Guess who’s back?

Guess who's back

Back again

Frana’s back

Tell a friend

Guess who's back, guess who's back

Guess who's back, guess who's back

Guess who's back, guess who's back

Guess who's back? - Eminem

I choose ”Without Me” by Eminem (with equally brilliant (but slightly gross) music video) as my return to work anthem https://youtu.be/YVkUvmDQ3HY

I am conflicted over my love for Eminem (aka Marshall Mathers/Slim Shady).

As a feminist I find it impossible to justify some of Marshall’s incredibly clever but mysogynistic lyrics. As a cancer survivor I think, ”Who has time to justify their love of anyone and why should they?” so I declare my love for Eminem and I also voice my disapproval of his misogyny and confess I always chuckle at the line “I’ve settled all my lawsuits, F@ck you Debbie!” (a reference to his mother, Debbie Mathers, who sued him over the lyrics to the song “My Name Is”).

I am excited to be returning to work today because I love what I do. I love my clients, my workmates, the experts I work with and of course, the law. I will be working from home due to Omicron (boo Omicron!) but that doesn’t diminish my happiness too much. I made the most of our time in “orange” and visited my workplace. I felt a lot of joy being surrounded by my work mates in our beautiful new premises and I’ll be back there one day when COVID has burnt itself out.

In saying all this I acknowledge that the legal profession has treated women terribly. The recent disciplinary decision concerning the former Russell McVeagh partner, James Gardener-Hopkins, demonstrates our profession has a long way to go in acknowledging the damage caused by some of the inappropriate predatory behavior and abuse of power in law firms and punishing it accordingly. That “boss“ touched multiple young women without their consent, refused to take responsibility for his actions for years, was protected by his law firm, made the victims give evidence about what he did to them and then at the eleventh hour, when clearly he knew his number was up, he pleaded guilty, probably to save himself from being struck off. In my opinion he deserved more than a two year suspension.

Cue the chorus of “he is being made a scapegoat”. I call BS on that. Just because he is “lawyer number one” to find his career in jeopardy for building a toxic, predatory culture, doesn’t make him a scapegoat. He did what he did. Hopefully a number of other people are reflecting on their own bad behaviour and feeling a bit scared.

Once upon a time, many, many years ago I too was a young woman lawyer and I was on the receiving end of some bad behaviour. On reflection I was very fortunate to have a very progressive first boss. Gordon treated me with respect and channeled a lot of time and effort into my professional development. I was very lucky. If my first work experience had been negative I doubt I would have continued.

There was a woman partner in the provincial firm I first started working at in 1993. This was unusual. To put it in perspective, 1993 was also the year a woman was first appointed to the High Court bench. I am pretty sure the woman partner in my firm was the only woman in a partnership in Whangarei at the time. There were other senior women lawyers but they tended to be sole practitioners (and that still appears to be the case up north, there are few women in partnership, which demonstrates that there is still a thick glass ceiling). The woman partner was a total nightmare. I have empathy for her now because she obviously had a terrible time at the hands of her male partners and I am sure she felt very alone - but she was terrifying. She certainly wasn’t a role model for me or someone I aspired to emulate.

I loved my first job and I was given many wonderful opportunities. As I said my boss was a very nice man. My first experience of inappropriate behaviour within the profession did not occur within my workplace but was at the hands of a lawyer from another firm. I was at the Court House Christmas Party, an annual soirée where the lawyers suppled the booze and the court staff supplied the venue and the food. As was fairly typical of legal events in those days, a lot of alcohol was consumed. During the course of the evening a member of the Crown firm, who also happened to be in a relationship with one of my workmates, offered to show me the Crown Room. I was curious, so agreed. Once in the Crown Room, without warning, the lawyer seized me, pushed me into the wall and tried to kiss me. It took me a couple of seconds to realise what was occurring, to shove him off me and to run away. On reflection my initial reaction was not outrage because he had grabbed me and tried to kiss me without my consent, rather my outrage was for his girlfriend who I worked with. We never spoke of what occurred and I avoided him afterwards. If he was on the other side of any matter professionally we were cordial.

Fast forward a few years to when I had moved to London. I worked in a team that consisted of three solicitors with a paralegal working for each solicitor. I was the paralegal for a woman solicitor who did not have time to train me, was unapproachable and incredibly passive aggressive. I was desperately unhappy. One of the other solicitors was always really good to me. He would have been at least 10 years my senior and lived with his partner. He had a car and helped me and my two flatmates move house. We’d often go to the pub after work and sometimes to dinner. He was into music and live comedy and we went to concerts and comedy clubs together. He explained his partner’s absence as her having a chronic illness that made her very tired. To this day I do not know if this was true. I considered him to be a good friend. Finally he rescued me from my solicitor boss by swapping his paralegal for me. We were now working closely together. It wasn’t unusual for us to be together 12 hours a day and to see each other in the weekends. Gosh he was clever. I think he is the cleverest lawyer I have ever worked with and I learned a lot from him and the copious red pen he covered my work in. He was certainly much cleverer than me. I didn’t see what was coming.

My flatmates were suspicious of his motives but happy that they too got the benefit of him helping us move flats and lots of inside information on where to go for great live music. They tried to warn me. I dismissed their concerns. I feel embarrassed to recount what happened next - but I shouldn’t be. I was naive but he attempted to abuse the power he had over me.

My flatmates were away travelling in Egypt and Greece. I was home alone. He knew this. He asked if he could come and stay the night because he had to travel to Head Office in Cheltenham and our flat in West London was close to the ring road. I didn’t think anything of it and said yes. The day arrived. Unbeknownst to, and rather fortuitously for me - my flatmates became quite ill in Egypt and they decided to cut their trip short and return home. So it was that one of my flatmates came to open the door to my boss when he arrived at our house before I did.

When I eventually arrived home my flatmate intercepted me at the front door and demanded “What the hell is going on?”

I innocently recounted the ring road story and my flatmate said “I thought you were conducting an affair behind our backs. Can you hear yourself? What do you think is going to happen tonight? That ring road story is utter bollocks - it’s a ring road - it will probably save him 10 minutes at the most. I can tell you that he was most unhappy to see us and was quite petulant about it“. As the penny dropped for me she said “Right, I’ll handle this”. And she did.

She asked him to peruse the menu of our local take away shop. She went with him to pick up dinner while I set the table. After dinner we all watched TV and then my flatmate said “Right-o we are all off to bed. You’ve got the sofa, here’s some bedding for you. Come with me and I’ll show you our breakfast selection since you’ll be driving to Cheltenham before we all get up.” She then shut him in the living room and said “You take my bed, I’ll sleep in yours, just in case he tries anything funny.”

Things were really awkward at work after that. I got the silent treatment. Not long afterwards I resigned to go backpacking around Europe. After I returned from Europe he asked me to go to a ball with him and then out for dinner. In the course of our last conversation I told him how sad I was that he stopped speaking to me at work without explanation when I thought we were friends, that it wasn’t appropriate for him to keep asking me to accompany him to places instead of his girlfriend and I wasn’t interested in having an affair. I never heard from him again. I guess we weren’t friends eh?

Perhaps the most embarrassing bit of sexism I ever experienced came at the hands of a British QC. I was the plaintiff’s solicitor so had to sit in the second row behind my barrister. A QC arrived for the defendant which meant we all needed to move back a row so the QC could sit at the front. The QC blocked me in so I could not go back a row. He made me clamber over the desk behind me in a pencil skirt. He thought he was hilarious. I’ll never forget how it felt as he laughed at me. I was so angry, I gave him an ear full but that probably added to his amusement. I knew he’d never have done that to a man.

When I returned to New Zealand I worked for a medium sized full service firm. I was close friends with three other women associates at the firm. The partnership (all men) called us The Coven (it wasn’t meant as a compliment). We embraced that name and since 2001 I have had a group of women friends known as The Coven & Associates.

This firm had an annual client function. The female support staff were expected to stay after hours to act as waiting staff and the female lawyers were expected to entertain a group of lecherous middle aged men. One of the tasks I gave myself was to warn the young women in the firm to have their wits about them, not to drink too much and if they found themselves in an awkward situation to find me or another member of The Coven to assist. I hated those client functions. I was inappropriately touched by clients, witnessed my colleagues being inappropriately touched and resorted at one stage to slapping a handsy man in a lift. I also intervened in a situation unfolding in the firm’s library where It was quite clear the woman involved was incapable of consenting to anything. This all happened in my workplace under the watch of my employers.

The law is also the domain of bullies and psychopaths. Those are stories for another day. Let’s just say I have met my fair share of them in my time too.

I commend the brave young women that held James Gardener-Hopkins to account.

I feel sad for my younger self. I tolerated lots of bad behaviour. If I had complained about it, I know nothing would have happened. Those experiences shaped me and they made me determined to create something better for the next generation of young lawyers.

I take the responsibility of protecting the people I work with extremely seriously. Every one should be able to come to work and feel safe. I am proud of the team we have created. They are a diverse bunch of fabulous people, who most importantly, are kind. I’m so pleased to be back with them.

Testing, attention please

Feel the tension, soon as someone mentions me

Here's my ten cents, my two cents is free

A nuisance, who sent? You sent for me?

Now this looks like a job for me

So everybody, just follow me

'Cause we need a little, controversy

'Cause it feels so empty, without me

I said, "This looks like a job for me"

So everybody, just follow me

'Cause we need a little, controversy

'Cause it feels so empty, without me

I like to think work felt a bit empty without me.

Attention please! Guess who’s back? It’s me!