the times | Thursday October 15 2020 1GM 53
David Greene is not keen to start
his year as leader of the solicitors’
profession by picking a fight with the
government.
Last month, days after Priti Patel
claimed that “activist lawyers” were
frustrating the removal of migrants,
there was a knife attack at a law firm in
which an immigration solicitor was
injured. Colleagues claimed that the
comments had motivated the attack;
Greene’s organisation, the Law Society,
wrote to the Home Office and the
Ministry of Justice about the incident.
Patel doubled down on the claim at
the Tory conference on October 4 by
referring to “lefty lawyers” who were
hindering efforts to reform the asylum
system. Boris Johnson used his own
address to lambast “lefty human rights
lawyers”. This week Greene’s counter-
part at the Bar Council called for public
apologies from the prime minister and
home secretary.
“There should never be a situation
when a British prime minister, home
secretary and other government minis-
ters need to be called upon to stop delib-
erately inflammatory language to-
wards a profession simply doing its job
in the public interest,” Amanda Pinto,
QC, chairwoman of the Bar Council,
which represents 16,500 barristers in
England and Wales, said. “Shockingly,
we’ve arrived at that point.”
Greene, the new president of the Law
Society, which represents 145,000 so-
licitors in the jurisdiction, is adopting a
more diplomatic tone. Speaking to The
Times before his promotion to the top
slot today, which was delayed by about
three months owing to the pandemic,
he says: “It would be wrong of me to
suggest that the knife attack flowed
from a particular rhetoric from either
the home secretary or the prime minis-
ter. However, those comments feed into
a febrile atmosphere.
“Politicians should be careful in their
words when in this particular atmos-
phere and have to avoid the rhetoric of
blaming lawyers when solicitors and
barristers are simply doing their jobs.”
Immigration law is a controversial
area. While the language of Johnson
and Patel is damned by many as inflam-
matory, others claim that there are sig-
nificant examples of fraud in that field
resulting in solicitors being struck off.
Greene is also not looking for a battle
with the profession’s watchdog in his
first week in office. “We put our trust in
the Solicitors Regulation Authority
[SRA] to enforce regulation in a proper
and prompt manner and I’m sure that
they do,” he says.
Greene, 64, does not normally run
shy of a dust-up. He has twice stood un-
successfully as a Labour candidate for
parliament. And two years ago he told
the Law Society Gazette that if he had
not gone into the law, he would have
persisted with politics.
“I was a member of the Young Com-
munist League [the youth wing of the
Communist party of Great Britain] and
then joined the Labour Party,” he said,
adding that his legal practice “has al-
lowed me to pursue politics through thecourts”. Indeed, Greene took a promi-
nent role in the Article 50 case that
went to the Supreme Court as Theresa
May’s government attempted to fire
the starting gun on the UK’s departureexclusive to members
Sick and wrong Pandemic
triggers rise in hate crime
Keep it simple Disclosure
plan is far too complicated
New alliances Sanctioning
rights abuses after Brexit
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thetimes.co.uk
In conversation
David Offenbach
on a life spent
fighting the
establishment
thetimes.co.uk
David Greene says that Brexit must not be forgotten amid the pandemic panic
‘Ministers must watch language’
from the EU. The businesswoman Gina
Miller had most of the limelight in that
challenge, but her co-applicant, Deir
Dos Santos, a hairdresser, was repre-
sented by Edwin Coe, the London law
firm where Greene qualified in 1980
and where he is the senior partner.
Brexit has almost faded from the
public consciousness in the whirlwind
of Covid-19, but Greene warns that it
must not be forgotten. He says a no-
deal Brexit would mean that solicitors
who were able to practise across the EU
under mutual recognition of qualifica-
tions provisions will at the end of the
year be faced with a maze of bureau-
cratic processes in various jurisdictions.
Diversity is an issue for Greene, who
acknowledges that especially in the
City the number of partners with ethnic
minority backgrounds is vanishingly
small. But he argues that the term
BAME is too broad and disguises differ-
ences within ethnic minority groups.
City law firms “need to drill down
beyond BAME,” he says, adding that
“the experience of black and Asian law-
yers is often very different. And indeed
the experience between Afro-Caribbe-
an lawyers and African lawyers is also
very different.” He says that the Law
Society, is also studying “issues around
disabled lawyers — and white working-
class men. This is important work
because the profession should reflect
the wider population and clients”.
Sexual harassment and the use of
non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) is
another area of difficulty for the
society’s leadership. Last year commen-
tators claimed that the society under-
mined guidance from the regulator on
the use of NDAs. A former SRA official
said that the society’s own guidance
was “woolly” and accused it of giving
“too much room to solicitors to use
clauses that risk the silencing of appro-
priate reporting to the police or regula-
tors, or perhaps even preventing some-
one giving evidence in trials”.
Greene claims that the society and
the watchdog are aligned in their gui-
dance. He also defends the use of the
agreements in some cases, arguing that
“one shouldn’t conclude that it is only
the firm that wants to impose some
form of NDA — often the employee
wants to seek an agreement”.
The SRA is understood to be review-
ing its warning notice on the use of the
agreements, though it will not give de-
tails. Greene says the society will mirror
amendments made by the regulator.TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILLJonathan Ames
Lawyer of the week Sarosh Zaiwalla
Sarosh Zaiwalla, the founder of
Zaiwalla & Co in London, acted for
Banco Central de Venezuela in the
Court of Appeal in a fight about
£1.5 billion of gold stored in Bank of
England vaults. The cases hinges
on whether Nicolás Maduro or
Juan Guaidó holds the
disputed Venezuelan
presidency. The court
ruled that an earlier High
Court decision exclusively
recognising Guaidó was
incorrect. The matter will
be reconsidered by the
High Court.What were the
main issues?
Various
aspects ofsanctions law, public policy and
constitutional law, creating a
politically sensitive cocktail that has
made this case so contentious. The
fundamental question is whether it
is acceptable to single out the
Venezuelan president while
other leaders around the
world with more doubtful
democratic credentials are
fully recognised.What is the best decision
you’ve made as a lawyer?
To stay in England after
qualifying rather than
to return to India
— the British legal
system is the best
and the fairest
in the world.Who has inspired you in your
career? Cedric Barclay, one of
the most eminent maritime
arbitrators, who encouraged me to
start my own firm.What is the funniest thing that has
happened to you in the law? Years
ago, I had back-to-back meetings with
a potential employee and a bank
manager. After a diary error, I was
informed 25 minutes into the first
meeting that I was attempting to
interview the bank manager for a
role at my firm.What is the best advice you have
received? Always to act with
complete integrity and honesty,
with the client as well as opponents
and the court.Which three qualities should a
lawyer have? The courage to take
innovative but sometimes
unpopular points of law, an instinct
for uncovering the truth and
acceptance that the law is a jealous
mistress.What law would you enact? A
constitutional category law to ensure
equality of men and women in all
fields of work.How would you like to be
remembered? As someone who
courageously innovates to secure
justice for overseas clients seeking a
fair hearing.Linda Tsang
[email protected]Strength in
numbers?
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the
Welsh former lord chief justice,
has argued that his homeland
should have a bespoke justice
system with its own courts. But
that hope appears to have been
dashed by a fellow countryman.
Opening this year’s Legal Wales
Conference last week, Robert
Buckland, QC, the lord chancellor
and secretary of state for justice,
who was born in Llanelli, said:
“We are in a much stronger
position to respond to competition
in the legal sector through a single
jurisdiction for Wales and
England.” Accepting there will
always be a debate on devolution,
Buckland said he was “convinced
that the set-up we have is best for
the law and the legal sector in
Wales, as well as in England”.
When he published the report
of the Commission on Justice for
Wales, which he chaired, last
autumn, Lord Thomas took a
different view. He told The Times:
“The current justice system does
not serve Wales well and we
conclude that justice should be
devolved to Wales.”Bullies at the Bar
Yet more evidence that bullying
continues to blight the Bar. This
week, the Bar Standards Board,
the profession’s regulator,
published the results of interviews
with 35 barristers and pupils who
claimed to have experience of
such behaviour. “Participants felt
that bullying, discrimination and
harassment were tolerated to a
certain extent due to the
adversarial, male-dominated
culture of the Bar,” the report says.Gulf war rumbles on
More twists and turns in the saga
involving City lawyers and the
Gulf emirate of Ras al-Khaimah.
The story kicked off earlier this
year when Farhad Azima, a US
entrepreneur, sued the emirate’s
investment authority over claims
that it had hacked his emails. He
accused Dechert, the authority’s
law firm, of running a mini-Stasi
on behalf of the emirate’s ruler.
Azima and Karam al-Sadeq, a
former lawyer at the authority,
claim that Neil Gerrard, a
London-based Dechert partner,
threatened them with torture
during prison interviews.
In May, Judge Andrew Lenon,
QC, dismissed Azima’s claim but
last month, Lord Justice Arnold
granted leave to appeal.
Piling the pressure on was a
High Court claim this month by
Jihad Quzmar, a former lawyer to
Saud bin Saqr al-Qasimi, the ruler
of RAK. The lawyer claims he
faced “unlawful interrogation by
Mr Gerrard in circumstances
amounting to torture”.
Dechert and Gerrard have
consistently denied wrongdoing.OUT OF COURT
The cases, the chatter, the chaos:
what’s really going on in the law