Unis cut ties with law firm
Response to sexual harassment claims behind move
All six of New Zealand’s law schools have for now cut ties with Russell McVeagh following of a series of allegations that paint a culture of sexual harassment as rife within the firm.
AUT, Waikato, Victoria, Canterbury and Otago universities all said they had temporarily banned any Russell McVeagh-related events.
The University of Auckland’s Dean of Law Professor Andrew Stockley yesterday told staff and students its relationship with the firm was “on hold” for the rest of the year.
Stockley said that the school would not accept any student being subjected to inappropriate behaviour or sexual harassment.
Staff and students alike were concerned about Russell McVeagh’s response to the recent media coverage and it did not reflect the change in culture he had been assured would occur, he said.
“There is widespread feeling that there should have been a much stronger apology and public recognition of the harm that some women law students have experienced, and that the answers reported in the media have been unduly legalistic and narrow,” he said.
“As an example, there have been comments made to the effect that there were no formal complaints, that privacy prevents the firm saying more, and that in some cases the women consented.” Andrew Stockley
The law firm is undertaking an external review of its Auckland and Wellington offices. It says it will make recommendations from the review available to women who raised the issues, its staff, clients and the Law Society.
Victoria University of Wellington Vice-Chancellor Professor Grant Guilford said the university would wait for the result of the external review before it decided if it would resume activities with the firm. It was in the “best interests” of the students to do so, he said.
“Our caution in part relates to the ongoing allegations of prior alcoholfuelled sexual impropriety between senior staff and students on the firm’s premises but also the firm’s recent description of such events as ‘consensual’,” he said.
“This description suggests the culture that fostered these behaviours may very well remain well ingrained in the firm.”
In another development, a legal researcher who set up a blog for people in the legal industry to anonymously share their experiences of sexual harassment and sexual assault has received 12 submissions.
Zoe¨ Lawton, a contractor for the Chief Victims Advisor to Government, said the blog was for “people to share what they have witnessed in the workplace and what they would like employers to do differently”.
The address metoo-blog.html. is zoelawton.com/