Introducing honesty to ethics.
A pupil barrister has been fined £500 by the Bar Standards Board for letting out his inner voice during an exam.
Jack Sadler, who was at 5KBW and is also an accomplished photographer, turned the air blue during his Professional Ethics Assessment last July.
Sadler was sitting the exam remotely and said he didn’t realise his webcam was being used to record his voice and actions. The BSB highlighted seven comments it viewed as crossing a line.
When the exam proctor, who can communicate with candidates via an online chat, told Sadler to show his desk to the camera and reminded him that he couldn’t wear any kind of watch, the barrister exclaimed, “What is a watch going to do, how the fuck am I going to cheat with a watch, come on”.
Sadler wasn't delighted at the proctor's attempts to contact him, blurting out, “What? Fucking piss off, I don’t need to start a fucking chat”.
“This is annoying, oh my god, this is going to really piss me off”, he said, before apparently deciding to ignore the alerts: “Right, go away now, fine, just going to sit there fucking flashing and be annoying”.
Later, Sadler expressed his relief at coming across a preferred topic: “Fucking finally, a criminal question… This civil shit... How can you have any ethics if you’re a civil practitioner, honestly”.
The thrill appears to have worn off quickly, however, prompting Sadler to remark, “I’m so fucking bored of this”.
“You’re going to kick up a fuss about me having a fucking ibuprofen aren’t you?” he said, before ending the exam by giving the camera the finger.
As well as providing his unguarded commentary, Sadler also checked his work emails during his assessment, exposing client information in the process.
The proctor messaged him warned that “Accessing mail is not permitted. I will kindly ask you to close it”, which Sadler waved off by explaining out loud, “Don’t worry I’m not cheating, this is the middle of a workday, I have work to do”.
Sadler accepted that making profane comments and flipping off the invigilator constituted professional misconduct, but said in mitigation that he had not read the briefing materials explaining that he would be visible and audible to someone on the other end of the camera, or that his whole screen would be recorded.
Sadler's defence stated that he “honestly believed he was in private, and behaved as such, voicing opinions that he thought no one else would hear of”.
He said his behaviour should be viewed as a “catastrophic lapse in judgment" and "not as anything more insidious”.
The BSB panel decided that Sadler acted in a way which was likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public placed in him or in the profession, but agreed that his conduct “fell within the lower range of culpability and harm”, and that it was an isolated incident.
The panel also noted that Sadler had left the Bar and that, as a recent pupil in the early stages of his career, he may be of limited means, which contributed to its decision to allow him to pay off his £500 fine in installments.
Sadler did not respond to a f**king request for comment.
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Comments
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Let me get this straight, the only person who saw this happen was a pencil-neck proctor?
But the BSB decided to fully engage the Streisand Effect by investigating then broadcasting these minor infractions, doing far more to bring the profession into disrepute than Sadler (whose inner voice seems on the money imo)
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Is a proctor like a proctologist?
If so, the swearing was justified.
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It sounds like no harm was done, no cheating took place and he just didn't know the way the proctoring worked so cut him some slack. Perhaps a better investigation might have been into how there were not many criminal questions on the paper!
Also I suspect the BSB does allow his words to be published to others in its terms but someone should check as he did not consent to that.
I remember when my sons sat the LPC proctored on line from home and I think most people and they DO read the rules, know all about watch rules and that you are being recorded (of course you do know that because the whole point is the recording could be produced later). If someone had not read the rules they might have thought only technology eg AI was looking at them I suppose. I read the LPC rules too (although not usually a tiger mother) as due to covid things were being done at home and we had to make sure we had two separate rooms on separate floors that were completely disconnected particularly as twins in exams over the years (but not mine and mine are not identical) sometimes have produced similar answers at university as they can think alike and sometimes have studied together. I was also much more worried about our internet going down as it does once a day and what to do in the exam than if they would know the material. It is a whole new world of proctored exams.
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Someone who doesn't know how technology works. He would have fit right in at the bar.
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Did he pass?
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Destroy the harmless infractions by juniors* while letting seniors off with a waggling finger Part 587
Completely pointless disgrace
*even those that didn’t even get going in the profession
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Is regulated by out-of-touch relic fvckwits.
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Really, his biggest clanger was accessing the email and breezily saying “Don’t worry, I’m not cheating, this is the middle of a workday, I have work to do”. If he hadn't bothered to arrange a free hour to do this, it's really on him.
You wouldn't do that in any other exam, and it was bound to get the proctor's back up...
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Such japes.
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I'm quite tickled by the thought of the proctor awkwardly sitting at his desk wondering whether to say something as Mr Sadler rants, raves and rabbits away to himself for half an hour.
Like a very sanitised version of someone looking increasingly uncomfortable on the bus as the mad person who sat down next to them engages in an increasingly animated conversation with themself about tuna quotas, Frank Sinatra and thermonuclear Armageddon.
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What an idiot. Who logs onto their email in the middle of an exam? Who swears at a proctor when he tells you to take your watch off (clearly a rule that exists because smart watches exist)? Also the idea that "he didn't know" that his camera/mic were being monitored is a blatant lie: clearly this will have been explained ad nauseam in the rubric (it is the basic premise of remote exams that there is remote proctoring), he obviously must have granted remote access to camera/mic at the start of the test and if he wasn't being watched, how did the proctor know he was wearing a watch? I have zero sympathy for an aggressive liar who clearly thought the university staff member monitoring the exam was beneath him.
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My kind of barrister!
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SRA: we are the most out of touch regulators in the profession
BSB: hold my soy milk
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He is going to be fun in court.
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Throw away the keys, his time is up, took away his license , seize, he thought the exam went easy - breeze.
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If the regulations are that strict about what you should and shouldn't be doing during your exams, why on earth is the examining board too cheap to stump up for an examination hall? God knows they charge enough!
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“Of limited means”…..good job he wasn’t a junior solicitor being investigated by the SRA & slapped with a £20k costs bill!
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To anyone thinking this penalty was fair… the SRA would surely have added a couple of zeroes onto the fine?
Really, is he pleading stupidity for not reading instructions, stupidity for voicing obscenities, not once but several times.. or stupidity for not taking a formal assessment seriously? I don’t think SQE students would get away with one profanity…
And to be allowed to pay in instalments? What was that recent post about it being more difficult to become a barrister? Not supported by this example..