Thread by @JolyonMaugham

Two hard truths about lawyers and Oligarchs. 🧵

First hard truth. It's generally fine to criticise lawyers - barristers and solicitors - for acting for Oligarchs.

Solicitors always get to choose who they act for. Some barristers do (nobly) abide by the cab rank rule - but many do not. They act for who will pay their fees.

Yes, criticising lawyers for acting for Oligarchs theoretically undermines access to justice and equality before the law which is a genuinely important foundation of the law.

But to talk of the harm done by criticising lawyers for acting for Oligarchs is to strain at a gnat after swallowing a camel. Equality before the law is a bit of a joke in a world where normal people can't access it and rich people can. If you care about equality talk about that.

Oligarchs will always be able to find lawyers to act for them. There is no real access to justice issue. If you clutch your pearls at theoretical risks to Oligarchs rather than point at real problems for normal people you are de facto an unpaid lobbyist for the wrong people.

Second hard truth, there is a real problem not only with who lawyers act for but what they do.

Lawyers are supposed to uphold the law; that's perhaps the core ethical duty of lawyers.

There's a narrow conception of that duty which lets you do anything which isn't positively prohibited if it advances the interests of your client. So you eg delay, cause the case to be more expensive, run points you know to be bad so long as you think it helps your client 'win'.

And there's a broad conception of that core duty which requires you to engage in a less formalistic way with what 'upholding the law' means. That broader conception doesn't mean you put aside the interests of your clients. But it does mean you mediate them through your core duty.

The debate between broad and narrow conceptions is akin to the debate the tax profession has with itself about whether tax avoidance - often involving constructing legal castles in the sky that bear no relationship to the reality on the ground - is professionally ethical.

The narrow conception turns lawyers acting for the wealthy into a private army who weaponise the law. No longer does it serve a public good. Instead it a tool for the extracting of undue benefit from those who lack your economic power.

This undermines, not upholds, the law.

We see the effects in spaces that only the wealthy can occupy like defamation actions and we see it in contractual relationships between the wealthy and everyone else.

It's difficult stuff: @sra_solicitors has started to grapple with it - but @barstandards has more to do.

The upshot (I think) is that many of the criticisms - sometimes badly motivated, lacking nuance, or even inaccurate - from the press about the conduct of lawyers acting for Oligarchs deserve a more nuanced response than they often get from the legal profession. /ENDS