A Lawyer Writes

A recently-promoted partner at a leading UK-based global law firm is facing professional ruin, the Court of Appeal said last week, after being “played for a fool by a skilful and well prepared interrogator” acting covertly for his client’s litigation opponent. “A ‘privilege hunting’ operation such as occurred in this case should have no place in litigation in the courts of England and Wales,” one of the appeal judges observed.

Member states of the International Criminal Court will vote today on whether to fire the court’s suspended chief prosecutor Karim Khan KC for alleged sexual misconduct. He denies the allegations. Khan’s accuser, a lawyer at the court identified only by her first name Sarah, spoke on camera for the first time last week. In an interview with CNN, she repeated her allegations that the prosecutor had a non-consensual sexual relationship with her.

The United Kingdom’s uncodified constitution must be safeguarded if it is protect the integrity of our democracy, public policy experts argue in a report published today. They make 28 recommendations dealing with loopholes that could be exploited by unscrupulous governments as well as raising wider concerns.

Andy Slaughter MP, currently chair of the Commons justice committee, has been appointed solicitor general. He will deputise for the attorney general Ellie Reeves KC MP and is expected to deal with unduly lenient sentences. Slaughter was called to the bar in 1993 and has been an MP since 2005. He held shadow ministerial posts while Labour was in opposition.

Eleven years ago this month, Sir Christopher Pitchford formally opened the Undercover Policing Inquiry. It was expected to take three years and Pitchford was able to continue sitting as an appeal judge. Nearly two years later he stood down because of ill-health. The former High Court judge Sir John Mitting was appointed to replace Pitchford in 2017. Though the inquiry has not yet concluded, he too is planning to retire after publishing his latest interim report.

A person “may not be recommended for appointment as lord chancellor unless he appears to the prime minister to be qualified by experience”. So said parliament just over 20 years ago when it passed the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Alex Norris MP in Bulwell, Nottingham What experience qualifies Alex Norris MP for his appointment yesterday as lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice?

I have been speculating for some time that the new prime minister will not allow David Lammy and Lord Hermer KC to keep the top legal jobs in government. Their expected successors — we still don’t know Andy Burnham’s plans — will have no shortage of political advisers. But what emerged last Friday is that the justice secretary and the attorney general have not been receiving the constitutional advice they clearly needed.

The attorney general should have corrected factual inaccuracies in a press release published by the Crown Prosecution Service on 21 May after three boys were sentenced for rape offences at Fordingbridge, Hampshire, the Court of Appeal said today. I published a detailed account last week of the “very significant errors” that were left uncorrected for nearly three weeks.

Home Office ministers were accused of shelving an independent report on fraud in February, the Financial Times reported at the time. It had been expected that the report, written by Jonathan Fisher KC and completed last December, would be published before the government unveiled its fraud strategy at a global summit in Vienna in March. We “will publish it, along with a government response, in due course”, the Home Office promised in February.

LeO “needs to transform”, his handler said this month. LeO, in this context, is the legal ombudsman and his handler is the chair of the Office for Legal Complaints — which, in turn, reports to the Legal Services Board. One enhancement — if not quite a transformation — is suggested in a report today by Blind Justice UK, a small charity that bases its research on published data. I’ve covered two of its reports so far.