The woman who first broke a Harvey Weinstein non-disclosure agreement (NDAs) has strongly criticised the Bar Council for dismissing the growing evidence of NDA abuse.
Writing for Legal Futures, Zelda Perkins argued instead that “the comfortable ‘NDAs are fine’ consensus appears to be breaking down among individual practitioners”.
Together with Dr Julie Macfarlane, with whom she co-founded the pressure group Can’t Buy My Silence, Ms Perkins added: “The ethical conduct of lawyers has always been much wider than simply getting away with avoiding doing something illegal.”
Responding recently to the Legal Services Board’s (LSB) call for evidence on NDAs, the Bar Council insisted that the oversight regulator has “no role” in “attempting to control or regulate lawyers involved in assisting clients in the lawful use of NDAs.
The Bar Council described the call for evidence as “freighted with assumptions founded on anecdote and headlines”, while failing to reflect “the many good reasons” why NDAs were used by parties on both sides.
Ms Perkins was Weinstein’s personal assistant and signed an NDA to settle her claim against him and his film company Miramax in 1998. She broke it in 2017 to speak out about what she had faced, triggering his prosecution and the #MeToo movement.
In the joint blog with Dr Macfarlane, Ms Perkins observed that the Bar Council response “scoffs at the idea (describing it as ‘very muddled thinking’) that some NDAs might be illegal or unenforceable, and...
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