Partner being ‘sleazy’ to student – witness

A partner at law firm Russell McVeagh was being ‘‘sleazy’’ to a female law student and was stopped from leaving a 2015 Christmas party in the same taxi as her, a disciplinary tribunal has been told.

The partner, whose name is suppressed, has now left Russell McVeagh and faces seven charges before the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal in Wellington.

He is alleged to have inappropriately touched four female students at the Christmas party and his conduct with a fifth student a few days later is also an issue before the tribunal.

The students were working at the firm over the summer university break. One of the male students said at the Christmas party he saw the partner was drunk and acting in a sleazy manner towards one of the students.

He was sort of draped over the young woman and having contact with parts of her that he shouldn’t have.

The witness and others stepped in when the lawyer tried to leave in the same taxi as the young woman.

A lawyer at the firm said that at another Christmas function that year he saw the partner and another of the law students in a sauna and the student was a ‘‘bit drunk and flirty’’.

She and the partner began kissing and it made the witness really angry, because it was such an error of judgment for a partner to be doing that with a student, with his wife in the house, he said.

At the time the witness thought it was consensual, and nothing the woman said to him later suggested anything different.

But looking back he could see it was blindingly obvious that he should have put her in a taxi and made sure she got home.

‘‘It weighs on my mind a little bit,’’ he told the tribunal.

The partner was expected to give evidence later in the hearing, but through his lawyer, Julian Long, he has expressed regret.

One of the students said the partner approached her while she was dancing, put his arms around her so his hands were on the upper part of her bottom for about five seconds and he kissed her.

‘‘It was a big sloppy kiss on my right cheek,’’ she said.

She was shocked and disgusted. ‘‘To him, I was just a piece of meat.’’

The identities of many of the people involved were suppressed.

The first witness from the hearing yesterday said that the lawyer was lauded as a hip, cool guy at Russell McVeagh.

At the party he approached her from behind, touched or caressed her bottom and moved one hand up to her breast, which he touched for a few seconds.

In her mind he went from being a funny drinker in the firm to, ‘‘this guy’s an animal’’.

She was 21 at the time and in the years since she had counselling, moved firms, and taken tranquillisers.

At the tribunal hearing, Long said the lawyer did not remember touching her, but if it happened it must have been in the context of dancing and him not respecting people’s space. The woman rejected that or that it was like a ‘‘momentary brush’’.

A national standards committee of the Law Society laid the charges for the tribunal. The lawyer’s response was to have the committee call its evidence before the tribunal.

The tribunal’s hearing expected to last the week. is