Roll on Friday
An office head who trapped a woman in a wheelchair on the dancefloor and joked about another’s virginity at his firm’s annual conference has been expelled from the legal profession.
Darren Shaw, a Chartered Legal Executive, was the Head of Financial Products at personal injury firm Keller Postman and the head of its Manchester office from 2020 to 2024.
Shaw’s toe-curling adventures took place at Keller Postman’s annual conference in 2022, beginning with his reaction to the announcement over dinner that one of the prizes in the raffle was a ‘Virgin Experience Day’.
Shaw immediately boarded the banterbus by joking that a junior female colleague was a “virgin” and the winner would therefore be taking her virginity. It was such a zinger that he repeated the gag, commenting, “I didn’t realise you could spend a night with [Person A]!”.
After dinner, a junior member of staff in a wheelchair, Colleague E, said she saw Shaw “pulling female staff” on to the dancefloor, “some of whom seemed uncomfortable and tried to pull away”.
She became a target herself, testifying that Shaw took her hands uninvited and tried to pull her along in her wheelchair, “positioning his hands either side of her and controlling the chair so she could not move away”.
The woman stated that Shaw approached her again later on and “held her hands and tried to move her wheelchair” on to the dancefloor. Although she objected repeatedly, he replied with words to the effect of, “Oh stop, you’re teasing me”.
The flirty boss also approached another woman, Person B, and adjusted her hat to show more of her face, saying, “Come on, come on… you should wear it like this. You’ve got a great face; you’ve got a great name. Are those your eyes?”
A fourth colleague stated that Shaw appeared next to her “out of nowhere”, then leaned in close and said words to the effect of, “Do you want to come to the bar alone with me?”
She didn’t, but about 15 staff ended up at a bar in Manchester with Shaw until around midnight. “Has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful, gorgeous, really attractive?” he told one of the attendees.
Adopting a pick-up strategy ROF would not advise any reader to follow, he put his arm around another colleague and told her, “You smell like coconuts”.
Remarking that she was “too pretty to be single”, he told her, “You have really nice eyes”, insisting, “Oh, what I’d do to you with those eyes”.
Colleague C agreed to dance with Shaw at the bar, but when she tried to walk away he put his hands on her waist, pulled her towards him, whispered, “I haven’t finished yet, I’m just taking a sip of my drink”, then rubbed her stomach.
After the complaints began rolling in from women who said they felt “shocked”, “uncomfortable” and “violated”, but unable to object at the time because of Shaw’s seniority, Keller Postman reported the matter to the SRA and appointed Gowling WLG to investigate.
Gowling concluded that Shaw’s conduct was inappropriate and the firm gave him a first and final written warning. It banned Shaw from drinking at work events, and from attending offices or events outside of Manchester without prior written approval, and it barred him from being alone with female staff in offices other than Manchester.
