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(Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

Flame. On.

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Bob Seely is a Tory member of parliament from the Isle of Wight and — taking advantage of the parliamentary privilege shielding members from defamation to allow a fulsome debate — Seely went OFF on lawyers representing organs of the Russian government and padding Putin’s pockets.

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Not just “firms.” This guy names INDIVIDUAL LAWYERS!

Well. This is spicy. Conservative MP Bob Seely makes the most of parliamentary privilege to name individual London lawyers working for Russian oligarchs and questions their morality. pic.twitter.com/Cq6XoNvBLR

— Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson) March 1, 2022

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According to our mates at Legal Cheek, who are all over this from the UK perspective, these attorneys are all “CMS, Carter-Ruck and Harbottle & Lewis, as well as a barrister from Matrix Chambers.”

Oligarchs, Putin’s henchmen… teaming up with amoral lawyers. These firms set up a one-stop corruption shop to offer a form of legalised intimidation to silence their rivals but also journalists and authors, but also an unstructured and unregulated private eye business which is now collecting kompromat on people in this country.

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I don’t blame lawyers for seeking money in happier times. But the failure here, as Seely explains, is with the government. There were opportunities to block this kind of work and no one wanted to take them. Part of that is the thought that — like with China and Iran (pre-Trump) — intertwining the economy with Europe and the United States can be an instrument of containment if not reform. But with the global liberal order all blown to hell under Trump, Putin’s clearly decided to try to cash in on Western goodwill and found it lacking.

From the Legal Cheek article:

Barrister Vishal Misra of Great James Street Chambers said naming the lawyers and their law firms in this way was “reprehensible behaviour”.

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Oh, fuck you.

Mishra himself is pretty young, but there’s a cult of attorneys — skewing a little old — claiming that the new generation is soft but this is the snowflakiest stuff ever. If you don’t want to be called out for representing a war criminal, and I say this with all respect, don’t represent war criminals. Analogies to criminal defendants are such bunk. Representing a defendant against the awesome power of the state has detached nobility. Signing off on oil futures so a dictator can build hypersonic nukes doesn’t. It’s an insult to the profession to pretend these are the same.

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I’m never going to support the Tories, but maybe this guy should take a shot at number 10 right now. Can it get any worse than Boris?

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

Biglaw, Russia, Ukraine