A firm has admitted to repeated plagiarism after being caught red-handed by RollOnFriday.
An article on mfg Solicitors' website is an almost word-for-word duplicate of a bulletin by employment barrister Daniel Barnett. Barnett posted his article in July. Four weeks later it re-appeared with minor amendments on mfg's site, under the name of Sally Morris, a partner and Head of Employment at the 65-solicitor regional firm.
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Spot the difference: Barnett... |
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...and Morris. Highlighted text shows identical language. |
Barnett tweeted, "
Always gives me a frisson of pleasure when I find another solicitors’ firm which has put my bulletins on their website & claimed authorship". However, he clarified to RollOnFriday that mpg was not the firm to which he had been referring. RollOnFriday subsequently discovered that Healys Solicitors had also lifted Barnett's work.
But Barnett said that Healys was not the firm he had identified, either. He declined to name the third culprit, but tweeted that the brass-necked lawyers in question gave "
no apology nor offer to remove the content". Barnett told RollOnFriday, which is also no stranger to having its content ripped off, “
This happens depressingly often, including with two practising barristers who ‘own branded’ my summaries onto their websites and claimed authorship. I always ask them to remove the content, undertake not to do it again, and make a £500 anonymous donation to the Free Representation Unit as a condition of me not taking it further”.
A spokesman for mpg told RollOnFiday, “
As a respected law firm our reputation is of huge importance to us. Our blogs are bespoke, insightful and are created exclusively by our team of professionals to give our view on key legal topics. On this one occasion there was an oversight which resulted in a section of another blog being used. The issue has now been rectified and the post removed”.
Which is an interesting response, because a second post by Morris is also remarkably similar to an article by Barnett.
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Barnett... |
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...and quite a lot of Barnett again. |
RollOnFriday stopped looking after a third article, which bore an uncanny resemblance to a post by an employment lawyer at Weightmans.
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Weightmans |
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Wait, oh man. |
Confronted by the additional examples, mfg was silent for two hours before a spokeswoman responded,“
Our investigations have shown other blog posts which have been replicated in certain sections from other blogs. This is an internal matter which is being rectified and mfg Solicitors will make no further comment".
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