
Pupil: Exceptional circumstances
A first-six pupil barrister who accessed a file without permission that helped her with a training exercise, and then pretended she had not, has been suspended for 18 months.
The Bar disciplinary tribunal decided that there were exceptional circumstances in the case of Georgie Dibbo that justified departing from the usual sanction of disbarment where dishonesty is involved.
She was called in July 2023 and started her pupillage three months later. In November 2023, her pupil supervisor, ‘DW’, set her the task of drafting a skeleton argument in support of an application for summary judgment, to be completed while he was abroad on a case.
The exercise was based on a previous real case in which DW had been instructed and he provided her with the necessary documents in a PDF file.
DW had the case file in his room and Ms Dibbo was not given permission to access it; however, while working on the exercise, she did so.
She said this was to check where the tabs were within the papers, and she then came across the original skeleton. She did not tell DW this when she sent him her draft but he “immediately noted many similarities” with the original, the tribunal recorded.
DW communicated his concerns to the chambers’ pupillage coordinators. Ms Dibbo was called to a meeting at which she said she had noticed the original on the file and had “flicked through” it, but maintained that she had done the work without reference to it.
The chambers told her that it appeared she was in breach of the code of conduct and that she was required to self-report to the Bar Standards Board (BSB). She later admitted that the self-report “understated the extent to which she had referred to the original”.
Ms Dibbo did the same when sending a detailed response to chambers, but following another meeting with four members of chambers, including DW, who asked her to reflect on what had happened, she admitted that she had previously misled them.
The chambers terminated her pupillage, a decision Ms Dibbo said she accepted, and she made a second self-report. She admitted the allegations before the tribunal.
At the request of the tribunal’s chair, Her Honour Janet Waddicor, Ms Dibbo agreed to answer questions from the panel.
“The respondent was obviously extremely upset throughout the hearing. It was clear that she was embarrassed and ashamed to find herself before the tribunal,” it said.
“In the few minutes that the respondent spoke directly to the tribunal she said all that needed to be said about the circumstances of her misconduct and the devastating impact this case has had on her.
“She explained that she had felt alone, isolated, and ultimately inadequate in chambers. She said that all her pupillage applications had been to chambers specialising in commercial law and that that was the area of law that had interested her most, but at present she did not see herself returning to the Bar.
“She had gone from loving the law to no longer wishing to have anything to do with it. She could not even bear to listen to anything about the law on the radio and she now hated being in London.”
The tribunal also noted there was no likelihood of repetition and that “excellent character references” confirmed that the misconduct was “completely out of character”.
The five-person panel concluded unanimously that there were exceptional circumstances here.
“Of particular importance were the respondent’s youth, inexperience, feelings of inadequacy at the time, previous exemplary conduct, and the high esteem in which she was and is still held by the referees, her deep and genuine remorse, and the limited harm caused.”
It ordered that she be suspended instead for 18 months. As Ms Dibbo is a pupil, this is essentially an order for the BSB not to issue a practising certificate in that time.
A BSB spokesman commented: “Ms Dibbo’s conduct fell below the high standards of honesty and integrity reasonably expected of those training to become members of the Bar, and the sanction reflects this.”
Unfortunately, her “circumstances” are not uncommon for pupils at the commercial Bar.