The criminal solicitor stated that he had “qualified into a culture of ‘robing room banter’ that made light of difficult work by relying on inappropriate humour”.
The SDT stated that the lawyer’s attempted humour was directed at a younger female probation officer. He had shown her an image on his phone of a naked woman lying on a table with bottles covering her breasts and had suggested that the woman looked like the probation officer.
The tribunal found that the incidents “included a bullying element and involved sexualised content and comments” towards her.
In her role as a probation officer, she routinely worked at Crawley Magistrates’ Court, where the offences took place.
There were two separate occasions, the first in May 2021, when the lawyer had shown the image to a solicitor sitting next to him and said “something like ‘[Probation Officer] it looks a bit like you’ and ‘your hair looks the same”, before showing the image to the probation officer.
She said she did not know how to react and felt “awkward and uncomfortable because the person in the picture was naked”.
The second incident was in July 2021, when the criminal solicitor had been representing a female client who was arrested for having sex on a train.
In an attempt to “joke about” the offence, solicitor said to the prosecutor: “[Probation officer] knows all about that, standard probation practice.”
The probation officer said that the comments made her feel “really uncomfortable” and that it was a “totally outrageous thing to say and not at all appropriate.”
It was added that it was “not the first time that [the criminal solicitor] had made such inappropriate comments towards her”. After both incidents were reported, he apologised to her in December 2021.
The SDT found that the solicitor failed to uphold public trust and confidence or encourage EDI.
He was reprimanded and ordered to pay costs of £12,000.
