Old habits die hard. The feminist barrister Dr Charlotte Proudman – a woman so proud to have once been called a Feminazi that she had a coffee mug made with the word emblazoned on it – is telling me how she surprised herself by breaking down and crying during a disciplinary tribunal hearing this week – one that effectively put her in the dock and threatened to end her career.
Although she can’t help but quibble with the language that was used. ‘The papers reported that I ‘wept’,’ she notes. ‘Would anyone say that a man wept?’
Possibly not, but the facts are that she did cry, which is startling given the thick skin she is supposed to have.
‘I’m human,’ she says. ‘The whole process felt overwhelming. The language in the tribunal process is similar to that used in a criminal court. I was the ‘defendant’. If the decision went against me, I would be ‘sentenced’. I am familiar with courtrooms, but I have never been in a situation where I felt on trial, and my steely mask slipped.
‘I started to cry when the clerk read out the charge sheet. It went on for pages. I was accused of breaching this code and breaking that rule, lack of integrity, and recklessly misleading the public. It all sounded so terrible.
‘I sat there thinking ‘I am not this person’. I will say it gave me great insight into just how intimidating and terrifying this process must be for my clients.’
For a barrister to be hauled before a Bar Standards tribunal is a huge thing. ‘Life-changing. Career-ending,’ she agrees. What on earth had she done? What heinous ‘crime’ had she committed? As she says herself, ‘the sanctions I was facing would have been the same had I committed sexual assault’.
Incredibly, the case against Dr Proudman – which hung over her for two and a half years – was brought after a series of online posts in 2022 in which she criticised a judge for his handling of a domestic abuse case.
Had she been found guilty of the accusations, she would have lost her licence to practise for a year and her reputation would have been in tatters
A prolific tweeter, she made public her views about a ‘boys’ club’ attitude – a reference to the fact that the judge involved was a member of the all-male Garrick Club.
And, in her words, the old boys’ club ‘came down hard to deal with me. They moved to silence the woman who spoke out.’
Had she been found guilty of the accusations, she would have lost her licence to practise for a year and her reputation would have been in tatters. She would have also faced a fine of up to £50,000, and been obliged to pay the other side’s costs.
‘Just a few days before the case started they sent me a cost schedule of almost £40,000,’ she reveals, admitting she faced the tribunal panel knowing that she simply could not afford to lose.
‘Most people do not have that sort of money, and without being able to work… How? People go bankrupt over such things. I do not come from a background where it is normal for people to go into a career in the law. I was the second member of my family to go to university.
‘I worked in the Co-op in my small town from 16 until 21. In my darkest hours, when I was lying awake worrying about this tribunal, I worried about ending up back there. There is nothing wrong with working in a supermarket, but I have spent years establishing my career.’
It all began in 2022 after a string of comments she made about Sir Jonathan Cohen’s judgment in a case that she lost. ‘I lost the case. I do not accept the judge’s reasoning,’ she wrote on X. ‘This judgment has echoes of the ‘boys’ club’ which still exists among men in powerful positions’.
Dr Proudman, now one of the most prominent women’s rights lawyers in the country, has always been a divisive figure who has made enemies (of both sexes, she agrees) within the legal profession. But this move against her was extraordinary.
The Bar Standards Board (BSB) alleged Dr Proudman had ‘failed to act with integrity’ and that the posts amounted to professional misconduct. She was also accused of ‘inaccurately reflecting the findings of the judge’, which she vehemently denied.
More breathtaking still was the ‘verdict’, which came on Thursday at the disciplinary panel hearing in Gray’s Inn Square, London.
The case was thrown out, with the panel ruling she had no case to answer, had not breached any code of conduct, and was within her right to express her opinion.
Judge Nicholas Ainley, chairman of the panel, said they found Dr Proudman’s posts did not constitute professional misconduct.
‘We do not consider she has lost the Article 10 protection [which protects freedom of expression] by reason as to what she wrote,’ he told the tribunal. ‘They would not have been pleasant for any judge to read. These remarks may be thought to be hurtful, but they are not gravely damaging to the judiciary.’
To translate: the panel found the complaints against Dr Proudman to be poppycock.
‘I just felt numb when the decision came in,’ she says. ‘It had been this huge thing in my life for two and a half years. I hadn’t been able to sleep, eat properly.
‘I just turned to my partner and gave him a hug, and thanked him for putting up with me, because frankly it has been hellish.’
Dr Proudman speaks to me the day after the decision. She has a slightly sore head because the Champagne was flowing the night before. But her relief is palpable.
‘I can have my life back now,’ she says. The stress had descended immediately after she got wind that the BSB was ‘after’ her. She says she got the heads up from a mentor. ‘I couldn’t actually believe it at first, but he said ‘They want to make an example of you. You are going to be a guinea pig’.
‘What was bizarre was that, on that very same day, I got an email from a lovely woman who contacted me to say she’d had a tattoo done on her arm of the scales of justice, with my name underneath… My whole life was hanging in the balance and there was this woman with my name on her arm.’
Now, she is looking forward to getting on with her job. And taking her own legal action, presumably?
‘I am considering my options,’ she says carefully. ‘But yes, I will be pursuing my costs. This whole thing has been a farce, an attempt to silence me. They wanted to say ‘Shut up’. They wanted to stop me even using the term ‘old boys’ club’. I won’t, because it still exists. Of course it does.’
And to her detractors who say she brought this on herself by being just too outspoken?
‘That smacks of ‘she deserves it’ or ‘she was asking for it’, which is the sort of thing we see so often in rape trials,’ she says.
Now free to let rip about the entire ‘witch hunt’, Dr Proudman seizes the opportunity.
‘The case against me should never have been brought. The hell they put me through, and all because I expressed a perfectly valid opinion,’ she says.
‘At the same time, the BSB have not taken action against other, male, barristers who have critcised judges, calling them stupid. Nor have they stepped in to support me or impose sanctions on those fellow barristers who have attacked me online.
‘I have been called a ‘c***’ and ‘mentally ill’. And yet the full forces were marshalled against me when I dared to mention a boys’ club? It’s a clear case of sexism and double standards.’
She argues the BSB is ‘unfit for purpose’, and has offered to help it mend its ways, as long as a few heads roll. ‘To do my job I need to be part of the Establishment. I need to work within it,’ she says, though the irony of remaining in a legal system she believes to be sexist is not lost on her.
Nor is the fact that in the time it took for this case to be heard, it has been all-change at the Garrick Club, which in May voted to allow women to join for the first time in its 193-year existence.
In July, actresses Dame Judi Dench and Dame Sian Phillips became the first women members, their positions bestowed on them as ‘honorary’ members.
General membership is still by invitation, but Dr Proudman has made it clear she would be happy to join her learned colleagues at the bar (the one serving drinks).
Pushing the boundaries as ever, she cheekily posted a picture of herself on social media wearing a Garrick Club tie, saying she was ready when they were. She may yet have some wait.
This article I was subjected to a two-year witch hunt – and faced ruin – for daring to call the judiciary an old boys’ club: Barrister who was proud to be called a ‘Feminazi’ tells of her torment after winning dramatic legal case was originally published by the MailOnline on Sunday, 15th December 2024.
