In the lectures he highlighted the serious legal problems of recent years, including the cases handled for oligarchs; the threats to national security posed by professional enabling, alleged SLAPPs, NDAs, corruption and phone hacking.

He also warned of a culture of excessive aggression in legal work – suggesting things are legal that are likely not legal, including misleading and abusive handling of legal matters.

He said: “We have to change the way lawyers think and behave. We have to put complete integrity and particular care not to mislead at the front of our thinking. We should turn away from lauding amorality and guard against harm.”

Professor Moorhead also recommended:

• Ethical practice should be a routine and proactive part of competence review for all lawyers in firms and chambers.
• There should be a mechanism by which individuals, teams, or their firms/chambers could undergo non-disciplinary investigation and analysis, to encourage lesson learning and remediation, not punishment.
• The role of the compliance officer in legal practice in solicitors firms should be reviewed and improved.
• There should be a full, independent review of the law on legal professional privilege.

He said: “Lucid ethical thinking could be aided by modest changes to codes, better guidance and regulation, and a concerted programme of training. This may sound forbidding to practitioners and judges at first and it will require exceptional leadership and determination.

“The commission with a mandate to address a programme of reform, not just one big bang. As well as more sincere apologies, and proper compensation, the victims of the Post Office Scandal deserve  real change in the integrity of lawyers, the legal system and those who use them.”