IBA's Bullying & Sexual Harassment Seminar and Report

Last Monday (June 4th, 2019), I attended an evening seminar hosted by the IBA in the Thomson Reuters building in Times Square in NYC. The seminar was to report on the results of the IBA's report on the subjects of "bullying" and "sexual harassment" (viz.: https://www.ibanet.org/bullying-and-sexual-harassment.aspx) and to discuss the ways forward. My understanding is that the report was inspired by the "#metoo" movement that erupted on Twitter in October 2017. The seminar brought together lawyers and other professionals from around the world to discuss the past and present problems that bullying and sexual harassment have posed and continue to pose and to hear about solutions to combat the same.

The panel discussed historical examples of bullying and sexual harassment. We heard about the days of shoes and briefcases being thrown at lawyers in American law firms. We heard about female lawyers having to adopt evasion strategies to deal with sexually aggressive peers and judges. We heard that now, male partners are becoming increasingly uncomfortable about going on business trips with female junior lawyers for fear of reprisals. We also heard from various speakers that it is up to law firm management to "set the tone at the top" and how important culture and reeducation are.

During the cocktail hour, I had several interesting discussions with attendees. I shared the story of one woman whom I know very well. Let's call her "Jane." Jane, a white middle-aged woman, worked as an executive assistant in a British law firm in NYC and, one day, when the managing partner, who was a new father of twins and facing a court deadline, snapped and punched Jane square in the face (this happened more than 10 years ago and Jane still bears the yellow shadow of the bruise on her face). Rather than call the police, her colleagues were adamant that, if Jane called the police, they would not corroborate her story. Jane was taking care of a sick family member and was in a fragile financial state. Fear for her and her family member's survival stopped her from calling the police. However, when Jane finally got the courage to speak up, it was too late (the statute of limitations had run out). However, what is even more shocking is that, when Jane called the NYSBA to complain about the managing partner who assaulted her, the NYSBA did nothing and said attorney is still in good standing. Someone said that, if it had been a non-white person, the firm would have handled it in a completely different way and the police would have been called. It is hard to know if and how the results would have differed had any of the variables been different. Sadly, the fact remains that Jane was the victim of a violent physical assault in her workplace and was neither supported by the firm nor vindicated in court or by the NYSBA.

As an attorney with significant compliance experience, both in Al Jazeera and Qatar Airways, I was not surprised to hear about the incidents of bullying and sexual harassment in the legal workplace. I have seen and experienced it and the other attendees had also seen and experienced it in different degrees. Whilst bullying and sexual harassment occur in all workplaces when it happens in the legal workplace, it is more abhorrent in the legal world because of the high standards to which legal professionals are held. We can draft all the corporate policies we want against bullying and sexual harassment but without stringent implementation and significant sanctions, such reports as the IBA's report will have little impact and company policies will do nothing but pay lip service to the problems.

The IBA recommends the following steps going forward:

1. Raise awareness;
2. Revise and implement policies and standards;
3. Introduce regular, customized training;
4. Increase dialogue and best-practice sharing;
5. Take ownership;
6. Gather data and improve transparency;
7. Explore flexible reporting models;
8. Engage with younger members of the profession;
9. Appreciate the wider context; and
10. Maintain momentum.

New York (and, certainly, lawyers from other US states) qualified lawyers like my peers and me, know that professional standards attach to the profession. Indeed, when I swore in as an Attorney in NY, my intake heard our first Continuing Legal Education seminar on Professional Ethics. We were urged to uphold the professional standards, to be polite to our peers and opponents and refrain from verbal and physical abuse. One would think such advice is unnecessary.

Having spent 15 years in the profession, all of it in the Middle East, I witnessed degrees of bullying and sexual harassment that would probably result in multi-million dollar lawsuits in the Western world. Sadly, the worst abuse was often perpetrated by a Western licensed lawyer who would feel free to engage in such behavior because s/he felt "above the law" (i.e., the false belief that local laws did not apply to him or her and consequently they could and would perpetuate such bad behavior) and/or that the local laws were equipped to deal with their bullying and/or sexual harassment and consequently the actor would get away with it and his or her victims left without legal recourse. In this regard, I would call on all Western professional law associations to develop stronger and more significant sanctions against members who fall afoul of their professional standards regardless of where in the world they are (whether they are in NYC or Timbuktu). Lawyers with active memberships in, say, the New York State Bar Association, the Law Society of England and Wales or Australian jurisdictions who then embark on expat adventures in the GCC (i.e., Manama (Bahrain), Doha (Qatar) or Dubai (UAE)), Singapore or elsewhere, often forget that they are still held accountable for their professional (or unprofessional) behavior as the case may be regardless of where they are in the world.

Changing a culture is no easy task. As other professionals have written on LinkedIn (viz. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/tone-from-top-dissipates-jonathan-t-marks-cpa-cff-cfe/), the "tone" from or at the top is crucial. This also applies to legal professional bodies to be more pro-active about not just raising awareness of the problems but sanctioning offenders in significant and meaningful ways that would consequently have a preventative effect. Fear stops a lot of people from complaining - the fear of being labeled a "troublemaker", the fear of reprisals, and the fear of never working again. Despondency, i.e., seeing that others have complained and nothing changed, is another reason why change does not occur. Hypocrisy, i.e., paying lip service to the problem while turning a blind eye when it happens in front of you, is another reason why bullying and sexual harassment continue - applying the rules inconsistently but protecting cronies is rife not just in the Middle East, but everywhere.

The IBA report highlights two very serious problems in the legal profession and presents a perfect opportunity for firms, companies and professional bodies to stop bullying and sexual harassment in their respective tracks. We can all do our part and be the change we want to see in the world and effect positive changes in our own proverbial garden patches.