The Law Society chief executive has been found “guilty of gross misconduct” following a character reference he provided to a cousin convicted of serious sexual offences.<\/p>\n
David Lavery had provided a character reference to a court after the conviction of former schoolteacher William Lloyd-Lavery.<\/a><\/p>\n The Law Society said an independent disciplinary panel “determined that the appropriate sanction that the Chief Executive received a sanction short of dismissal”.<\/p>\n Lavery declined to exercise his right to appeal. <\/p>\n Last month, Lavery was sacked from his role as a human rights commissioner<\/a> but he remained in post as chief executive of the Law Society of Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n Nicola Bannon – one of four women who were indecently assaulted by Lloyd-Lavery<\/a> at a Belfast school in the 1970s – called on Lavery to resign.<\/a><\/p>\n A meeting was due to be held on Wednesday after 50 letters from Law Society members called for a Special General Meeting (SGM). <\/p>\n However, the Law Society said they have decided to “adjourn the Special General Meeting to a date to be fixed as soon as practicable”.<\/p>\n It had originally been understood the solicitors wanted to debate and vote on a range of motions, including calling for the resignation of Lavery.<\/p>\n It had also been understood they wanted to know how the decision was made to keep him in post as chief executive, and on what basis.<\/p>\n Mark Borland, the president of the Law Society, previously told the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster<\/a> programme that Lavery had his support to continue as chief executive<\/a> – but he expressed “regret” over how the society handled the situation and said they “got it wrong”.<\/p>\n In a previous statement, Lavery apologised for a “serious error in judgement” in providing the character reference and “for any hurt and distress” he caused the victims.<\/p>\n “I profoundly regret that and I am committed to doing all I can to address it in the time ahead,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Law Society chief executive has been found “guilty of gross misconduct” following a character reference he provided…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-764598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}