Ex-Jones Day partner suspended and fined £20k over ‘burn it’ order

A former Jones Day partner found in contempt of court in 2022 over a “burn it” order has been fined £20,000 and handed a two-year suspension from practice by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

At a hearing this week, Raymond McKeeve represented himself before the tribunal in relation to the 2022 High Court ruling that found him criminally liable for contempt of court for ordering a client’s IT manager to delete a messaging app subject to a search order in 2019.

McKeeve - then a private equity partner at Jones Day in London - had been advising the co-founder of Ocado who was setting up his own online grocery business and had engaged the services of a third person still employed by the grocery delivery giant.

Ocado, suspecting that its confidential information was being misused, issued a search order against McKeeve’s client and its employee. At that point, McKeeve issued the “burn it” order to the IT manager, instructing him to “burn” (or words to that effect) the messaging app through which he, the client and the Ocado employee had communicated.

An anonymity order was granted by the tribunal for the clients involved in this case, but their details are disclosed in the High Court ruling from 2022.

The tribunal heard, in an agreed statement of facts, some details of that ruling.

It heard that McKeeve contacted a member of Jones Day’s litigation team for advice immediately following the event, but that the incident itself was reported by the IT manager five days after the fact.

It also heard that, at the High Court hearing, McKeeve said he gave the ‘burn it’ order because his wife’s name had been used as a pseudonym in the messages - something he had objected to.

The tribunal heard that arguments of naivety on McKeeve’s part were discounted.

Tom Walker, acting for the SRA, said: “The High Court did not find that this was a sustained attempt to mislead or conceal, and although it did impede the due administration of justice, there is no evidence that any actual confidential material or activity was concealed by virtue of the respondent’s actions.”

He continued, “It still remains a very serious finding for a lawyer to be found criminally liable for contempt of court, but hopefully those failures have been put in context.”

McKeeve did not contest any of the allegations against him and apologised to the tribunal, calling the seven-year process “utterly tortuous”.

“I remain heartbroken, to put it bluntly, finding myself through my own actions in a position of my integrity and my position in a profession which I pursued vigorously for 30-odd years at the highest level to now be in question,” he said.

“I’d like to apologise to the tribunal in the most absolute terms for what was an isolated act of - I think the High Court judge described it as - ‘monumental stupidity’.”

McKeeve, who told the tribunal he was now working as a consultant for a tech company, was ordered to pay a fixed amount of £20,000, below the £30,930 in legal costs Walker said the SRA had incurred. 

He did not provide a written statement of means, but indicated that his financial situation was “impecunious”.