By Bonnie Eslinger

Law360, London (August 6, 2020, 7:54 PM BST) -- McDermott Will & Emery LLP has reported itself to the U.K.'s solicitor regulatory body after allowing a restricted Zoom link for its client's trial against the author of the Trump dossier to be distributed to individuals outside of the case, drawing criticism Thursday from a high-ranking judge.

High Court Judge Geraldine Andrews, the president of the Queen's Bench Division, rebuked the firm for sharing the link for the video feed from the in-person libel trial against dossier author Christopher Steele with unauthorized individuals outside the court. She said she would send a copy of her judgment to the U.K.'s Solicitors Regulation Authority "so that this court's views of the seriousness of the breaches in this case can be known to it."

"Even if the explanations are to be taken at face value, however, the picture that they paint is an unhappy one, demonstrating a casual attitude towards orders of the court which falls well below the standards to be expected of senior and experienced legal professionals and a lack of appropriate guidance and supervision of more junior staff," the judge said.

The underlying case is a libel trial brought by a Russian technology executive and his company over allegations in the report linking the Russian national to cybercrime and the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Seven individuals who are directly connected to claimant Aleksej Gubarev and a subsidiary of a company he founded, XBT Holdings, were sent the online link to watch the July trial proceedings live, McDermott partner Ziva Robertson told the court. They included Gubarev's wife, the claimants' attorneys in the United States and the mother of Nikolay Dvas, the CEO of another XBT subsidiary, who lives in Russia.

The judge presiding over the trial, High Court Judge Mark Warby, learned of the misconduct midtrial, when he saw that one of the witnesses in the case, who had been given permission to testify by video link, was watching the live-stream of the trial that was being fed into a separate courtroom for the public due to distancing needs during the pandemic. 

The court later found out that an associate solicitor with McDermott, which was responsible for arranging the video conferencing, asked Opus 2, the company handling the courtroom technology, for the link for the live video feed. The attorney also asked for it to be sent to Robertson, another partner, a junior lawyer at McDermott, Gubarev and Dvas.

The night before the July 20 start of the trial, which was held in-person at the Royal Courts of Justice, Dvas sent Robertson a text message asking if the link he received was "public," according to Thursday's judgment. Robertson responded by telling Dvas that livestreaming of the proceedings was not authorized, although she never investigated how the link had come to be distributed, according to the Thursday ruling.

However, when Judge Warby inquired about the unauthorized use of the link, the barrister instructed by McDermott said Robertson had "what, frankly, she accepts is a slight memory fade on Monday, when she told some of my clients that it was all right to use the Zoom feed ... she's just apologetic and embarrassed about it."

The judge decided to refer the matter to the divisional court, but said he was satisfied that it was not a case of open defiance to the court's order allowing the live feed for limited purposes only, such as an overflow courtroom for the press, and requiring permission from the court to transmit any audio or video recordings or live transcript. Judge Andrews heard arguments on the issue July 31.

In her Thursday ruling, Judge Andrews noted that in normal circumstances a judge can see and hear everything that is going on in court, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been temporary changes to the way parties, the press and the public have been allowed access to proceedings.

Various explanations from McDermott on how the links were disseminated were "difficult to comprehend and lack coherence," the judge added. For example, they don't address how the link came to be sent to members of the families of Gubarev and Russia, Judge Andrews said.

The judge added that the other McDermott partner, Lynsey McIntyre, was much more involved in the day-to-day matters of the trial and should have been aware that the associate was disseminating the Zoom links and put a stop to it.

The ruling also noted that the Zoom link was briefly put on the computer of a Law360 reporter by an Opus 2 technician trying to resolve a technical issue with the live feed in the overflow room.

A McDermott spokesman told Law360 on Thursday that the firm "respect[s] the judgment of the court and regret[s] our error in this matter."

"We note that the Court did not find these actions to be deliberate and recognized our self-reporting to the SRA," the firm said in an emailed statement. "We continue to act with the rigor and precision on which our firm was founded."

Gubarev claims in the High Court suit that Steele is responsible for BuzzFeed's 2017 publication of the dossier, which includes unfounded allegations that a web-hosting company Gubarev founded was knowingly involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's computer systems during the political race.

The dossier — a collection of memos that investigated possible links between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, his campaign team and Russia — garnered extensive media attention after BuzzFeed uploaded much of the report to its website in early January 2017, after Trump was elected.

Gubarev is represented by Andrew Caldecott QC and Chloe Strong of 5RB Barristers and Ian Helme of Matrix Chambers, instructed by McDermott Will & Emery LLP.

Orbis and Steele are represented by Gavin Millar QC and Edward Craven of Matrix Chambers, instructed by Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP.

The case is Gubarev and others v. Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. and another, case number QB-2017-002808, in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales.

--Editing by Abbie Sarfo.

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified one of the individuals to whom the Zoom link was sent. The error has been corrected.

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