Hogan Lovells has suspended a partner after he was caught using his work computer to look at porn.
The partner, who works in Hogan Lovell’s London office, did not fall foul of his IT department. Instead he was dobbed in by a lawyer working for another firm across the street.
On Monday morning a lawyer with Irwin Mitchell, whose London office is separated from Hogan Lovells by a narrow lane, looked out of their window and straight into the partner’s office. Sources told RollOnFriday that the Irwin Mitchell lawyer was shocked to see the Hogan Lovells partner watching porn at his desk, with his back to the window.
The IM lawyer filmed the absorbed partner on a mobile phone, sources told RollOnFriday, and sent the footage to Hogan Lovells lawyers. It then made its way to the firm’s HR. The partner has now been suspended.
In a statement, Hogan Lovells said, “We were made aware of an individual in our office mis-using their computer to watch adult material. Such behaviour is unacceptable and we have suspended them pending a full internal investigation”. An insider said it was a case of “Hogan (Self) Lovells”, although RollOnFriday has been unable to confirm just how much self-love the partner was expressing at the time.
Asked how he circumnavigated the firm’s firewall, a spokeswoman for Hogan Lovells said, “We didn’t block access to websites unless they represented a cybersecurity risk (eg they have malware on them). The nature of our work for clients sometimes means we need to carry out investigations in areas which require us to have flexible access”. But it seems one horny partner has brought the era of free browsing to an end: “We have reviewed and tightened this policy”, she said.
