Bar Standards Board investigations chief removes scary Facebook profile photo

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By Alex Aldridge on

Go ahead, barristers who fail to complete their CPD requirements, make Paul Pretty’s day

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The job of disciplining unruly barristers presumably requires the cultivation of a certain image of toughness.

But in selecting a Dirty Harry-style snap of himself aiming a gun as his Facebook profile photo, new Bar Standards Board (BSB) investigations and hearings chief Paul Pretty may have gone a step too far.

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Indeed, this has to be the conclusion drawn from Pretty’s decision to remove the photo on Friday evening after we contacted him about it following a tip off from our Inns of Court spies.

Stressing that the picture “was taken in the appropriate setting of a shooting range,” Pretty — who was a practising criminal barrister himself before joining the BSB — told Legal Cheek:

“As soon as I was alerted to the fact that the image may give an inaccurate impression of myself, I immediately took it down from my Facebook profile.”

Fair enough, no harm done. Let’s just hope that some heavy-handed professional regulator doesn’t get hold of what is clearly a silly mistake and blow it out of all proportion…