Alex Haines

Licence to Quill: legal services licences following the recent wave of Russian sanctions

In the wake of Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine, public perception, triggered – and at times encouraged – by the media and MPs, appears to support a blanket ban on representing persons and entities designated (DPs) under the UK’s new sanctions framework, or even non-designated persons allied to Vladimir Putin or his regime. As a result, lawyers have quickly become stuck between, on the one hand, a purported moral obligation and internal-firm practice based on commercial considerations ostensibly consistent with foreign policy and, on the other, their duty to preserve due process. In this article, Alex Haines delineates between what is and is not permitted.