Post Office: lawyers’ decision-making ‘corrupted’

Academics probing the role of lawyers in the Post Office Horizon scandal yesterday delivered a damning interim verdict after scrutinising a document at the heart of the saga.

Legal regulators must come up with ‘practical’ ways’ of stressing the importance of independence when lawyers conduct reviews for clients, they conclude.

The recommendation comes in a forthright working paper from Exeter University’s Evidence-based Justice Lab, which has been probing the scandal for two years. The 41-page paper focuses on a review conducted for the Post Office in 2013 by eminent silk Brian Altman.

Altman’s review, which was not made public until January this year, scrutinised the conduct of past prosecutions and prosecution policy at Post Office at what was a ‘critical juncture’ in the scandal.

The Justice Lab’s analysis of the review concludes: ‘There are lessons to be learned on the nature of human and professional relationships that encourage lawyers to absorb and reflect back their client’s view without sufficient independence and critical detachment.’

‘The [Altman] review demonstrated a tendency to treat with cynicism the appellants and to disregard entirely the human costs of the Post Office’s conduct. This blindness to the humanity of others is sometimes reified in practice (and the Bar’s Code of Conduct) as fearless advocacy. The review stands as a monument to that approach, showing how the decision-making of the lawyers can be limited or corrupted by excessive zeal.’

The Exeter project is led by Richard Moorhead, professor of law and professional ethics at the university. Last month his team was commissioned to conduct a three-year project on the scandal funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The Altman paper will be submitted to the official Post Office Inquiry, which will soon begin probing in detail the conduct of lawyers involved in the affair.

In perhaps their most pungent finding, the Exeter academics encourage the legal profession to reassess its way of working in light of how lawyers sell their services.

Alluding to commendations that appeared on the websites of, respectively, Lord Grabiner KC and Altman himself, they add: ‘We encourage the profession to reflect more urgently and candidly on its approaches to solicitor-client and organisation-client relations and organisational culture.

‘Where leading lawyers, connected with the Post Office case, appear to have sold their services on the basis they can turn, “a pile of refuse into something that looks great” [Grabiner] or on the basis that, “he won’t deviate from his path and will crush anything that gets in the way” [Altman], we are entitled to ask if the culture they laud influences their judgement and behaviour in ways they should take personal and collective responsibility for.

‘Reviews of this kind engage obligations of candour to the clients; obligations not to mislead or be complicit in misleading anyone, including key constituencies within the client; and obligations of independence. Regulators need to consider practical ways of emphasising the priority of independence when conducting reviews for clients commissioned to be, or to be held out as, independent.’

(See also today's Gazette magazine: Post Office Inquiry prepares to shine the spotlight on lawyers.)

This article is now closed for comment.