The Hamlyn Lectures 2024 | Frail Professionalism, Lawyers Ethics after the Post Office and other cases

These lectures will argue it is time to change the way lawyers think and behave, and how courts, clients, and regulators set their expectations. You can now book tickets for Exeter, Leeds, or London.

This year’s Hamlyn Lectures will be given by yours truly in Exeter, Leeds, and London. These lectures are open to all and there is no charge. You can book by clicking on one of the links. Let me set the scene…

The Post Office Scandal has alerted the nation to trouble in the legal world and the profession to problems in its ranks.

To those more accustomed to looking at lawyers’ ethics, the problems are less surprising. They suggest bad decisions of course, taken by bad people sometimes, but also bad systems and cultures too. The consequences of the Scandal were unparalleled for those who owned and worked in Post Offices and their families, but the problems that were exposed with the lawyers were unsurprising, ugly manifestations of a certain kind of professional orthodoxy. We see a clue about how important those problems are in the way they spread so widely across all segments of the legal professions, junior and senior lawyers, in-house and independent practice, and barristers and solicitors.

These lectures will argue it is time to change the way lawyers think and behave, and how courts, clients, and regulators set their expectations. As well as fair and rigorous enforcement, the intellectual frameworks of lawyers need refreshing, and the institutions they work within strengthening.

I: What drives ethical error? Unreliable gods and their fearless logics. 30th October, University of Exeter, 6pm (click here to book)

II: Can legal logics pollute institutions? Extraordinary Orthodoxies and Legality Illusions. 6th November, University of Leeds, School of Law, 6pm (click here to book)

III: Routes to proper professionalism? Lucidity, morality and accountabilities. 13th November, UCL, Faculty of Laws, London, 6pm (click here to book)

Abstracts

Hamlyn I: What drives ethical error?
Unreliable gods and their fearless logics. 30th October, University of Exeter, 6pm

This lecture will consider what drives good lawyers towards ethical blunders. Traditional notions of lawyers’ ethics, ideas such as fearlessness, zeal and Cab Rank neutrality, will be examined, as will the human frailties that all humans, even – perhaps especially – lawyers, face. We will consider how such ideas can drive lawyers towards disaster. Examples will be taken from the Post Office Scandal but also elsewhere. I will suggest traditional notions of ethics are flawed; that rather than protect the rule of law, they render it vulnerable.

Hamlyn II: Can legal logics pollute institutions?

Extraordinary Orthodoxies and Legality Illusions. 6th November, University of Leeds, School of Law, 6pm

This lecture shifts the focus from the individual to their institutional contexts. Lawyers operate in organisations and within courts, nurtured by the cultures of litigation that can reinforce each other's vulnerabilities, giving rise to ‘extraordinary orthodoxies’ that can pollute sensible and just decision-making, driving cover-ups and false narratives. Such orthodoxies are morally loaded and pathologically tactical; they may explain many of the actions of lawyers in the Post Office Scandals and other cases. The idea that these orthodoxies culminate in the creation of legality illusions will be developed to illustrate the need for a richer but simpler, socially meaningful notion of professional ethics that can have practical traction.

Hamlyn III: Routes to proper professionalism? 

Lucidity, morality and accountabilities. 13th November, UCL, Faculty of Laws, London, 6pm

This lecture will suggest routes to re-invigorating lawyers’ ethics. It will suggest reframing professional thinking so that lucid, practical, meaningful instantiations of integrity and independence match client loyalty. It will ask, does good judgment (and indeed the law) demand a place for morality in professional decision-making? And if so, what kind of morality? And how should uncertainty and risk be managed proportionately and without paternalism? An agenda for professional rule changes, regulatory practice, education, the courts, professional privilege and corporate governance is suggested by the orthodoxies the Post Office Scandal reveals; its victims demand our attention, and this lecture will propose ideas for action.