13 May 2024 What happens when you try to SLAPP a lawyer?

Full Disclosure:​

What happens when you try to SLAPP a lawyer?​

📩 Sign up here to receive a new edition of 'Full Disclosure' directly into your inbox, every week.

Click to expand...

Hi Reader 👋🏽,

Here's a (quick) rundown of how Dan Neidle, a lawyer and tax expert went toe to toe with Osborne Clarke:

It’s 2022 and Dan publishes a series of articles/tweets investigating the tax affairs of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Did Nadhim Zahawi engage in tax avoidance while the cofounder of YouGov?

Osborne Clarke ("OC"), acting for the Chancellor, reaches out. They want to chat.

Dan tells OC to put it in writing. He adds that he won’t accept ‘without prejudice’ correspondence (when lawyers are trying to reach a settlement, they’ll use this to keep the correspondence confidential/out of view from the courts).

OC ignores this point and sends Dan a letter marked confidential and ‘without prejudice’. The letter details how Dan is wrong, that he has the opportunity to retract his ‘allegation of lies’. Most importantly, they say he can’t publish the threatening letter or it ‘would be a serious matter’. Dan publishes the letter anyway.

Fast forward to last week and the OC lawyer is referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Why? What happened?

Powerful people use SLAPPs or ‘Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation’ to silence public criticism. Litigation or the threat of litigation is used, not because there is a genuine legal concern, but to stop journalists from writing about topics they don't like.

In this case, the organisation that regulates solicitors felt that the OC lawyer’s conduct could have amounted to a SLAPP.

Dan called this out in 2022. He felt the correspondence was more of an attempt to silence him than a genuine attempt to settle a dispute. It looks like the solicitors’ regulator agrees.

I admire Dan’s conviction: if a law firm tells you not to publish a letter or you’ll face consequences, it’s brave to do it anyway, even if you believe you're right.

But what if Dan wasn’t a lawyer? How many people have stopped writing about important topics because of the threat of litigation?

You can read much more on this story from Dan directly here.

---

Have any thoughts? I'd love to hear your perspective below!