Bar Standards Board Washes Its Hands of the Juneja Case

Published on: 22 Jun, 2015
Updated on: 22 Jun, 2015

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) has declined to give a quotable comment on the case of convicted former councillor Monika Juneja, in responses to questions from The Guildford Dragon News.

The board’s position is, as Juneja, at the time a student member of Gray’s Inn of Court, had not been called to the bar, an enquiry into her status, other than confirming she was not a practising barrister, was not a matter for them.

A board spokesperson refused to say whether the BSB knew she had not passed her bar exam or, if they did know, at what stage.

Borough Council officers at Millmead are believed to be disappointed that other organisations, including the BSB, are not being criticised for their part in the enquiry, in particular their failure to provide a more complete picture about Juneja’s legal training history, to the independent investigation.

The Director of the BSB Dr Vanessa Davies wrote to Guildford Borough Council’s independent investigator Dr Robin Hooper correcting earlier advice from a junior at the Bar Council, based on the law as it had been, effectively, until 2010, that Juneja had not committed an offence.

Not only did Dr Davies confirm that it was an offence if Juneja had called herself a barrister she concluded: “Now that I have set out the correct position for you it will be clear that there are implications for the investigation report but those, of course, are a matter for you.”

Subsequently there was a follow up telephone conversation between Hooper and Davies but Davies, it is understood, only confirmed the content of the letter, offering no additional information.

Dr Hooper apparently accepted as evidence, a soft copy of a letter from BPP Law School informing Monika Juneja of her Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) result. But the letter had been forged by Juneja so that instead of her marking reading “not yet competent” it read “competent”. She sent it to Hooper as a scanned image attachment to an email.

Hooper did not verify the letter with BPP and so concluded that the only issue was whether having passed, as he believed, the barrister course, but not having been called to the bar or undergone pupillage, Juneja should have called herself a barrister.

His conclusion remained that by doing so, even if a criminal offence, she had not breached the Nolan code of conduct with which councillors should comply. Nor did he consider it necessary to report the matter to the police.

Soon afterwards when the matter was referred to the police by the complainants and detectives conducted their investigation, a check with BPP was carried out and quickly discovered that Juneja had not passed the Bar Professional Training Course. A search of Juneja’s address then discovered, among other evidence, the forged letter she had sent to Hooper.

Further checks by the Police showed that Juneja’s deceptions dated right back to her application for barrister training 15 years ago, when she forged her degree certificate to show BPP she had a 2.1 degree in sociology from Greenwich university instead of the 3rd she had actually obtained. A third class degree was not sufficient to apply for barrister training.

Anyone wishing to check whether a person claiming to be a barrister is properly qualified can use the barristers’ register, set up by the BSB in January 2012. But a check will only show whether someone has a current certificate to practise as a barrister; it will not reveal any further details about their level of qualification, so does not discriminate between a person who is completely unqualified, a person who has only passed the BPTC or a person who has been a fully qualified, practising barrister but does not have a current practising certificate.

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