Spillover from Friday drinks
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There are also those who kick back against the allegations. Why, they ask, are these people coming forward only now?
Lawton’s blog was not alone. The calls that came into the Stuff newsroom – some verifiable, some not – would be laughable if it were not that real people were involved.
Picture this: A young male clerk is working in a Wellington firm when his senior returns from a boozy lunch and punches him in the testicles. This incident did happen.
As did this – witnessed by many: two male lawyers being sexually pleased by their secretaries at a very public law function.
This too: She was in her early 20s, not long out of law school. He was in his 50s, her boss and a partner at the law firm. They were having an affair.
They were at a ritzy restaurant with others for a long lunch. As diners dined, waiters waited, drinks were drunk, and the sun was still high in the sky, he reached down under the table and touched her intimately.
It was consensual, yes, but it didn’t take long for the story to reach right around the city’s law world. So the young lawyer, reputation in tatters, left New Zealand and left the profession.
There have been many tales of booze-soaked extra-marital affairs and pregnancies.
At the worst end is the alleged incident between a law clerk and at least one senior lawyer at a bar in Courtenay Place, Wellington. With the alleged victim unwilling to pursue formal charges, the full truth may never be known.
Many, if not most, of the cases never saw any major blow-back for the perpetrators. In fact, some of the most egregious are still happily married, gainfully employed, and working in law – the very discipline on which they sailed so close to the wind.