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Doing what’s right & legal

23 May 2019 / John Gould
Issue: 7841 / Categories: Features , Regulatory
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Conduct unbefitting? John Gould weighs up the evidence surrounding legal but anti-social lawyering
  • One person’s moral conviction is not another’s legal obligation.
  • Lawyers must have integrity and comply with professional codes.

Law is the great ethical common denominator. We can disagree with it but we must obey it or take the consequences. It tells us, in a way which matters, what is right and what is wrong. It tells us what is permitted and what is not. It tells us that with compliance comes the freedom to speak or to do as we please.

Individually I may think that failing to stand for the national anthem should be punished by public stoning but, until my lobbying produces a referendum and legislation, you can continue to sit there gesturing disrespectfully in my general direction. A Beefeater will not appear and haul you off to the Bloody Tower.

Fortunately for lawyers, we are not experiencing a shortage of law. Law, like nature, abhors a vacuum and a vast cloud of law

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

FOIL—Bridget Tatham

FOIL—Bridget Tatham

Forum of Insurance Lawyers elects president for 2026

Gibson Dunn—Robbie Sinclair

Gibson Dunn—Robbie Sinclair

Partner joinslabour and employment practice in London

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Muckle LLP—Ella Johnson

Real estate dispute resolution team welcomes newly qualified solicitor

NEWS
Cryptocurrency is reshaping financial remedy cases, warns Robert Webster of Maguire Family Law in NLJ this week. Digital assets—concealable, volatile and hard to trace—are fuelling suspicions of hidden wealth, yet Form E still lacks a section for crypto-disclosure
NLJ columnist Stephen Gold surveys a flurry of procedural reforms in his latest 'Civil way' column
Paper cyber-incident plans are useless once ransomware strikes, argues Jack Morris of Epiq in NLJ this week
In this week's NLJ, Robert Hargreaves and Lily Johnston of York St John University examine the Employment Rights Bill 2024–25, which abolishes the two-year qualifying period for unfair-dismissal claims
Writing in NLJ this week, Manvir Kaur Grewal of Corker Binning analyses the collapse of R v Óg Ó hAnnaidh, where a terrorism charge failed because prosecutors lacked statutory consent. The case, she argues, highlights how procedural safeguards—time limits, consent requirements and institutional checks—define lawful state power
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