[1]Sandhurst: Barrister claimed to have been commissioned
A barrister whose applications for pupillage at one chambers and then tenancy at another were based on a false CV has been disbarred – more than a decade after he first used it.
A Bar disciplinary tribunal said it was unable to find that Richard Anthony Joseph Gibbs, who was called in 2012, had disadvantaged other candidates, but his misconduct “plainly would have an effect of harming trust and confidence”.
In 2011, when applying for pupillage at St Ives Chambers, he claimed to have been commissioned by the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, given evidence in support of members of his troop and at inquests into deaths that had occurred during training exercises, and had been a regular in the Army.
Two years later, when applying for tenancy, he told No5 Chambers that he had been a British Army officer between 2001 and 2006 and had sold his company, Haven Search and Selection Ltd, in 2010.
The criminal law specialist, who most recently practised from Millennium Chambers, admitted that this was not true, and that in 2019 he failed to provide the Bar Standards Board (BSB) “with all the relevant details regarding the inaccuracies of his CV and No5 Chambers’ findings against him”.
The Bar disciplinary tribunal said that the circumstances Mr Gibbs had pleaded in mitigation – which were not detailed – were “not exceptional”. The dishonesty had been “deliberate and repeated”.
It went on: “The tribunal heard that the respondent has been successfully in his career as a barrister and that he had contributed to the profession in a number of ways.” He put forward references who spoke “highly” of him.
“The tribunal noted that the respondent has expressed great remorse and that it was aware that disbarment would have a significant impact on him personally and financially but it concluded that… the appropriate sanction in this case was disbarment.”
A BSB spokesman said: “It is not acceptable for a barrister to repeatedly and deliberately dishonestly misrepresent their career. The tribunal’s unanimous decision to disbar Mr Gibbs reflects this.”