Married high-flying barrister, 59, who pressured aspiring lawyer to have ‘undesirable intercourse’ with him on first day of labor expertise is disbarred

A married high-flying barrister who forced an aspiring lawyer to have ‘unwanted’ sexual activity with him on the first day of her work experience has been disbarred.

Navjot ‘Jo’ Sidhu KC, 59, initiated sexual activity with the young paralegal in her 20s, named only as Person 2, who was doing a ‘mini-pupillage’ work experience with him with a view to becoming a barrister in 2018, a seven-day tribunal in December heard.

The incident involved contact with her bare skin and sexual touching either over or under clothing, according to a panel at the Bar Tribunal & Adjudication Service, which found three charges of professional misconduct proven against Mr Sidhu.

The panel concluded that his invitation was of a sexual nature and one which he knew or should have known was inappropriate and unwanted. In a sanctions hearing on Wednesday, the panel announced the decision to disbar Mr Sidhu.

The December tribunal was told that the married father-of-two Mr Sidhu invited Person 2 back to his hotel room to work on a case and asked her to join him in bed despite her repeated insistence that she wanted to leave or stay on the sofa.

Person 2 told the tribunal that she had not responded to his advances after she lay on the bed, when he began to kiss her as well as touching her genitals and breast.

‘I touched his private parts at some point – I was not enthusiastic about it. I did not want the sexual activity,’ she said, giving evidence remotely and from behind a screen.

Fiona Horlick, KC, for the Bar Standards Board, told the tribunal the way the encounter unfolded amounted to ‘induc(ing) reluctant consent’ and that the woman had been coaxed into ‘unwanted sex’. 

Person 2 added that Mr Sidhu, who is the former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, was ‘a senior’ in the profession who ‘holds a lot out in terms of your careers’.

At a sanctions hearing on Wednesday, BTAS panel chairwoman Janet Waddicor said the majority decision of the panel was that Mr Sidhu – who appeared over a video link for the hearing – should be disbarred.

The sanction applied to two of the three charges, with no separate penalty for the remaining charge, which was said to overlap with one of the others.

On the extent to which Mr Sidhu acted in breach of a position of trust and authority, Ms Waddicor said: ‘He did. He was mentoring her, she was a mini-pupil and he was a senior barrister.

‘There was a significant disparity in seniority and experience between the two of them.

‘She was in her mid-20s and he was in his 50s. He was a senior silk and she had not had any experience of the Bar before. The disparity could not have been more striking.’

Lawyers for Mr Sidhu had argued that the tribunal case should be heard behind closed doors, but in a majority ruling the five-strong panel rejected that and found him guilty of on December 9, 2024, of three charges by a tribunal in London.

Another seven charges regarding the same woman – Person 2, who was doing work experience with the KC – and another younger woman were thrown out. Neither of the women has been named.

Mr Sidhu, who is married with two adult daughters and lives in west London, had originally faced 28 charges, but his lawyers successfully applied to have 18 dismissed at earlier hearings and he was found guilty of three of the remaining ten charges.

According to The Times, the tribunal ruled unanimously that Mr Sidhu should not have asked the woman to his hotel room, with the chairman finding that the ‘invitation was entirely of a sexual nature and entirely inappropriate in all the circumstances’.

It also found Mr Sidhu guilty of professional misconduct for changing out of his day clothes and into his pyjamas, insisting that she slept in his bed, for putting pillows between them as a barrier and engaging in sexual activity.

At the hearing before the Bar’s disciplinary tribunal, it was alleged that on two occasions within a fortnight in November and December 2018, Mr Sidhu, who was described as ‘attractive and charismatic’, separately invited both women back to his hotel room.

The other woman, named as Person 3, was a student that was allegedly invited by Mr Sidhu to his hotel room after she contacted him on LinkedIn to ask for professional advice.

He is said to have touched her knee at the hotel in December 2018 – but nothing further transpired until he texted her years later to make clear he wanted to have sex with her, offering to meet her at her student accomodation in London.

After a ‘significant break’ the pair began exchanging sexually explicit messages. These were not shown in court, but Ms Horlick KC, for the BSB, said members of the public would be ‘horrified’ by the exchanges.

Mr Sidhu did not deny having relationships with the women but he maintained that they were consensual and that the claims should be dismissed because they related to his private life and not his professional role.

During closing arguments at the tribunal, a lawyer for Mr Sidhu told the tribunal that he was not a ‘monster’ or a ‘predator’, adding that he had not sought them out aggressively or forced them to do anything against their will.

Mr Sidhu voluntarily gave up his certificate to practise and has not practised at the bar for 17 months. No reason was given as to why. 

Mr Sidhu, who hails from Southall in west London, wrote he ‘never wanted to be a barrister’ in a column for Counsel magazine in 2023, in which he extolled the virtues of equality and diversity.

He led thousands of barristers on strike during a bitter feud with the Johnson Tory government over legal aid rates; the action led to his successor, Liz Truss, granting a 12 per cent pay rise for thousands of barristers.

‘I have tried to remain faithful to my favourite motto, “we rise by lifting others”, by mentoring scores of aspiring barristers, speaking at university campuses across the country to encourage students to consider a career at the Bar, and supervising pupils in chambers,’ he wrote in the column.

He was state-educated at Villiers High School and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford; he then worked as a researcher at the BBC before being called to the Bar in 1993, taking silk 19 years later.

Mr Sidhu served as president of the Society of Asian Lawyers for four years and ran to become director of public prosecutions – the top CPS job once held by Sir Keir Starmer – twice.

He latterly moved to No5 Barristers’ Chambers – but left and removed himself from the Bar Standards Board’s register, taking him out of practice.