Barbara Rich

Good article. It’s very much not to the credit of the WASPI campaign that it did not focus on women in genuine hardship or from the world you describe but pursued a relentless and undeserving maximalism in its aspirations

He became significantly more sweary over the last year or so, perhaps because of stressful personal circumstances. Apart from that, he was an entirely inoffensive Twitter mutual who I assumed to be genuine in everything he posted. But I considerably doubt that now, knowing what I now know about him

Same word, both things, context usually will make it easy to tell them apart

He had many Twitter mutuals in the English legal world and cultivated the impression of belonging very successfully

He wasn’t even eligible to apply to take the Bar Transfer Test, let alone Calle himself a barrister “ex temp”, as he wasn’t an NL advocaat, and the transfer test, like temporary call, is a route for qualified lawyers only

I’m quite surprised by that as to the extent criminal cases are publicly reported the defendant’s name appears to be often anonymise, even when found guilty and sentenced

One random consequence of becoming immersed in this story is that I remembered the Anglo Dutch Young Bar Exchange of 1994, and my house guest then, who I kept in touch with for some years afterwards. I looked her up and was pleased to see she is now a judge in the court of appeal in Amsterdam

No, but they do, and they publish all the rules for progression and accreditation from one level to another. If RoF had dug deeper on this point I think all they might have found was the student membership from 2022

I now know that in NL “advocaat” and “mr” (master of laws) are both protected titles, with criminal penalties for their misuse. Unqualified representatives may act as advocates in cases in local courts with a value up to €25,000 but aren’t otherwise chartered or regulated as a profession

And I knew he wasn’t on the barristers’ register with a practising certificate or have an English chambers address. I didn’t actively think about his barrister status at all, but probably assumed he had been called to the Bar and kept up a social connection but wasn’t registered to practise

I think I looked at it in his pre-CILEX days. The only evidence of his membership is that he appears to have joined as a student in 2022 from an image he posted to social media then. That is a very long way in both time and hurdles to jump from being a CILEX authorised practitioner

Yes, this seems to have been just about status and forming friendships within an otherwise closed world to him. There’s an economic ceiling on what he can earn from his legitimate work as an unqualified representative in NL, including judicial assessment of legal costs, just as in this jurisdiction

This particular example is neither here nor there, but the real harm people like him cause is to take the time, attention, trust, and goodwill of established practitioners away from other newcomers who have acquired their credentials honestly through their own hard work and merits

Here’s an example of that. A couple of friendly tweets procure him a branded tote bag from a set of barristers’ chambers, with the word “barristers” prominent on it. And it even accompanies him when he happens to photobomb a video someone has made for tourists about his home town in the Netherlands

Once you see it, you can’t unsee the way in which he carefully ingratiated himself with English barristers and other people in the legal world on Twitter, and acquired and displayed props for his rather anachronistic English barrister fantasy. But at the time it seemed entirely innocuous

I wasn’t ever going to be collaborating with him in any legal work or even recommending him as a Dutch lawyer to my professional clients. That would have called for proper due diligence. But not an early evening social drink with others and a friendly Anglophile who appears to be in the legal world

Of course, everyone would do that if encountering him in a professional working context. But in a professional social or online para-social setting it’s very easy for a plausible, ingratiating person like him to be taken on trust as something rather different from what he actually is

That’s the thing. There wasn’t. He was perfectly plausible. I met him once in London for a drink with some other legal Twitter people. He didn’t give us any reason to check his credentials. I merely assumed he was a Dutch lawyer with professional connections and clients in England

One of the things that persuaded me that this was not just a story of a man in stressful personal circumstances overlooking some personal admin in failing to renew professional subscriptions was the way he dealt with the first RoF story. He also had an account here which was deleted a few days ago

Krougman seems to have been infatuated with the traditions and costume of the Bar of England and Wales. Which makes it hard to accept that he had a genuine belief he was entitled to call himself a barrister even temporarily without joining an Inn and participating in a ceremony of Call to the Bar

But you can see it’s a perfect opportunity for someone like Krougman to create an impression of being an English barrister without being questioned, and then use the images of himself robed up as a prop in his continuing fantasy. He had one as the banner on his now-locked X account until a week ago

That’s absolutely beautiful

It’s very much on my list of places to see, and oversight not intention that I haven’t yet done so

For anyone looking for a long read on the WASPI campaign. The government was right to say “no” to WASPI, who have inflated women’s expectations and resisted any form of means or merits testing and whose campaign would benefit numerous women who neither need nor deserve compensation. I am one myself

I would very much like to see those one day. Have never been to Chicago either, or to Houston, which is a significant art city, or to the Getty in LA

Isn’t there a substantial collection of British art at Yale as well?

Thanks for sharing these. They look marvellous. We usually go to Paris in January for the tail end of the winter exhibitions and other pleasures of the city: Greuze, Jacques-Louis David, and de la Tour this year

I’ve long wanted to visit it but don’t find the prospect of a visit to the USA appealing at the moment

The man even procured an English barrister’s wig tin with his name on it, insisting on the “Esq” and all. So much of his vision of the English bar seemed to be a fantasy of upper middle class gentlemen writing with fountain pens on briefs in pink ribbons in the Temple of a couple of generations ago

It’s outwith my own experience but I think that is very much part of the ethos of these international law gathering places. A Bar school friend did an EU law course in Bruges and described how students were encouraged to host each other in nationality groups and showcase costumes and traditions