Professor Richard Moorhead has called for the creation of an independent commission to improve “honesty, integrity and effectiveness in the use of law” in the wake of the Post Office scandal. 

Delivering the last of his Hamlyn lectures last week, Moorhead, arguably the UK’s leading legal ethicist, said: “We have to change the way lawyers think and behave. We have to put complete integrity and particular care not to mislead at the front of our thinking. We should turn away from lauding amorality and guard against harm.” 

In a detailed blog post accompanying his lecture, Moorhead, a professor of law and professional ethics at the University of Exeter, has proposed how society should address problems of honesty and integrity in commercial and public life following the Post Office Scandal.

His proposals, noted Moorhead, encompassed professional regulation of lawyers but went further to include corporate governance approaches and the courts as “part of the ethics ecosystem affecting commercial and public life.” 

Nor were they exclusive to the Post Office scandal, said Moorhead, pointing to “serious problems” in cases handled for banks and oligarchs, threats to national security, alleged SLAPPs, NDAs, corruption and hacking cases.

He criticised excessive aggression in legal work, such as “suggesting things are legal that are likely not legal, including misleading and abusive handling of legal matters,” as well as mutually irresponsible management of legal decisions between lawyers and clients – which he said was often aided by lawyers – and abuse of confidentiality and legal professional privilege.

Moorhead set out a series of recommendations, with the central one being the creation of an independent commission similar to the Clementi Review of Legal Services, whose “central agenda should be how to improve honesty, integrity and effectiveness in the use of law.”

The commission would need to be independent of, but working with, government, the professions, the courts and regulators, Moorhead said, adding that "given problems in accountancy it may need to encompass professional advisers beyond law." 

Moorhead's proposal coincides with a new report by the International Bar Association on the role of soft law guidance in supporting the ethical conduct of lawyers.

Responding to the IBA report and the issues arising from the Post Office scandal, the Law Society of England and Wales said it worked with the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre (IDEA) to produce a new ethical practice framework to support in-house solicitors.

Law Society president Richard Atkinson said he recognised the “growing need and demand for support … following the Post Office Horizon IT public inquiry.” He added that the profession should “learn the wider lessons and implications of what went wrong in solicitors’ professional ethics,” calling it “a key topic the profession would like more support on.”

He added that over the past year, IDEA Leeds has carried out research with Law Society in-house members and experts to identify the challenges faced by the in-house community, explore potential solutions, define the scope of the project and subsequently refine the contents of the framework further.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has also published revised guidance materials for in-house solicitors in response to calls for action from members of that community following the Post Office Scandal.

Juliet Oliver, general counsel at the SRA, said: “These documents reflect the unique challenges and issues that in-house solicitors encounter in their day-to-day roles and aim to support solicitors in meeting these and to highlight the value that in-house solicitors can bring to organisations in promoting ethical behaviour and managing legal risk.”