Last week we documented the BBC Geneva correspondent’s repeated portrayal of the controversial United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories as an “international lawyer”:
BBC GENEVA CORRESPONDENT CHEERLEADS UN RAPPORTEUR’S LATEST ANTI-ISRAEL SCREED
CAMERA UK submitted a complaint referring the BBC to an interview (since edited) with Francesca Albanese in which she stated “I didn’t take the exam to become a lawyer, because I’m not a lawyer, and I never wanted to do it”.
Four days later, we received a response from the BBC News website which includes the following:
“I have looked carefully at your message and the report to which it refers. I understand you were concerned about us referring to UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese as an “international lawyer”.
You say that because she has not obtained a licence to practise law and that it is “misleading and erroneous” to call her a lawyer.
Please may I draw your attention to the website of the UK’s Solicitors Regulation Authority and the section titled “legal jargon explained” – https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/choosing/legal-jargon-explained/
It describes a lawyer as follows: “Lawyer is a general term used to describe people who provide legal services. Unlike terms such as solicitor or barrister, lawyer has no defined meaning in UK law. Anyone can call themselves a lawyer, regardless of whether they have any professional legal qualifications or not. In our Standards and Regulations, we use the word lawyer as a shorthand to describe all regulated individuals, but in reality, if someone calls themselves a lawyer, it does not necessarily mean they have an official title or are subject to any formal regulation.”
Ms Albanese has two law degrees – a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Pisa and a master’s degree in law from SOAS, University of London.
She has a post as a scholar of international law at Georgetown University in Washington DC and is the author of many respected scholarly works, including Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2020).
She is hired by the UN, in her role as a special rapporteur, as a legal expert on the state of human rights in the Palestinian territories. Her UN website bio says: “Ms. Francesca Albanese is an international lawyer, specialised in human rights and the Middle East.” https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-palestine/francesca-albanese
In our article we described her variously as “a UN expert” and an “international lawyer”. We do not agree our description was misleading or erroneous, or that it breaches our Editorial Guidelines.”
The BBC News website is of course available to audiences not just in the UK but worldwide and there are many countries and states in which the term lawyer does imply being licenced to practice law. The National Bar Council in Albanese’s home country, for example, states that “Lawyers in Italy can start practicing the profession only after having successfully passed the National Bar Exam and their subsequent admission and registration to the district order”.
The idea that BBC News website readers around the world would be familiar with the UK’s Solicitors Regulation Authority’s particular definition of a lawyer is of course ridiculous and irrelevant.
