Blog post follows BSB’s battle with Charlotte Proudman
The director general of the bar’s regulator has reflected on the often tricky balance between free speech and barristers’ professional obligations in a new blog post.
Mark Neale, who has headed up the Bar Standards Board (BSB) since 2020, has posted the piece a matter of months after the regulator controversially brought disciplinary action against barrister Charlotte Proudman.
The regulator took Proudman to a regulatory tribunal after she tweeted about a “boys club” at the bar, following a judgment on domestic abuse that she disagreed with.
Whilst the BSB described the action as “seriously offensive” and containing “derogatory language which was designed to demean and/or insult the judge”, the case was thrown out by the tribunal with no case to answer.
After the ruling Proudman commented that she “would be willing to work with the BSB to promote change, but not under the current leadership, that is simply not possible”.
In his post, Neale begins by noting that he places a “high value on free speech as a guarantor of free enquiry and as a constraint on arbitrary power. But I also think that professional people are bound by higher standards than the general public”.
“I see no intrinsic problem with individual barristers making public statements about controversial public policy matters,” he write. “But that does not mean that barristers, and indeed other professionals, have complete license.”
He goes on to say that “professionals must take care not to undermine public confidence in their own profession”, using the analogy of doctors making unfounded claims about the safety of medicines.
“Similarly”, he says “barristers should think carefully about statements which might compromise the integrity of the justice system”.
Whilst this “certainly” does not mean that barristers cannot express “views with which some (or even many) clients may disagree or which they may even find offensive”, it does mean that “barristers should not express views in such a way as to give citizens of particular backgrounds or views legitimate grounds for doubting their or the profession’s ability to represent them effectively and dispassionately”.
“Whether a line has been crossed into a potential breach of the BSB Handbook will always be matters of judgement for the regulator taking into account the law, including caselaw developments in this area,” he said. “But barristers too must exercise judgment when speaking or writing publicly on controversial matters.”
“Professionalism carries responsibilities as well as rights,” Neal concluded.
The piece didn’t go unnoticed by Proudman, who responded on X:
Mark Neale, care to explain whether male barristers calling me a cunt, wanker, and mentally ill has a “potential impact on public confidence in the profession and the justice system”?
The regulator selectively enforces its rules—protecting male perpetrators instead of holding…
— Dr Charlotte Proudman (@DrProudman) February 6, 2025
