The Legal Services Board has recently approved some key changes to the Code of Conduct which governs the behaviour of solicitors in England and Wales and the firms the Board regulates. The changes were made on application from the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Two provisions have been added:
For solicitors:
New standard in section 1 (maintaining trust and acting fairly):
“1.5 You treat colleagues fairly and with respect. You do not bully or harass them or discriminate unfairly against them. If you are a manager you challenge behaviour that does not meet this standard.”
For regulated firms:
New standard in section 1 (maintaining trust and acting fairly):
“1.6 You treat those who work for and with you fairly and with respect, and do not bully or harass them or discriminate unfairly against them. You require your employees to meet this standard.”
(There are also other changes relating to heath and fitness to practice which are important but not covered in this article.)
An immediate reaction might be surprise that these requirements did not already exist, after all they are part and parcel of employment law.
Explicitly stating our expectations of conduct helps solidify common obligations and aims.
One would expect solicitors and their firms to treat people fairly and with respect. What is new, however, is that they are expressed to be part of the professional obligations of solicitors and their firms, and therefore go to their fitness to practice. It is part of what it is to be a solicitor or a regulated firm to treat colleagues fairly and with respect.
Both provisions speak particularly of bullying, harassment and discriminatory behaviour, but the requirement for fairness and respect arguably goes further than how those terms are understood in employment law, and impose a positive obligation as opposed to simply imposing liability for offending behaviour.
Further, although the provision for individual solicitors refers to colleagues, the accompanying guidance makes clear that this is not just fellow employees/partners in a firm but also contractors, consultants and experts with whom regulated individuals work. The guidance also makes clear that it extends to behaviour away from the workplace where such behaviour arises in the context of relationships as colleagues. There is an additional obligation on managers to challenge offending behaviour.
The provision for firms arguably goes further in its reference to “those who work for and with you” — that might well be understood, for example, to apply to people in other organisations, be they clients or other law firms for example.
We operate in a wider network than we might first imagine, and the way we treat those we work with, radiates out.
What has this got to do with the Mindful Business Charter, I hear you ask?
The MBC is based around four pillars, of which the first is the most important:
Openness & Respect — building trust and effective communication:
Respect for fellow professionals is obviously at the heart of this. Where MBC goes further than the Code of Conduct is in encouraging a culture of openness where we have the permission and language to talk about how our fellow professionals are behaving and the impact upon us.
A happy and productive workplace is one where everyone is treated with openness and respect — including the permission to speak up.
The Charter goes on in the other pillars to explore how this approach might then apply to different aspects of how we work — meetings and communications, respecting rest periods and delegation — exploring what respect means in those contexts and recognising that it goes far further than simply avoiding behaviour that might be classed as bullying, harassment or discrimination. It is unlikely, assuming this how we treat everyone, to be deemed to be bullying, harassment or discrimination, for example, to be emailing colleagues at 1am in the morning, or summoning them at the last moment to a meeting without explanation of the context and concern for their other priorities, but it is far from respectful.
At MBC’s heart though is a common language and the permission to talk about any aspect of our working practices that might be causing stress.
We have spent nearly five years now with our community of members (now around 140 organisations worldwide) exploring how to make this real in practice and have created a range of approaches and resources as a result.
For firms looking to explore what the changes to the Code of Conduct might mean, and how to address them, MBC offers a useful roadmap, not just to meeting those professional obligations but to go further in creating the healthy, effective and sustainable profession we want and need. Although our members now cover many different sectors, the founders were lawyers, and one of our informal aspirations from the outset was and is to create a legal profession we would encourage our children to join. The changes to the Code of Conduct are a welcome, if surprisingly tardy, contribution to that aspiration.
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