I am posting this here as it is the most popular thread and where it gets the most traffic.
We will be finalising the community guidelines in the next couple of weeks and hope to share this with you soon. We hope this helps to put clearer guidelines on what we deem acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in the forums and in private messages.
Ahead of us publishing the community guidelines, I want to give you the heads up that a very small minority of members' behaviour is currently not what we would expect. I have been contacted by a number of members who have received persistent lines of questions from other members on this forum and through other social media platforms, predominately LinkedIn.
There have also been a small number of messages that completely lack the integrity needed in the legal profession, including language that borders on harassment and even worse requests for people to take psychometric tests on behalf on the person messaging. This behaviour is not acceptable and if it continues we would need to consider appropriate actions against the members that are choosing to message in this manner.
I want to stress that this is a very small minority of our membership. We are really proud of how the vast majority of our members conduct themselves in the forums and we really appreciate a community that manages to balance support, advice and updates with ensuring they demonstrate the values, such as integrity, needed in a solicitor/lawyer.
I personally don't mind being bombarded with questions - its ultimately my job on here to answer questions for any member, whether in forums or in private message. But other members have no responsibility to respond to questions you ask them, let alone respond in the timeframe you expect. I would encourage everyone to consider utilising other members' time effectively and efficiently rather than extensively. I would also encourage you to consider your own expectations - not everyone can respond to something as quick as you would like them too. I would also like to remind members that they are responsible for their own research - getting people to always tell you the answers to everything is not helping you in the long term. If you start to think about all these points, you will be developing yourself into a stronger solicitor/lawyer - as a Trainee you won't be able to ask endless questions to your supervisors, you won't get immediate responses from clients/other parties' lawyers, and you won't always be told the answer to something.