Description
Professor Richard Moorhead
The Post Office Scandal
Leading astray: how lawyers and leaders got legal risk wrong
The Post Office Scandal is an appalling matter that has affected tragically so many innocent sub-postmasters. In fact locally, on The Wirral where I live Martin Griffiths took his own life when wrongly accused of stealing £60000.
Both big firms and leading in-house lawyers have long trumpeted the commercial lawyer who ‘has the businesses back’ and have adopted the ethics of hired gun rather than wise counsel. A growing number of scandals is prompting some to think again about the role of lawyers in business. One such scandal, driven by politics, dodgy accounting software, flawed lawyering, and questionable corporate governance, has led to over 700 erroneous convictions. Many innocents pillars of their communities have gone to prison, and thousands have lost savings, livelihoods, and more. Reputations on all sides lie in tatters. The Treasury is having to find £1bn to try and right the wrongs and we can expect corporate leaders, politicians, and lawyers, some of them leading lawyer and leading firms, to feel the heat. Courts and Parliament have been misled and prosecutorial power abused. This talk explores how poor, but common, ways of thinking by corporates and the lawyers who serve them have led us to this point. It is a story about aggressive risk management, the vulnerabilities of independent investigations, the ways in which lawyers, and PT strategists can lose sight of the truth, and how organisations respond to crises. It will argue we need better, more ethically aware professions and boards if better decisions are to be taken and the abuse of law is to be avoided.
