Ep 137: The Law Society  of Northern Ireland Special General Meeting:  What You Need to Know - with Rosemary Connolly

The question of tendering character references is one that has been topical in very recent times.

I mean, the Nexus Institute last year, speaking on behalf of victims generally, made submissions about the inappropriateness of submitting character references in cases dealing with sexual misconduct.

And I think it's important that specific factual context of this issue is remembered because victims would say, that when a character reference is tendered on behalf of someone, remembering that this person has now been convicted, that puts them in the position of hearing, as it were, the virtues or the character of this person being extolled.

They have no means of commenting upon that or offering anything to counter that.

And the other point to make, something recognised in the Gillen review, is that oftentimes an individual perpetrator's perceived standing in the community can be a mask which is adopted.

Now I've got to say that the matter of character references is something that's very much under consideration at the minute in the public.

Steps have been taken by way of legislation to ensure that anyone tendering a character reference must do an affidavit form and must tender themselves for cross-examination.

And importantly, in setting out a character reference, they're expected at the outset to state what the offences were of which the person has convicted and state that they personally have knowledge of that, of those offences.

Again, the Solicitors Regulatory Authority in England and Wales has cautionary guidance about issuing character references and again cautioning individuals and certainly any members of the profession

who

will contemplate doing such a thing to be very clear that they must not in any way do anything in tendering a reference which would seek to undermine or downplay the seriousness of offence, would undermine victims or would otherwise undermine the public perception of the administration of justice.

Yeah.

And of course, we've had so many victims who have spoken out in respect of this issue.

And it's opened up the debate, as you said, there more widely in the context of character references.

And of course, it's particularly relevant here because the person holds such a senior position as well in the justice system itself or in a very professional body.

And that creates, I would say, an additional responsibility to consider how the reference may be understood.

So it's in one way, it's hard to see how we've gotten to this point.

But on that basis, how do have we ended up with a special general meeting being called to address this by members? And we'll go into the details of that towards the end in terms of the practicalities.