Law firm’s misconduct spelt out

The country’s law schools, which so strongly cut ties with Russell McVeagh earlier this year, appear tentative to resume a relationship with the beleaguered law firm.

After four months and interviews with 250 people, public service troubleshooter Dame Margaret Bazley yesterday released her 89-page report, which was triggered by sexual misconduct involving summer interns around December 2015.

While most people interviewed felt it was a ‘‘great place to work’’, others told Bazley the law firm had a work-hard, play-hard culture ‘‘that involved excessive drinking and in some instances crude, drunken and sexually inappropriate behaviour’’.

Canterbury, Otago, Waikato, Auckland, AUT and Victoria universities announced in March they were rejecting any recruitment branding and Russell McVeagh-related events on their campuses until after Bazley’s report was released. All six are now to decide whether relationships between their institutions and the firm will be reinstated.

The majority of the more than 250 people that Dame Margaret Bazley interviewed for her independent review of the law firm Russell McVeagh had positive things to say about the company and its evolving culture. But while this was encouraging, Bazley concluded, more change is needed.

The review sprang from a series of incidents involving summer law clerks in December 2015 and January 2016 that took more than two years to come to light, and arguably did so only because of growing international attention to issues of sex and power. Bazley’s review shows the incidents were emblematic of a blokey, sexist culture that relied heavily on alcohol and had been inherited by the current generation of partners.

In short, such incidents were not isolated and nor was the firm of Russell McVeagh especially unusual, as Bazley writes: ‘‘Over the years some incidents of drunkenness and inappropriate sexual behaviour have been tolerated and not dealt with at Russell McVeagh. Such a history is not, I was told by staff with experience at other big firms, peculiar to Russell McVeagh and in fact was (and in some instances still is) common in some other law firms, accounting firms, big corporate firms and universities, as well as New Zealand at large.

‘‘An increasing number of public sector organisations, such as the Defence Force and the New Zealand Police, and other organisations such as rugby clubs have begun to deal with similar behaviours.’’

Along with the culture Bazley describes, there were also alarming failures of leadership when the incidents were brought to the attention of senior management and human resources. Internal communications were poor. Other firms should take the opportunity to check that their own processes and structures are in order.

There has been a generational change in New Zealand, especially around attitudes to sex, gender and alcohol. Bazley writes that, ‘‘I was told that 20 years ago, some partners took some male summer clerks to a local strip club’’.

Behaviours that were commonplace as recently as the 1990s would now be viewed as problematic by many employees. And in the two years between the incidents and their media scrutiny, Russell McVeagh has addressed a heavy-drinking culture. Bazley’s interviews took her beyond the incidents that were highlighted in the media into areas that some readers will find more nebulous. An unconscious bias towards sexism is by definition harder to pin down than observable actions but bias emerged, as did a culture of bullying. But what do we mean by bullying?

‘‘I was told of atrocious behaviour by the small group of offending partners: yelling, swearing, rudeness and sarcasm at the person; belittling and disempowering behaviours,’’ Bazley writes. ‘‘I was told this bullying was sometimes covert, and other times occurred across the room in front of other staff and in client meetings.’’

Most of us will have seen or experienced such behaviours in the workplace and may even have viewed them as normal. As well as acting as a wake-up call for managers, Bazley’s report should be read by employees who have ever wondered about the changing boundaries of acceptable behaviour.

Bazley’s report should be read by employees who have ever wondered about the changing boundaries of acceptable behaviour.