Horsfield Menzies : Blog vs Behaviour – RACHEL RIGG : WHO GETS TO CALL IT A FISHING EXPEDITION?

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Rachel Rigg has chosen an unusually dangerous metaphor for somebody writing under the Horsfield Menzies logo. Her article, “DSARs AS A FISHING EXPEDITION – DO THEY WORK?”, looks at employees who make subject access requests shortly before grievances, ACAS Early Conciliation or Employment Tribunal proceedings because they hope their own personal data may contain something useful. Rigg correctly explains that a DSAR is not general litigation disclosure. It gives somebody rights over their personal data, not a legal crowbar for wrenching open every drawer, inbox and Teams chat in the building.

Fair enough. The fun starts with “fishing expedition”, because that phrase does more than explain legal scope. It supplies a picture: the employee casting speculatively into corporate waters, hoping to snag an embarrassing email that can be dragged ashore and waved around at Tribunal. Horsfield Menzies even specialises in helping employers deal with contentious employee DSARs while, according to Rigg’s own profile, ensuring their handling supports “any litigation strategies in play”. So the employee looking for useful information is fishing, while the employer coordinating information around a litigation strategy is apparently doing sophisticated legal work.

That is quite a fucking stretch of water between two descriptions of people using information strategically during a dispute. Worse for Horsfield Menzies, Sam Butler has already been down to the medical centre with the tackle box.

The Employee Gets The Fishing Rod

There is nothing wrong with Rigg explaining that employees sometimes misunderstand what a DSAR will deliver. They do. A worker may assume that asking for all personal data connected with a dispute will produce every relevant document, when litigation disclosure operates according to a different test. Redactions may also be necessary, privilege can apply, third-party information requires consideration and some documents may be relevant to litigation without containing much of the requester’s personal data at all.

That is useful advice. However, the metaphor adds a faint sneer that the law itself does not require. Suddenly the employee is not merely exercising a statutory right while hoping to understand what happened. They are trawling. They are casting about, wandering around the corporate reservoir wearing waders and hoping someone in HR was stupid enough to email “yes, we discriminated against him” to the entire fucking board.

Organisations already possess the servers, recruitment systems, HR files, emails, meeting notes and internal conversations. The employee usually starts with whatever happened directly in front of them. A DSAR can therefore be one of the few mechanisms available for discovering how their own information moved once it disappeared through the company door. Of course they may hope the answer helps explain a dispute. Why the hell else would somebody halfway through an employment row suddenly develop a recreational passion for records management?

Wanting information because information may explain what happened is not inherently grubby. It is the ordinary response to being told that decisions were made somewhere you could not see. Yet Rachel has put the rod in the employee’s hand, which is unfortunate because Horsfield Menzies should probably have checked the office cupboards before choosing the metaphor.

My Medical Evidence Was Not A Fucking Bait Box

I supplied medical evidence during the Cepac litigation because Cepac disputed disability. The purpose from my side was hardly mysterious: provide evidence of the condition, treatment and effects being relied upon in the proceedings. Sensitive medical material entered the case because the respondent wanted proof.

Horsfield Menzies therefore obtained access to highly personal information because its client put disability in issue. Sam Butler then went through the medical chronology and extracted an entry he believed assisted Cepac’s opposition to my postponement position. The entry concerned an appointment date, but it was not the relevant appointment. I had notified the Tribunal about the appointment affecting the hearing before the date Butler relied upon, and Horsfield Menzies later accepted that chronology.

That might have been a useful moment to stop rummaging.

Instead, the firm (Butler) contacted the medical centre. It then returned with fresh information about alternative appointment availability, another doctor, comparative seniority and how long I might wait for somebody more senior. Butler relied on that information while advancing the position that moving my healthcare appointment was more expedient than moving the hearing.

Now Rachel wants to discuss fishing expeditions.

Splendid.

One Side Asked For Its Own Data

Put the legal labels aside for a moment and look at the ordinary-language picture. Rigg’s employee submits a statutory request asking an organisation what personal information it holds about them. The employee may hope that information clarifies a grievance or reveals something useful to litigation. Horsfield Menzies puts “FISHING EXPEDITION” in the headline.

I gave the opposing solicitors medical material because their client demanded proof of disability. Somebody then searched that chronology for information useful to another procedural argument, relied upon the wrong appointment and subsequently contacted the healthcare provider before returning with additional scheduling information.

Those are legally different activities, obviously. A DSAR is not Tribunal disclosure, and neither is identical to a solicitor making an enquiry during litigation. Pretending otherwise would turn a good argument into cheap bollocks. But Rigg chose an ordinary-language metaphor about searching for useful information, not me.

Once you do that, the comparison becomes irresistible. One person asks to see personal data held about them. The other follows somebody else’s medical information until the trail reaches the surgery.

Which one sounds more like an expedition?

Rigg Supplies The Rig

Rachel’s professional biography makes the contrast even better. Horsfield Menzies describes her as having particular expertise in contentious employee subject access requests and says she works alongside HR and Legal teams so those requests are handled in a way that supports litigation strategies already in play.

There is nothing inherently improper about that. Employers embroiled in litigation need coherent advice, and a DSAR response should not be handled by one department while the litigation team merrily contradicts it somewhere else. The language is still magnificent, though.

When the employee hopes information obtained through a DSAR might support a claim, the website asks whether the exercise amounts to fishing. When the employer manages the resulting information so its response fits the broader litigation strategy, that becomes specialist legal advice.

One side gets a rod and a slightly grubby metaphor. The other gets HR, Legal, external solicitors and a strategy document.

Apparently the difference between fishing and professionalism is whether somebody has opened a matter number.

Horsfield Menzies Already Hooked The Wrong Appointment

The medical-centre episode matters for another reason. TCAP had already published “Sam Butler : The Medical Fishing Expedition” before this Rachel Rigg piece became the next Blog vs Behaviour target. That earlier title described the sequence as I saw it: medical evidence entered the proceedings for one purpose, an individual entry became useful for another argument, the entry turned out to concern the wrong appointment and the information trail was then followed beyond the record to the healthcare provider.

Then Horsfield Menzies published an article asking whether employees use DSARs as fishing expeditions.

You could not script that without an editor telling you to calm the fuck down.

The phrase is now sitting on the firm’s own website while an existing TCAP article bearing almost the same metaphor describes one of its own senior associates examining a disabled claimant’s medical chronology and then going beyond it to the medical provider. At some point satire stops having to write jokes and simply starts forwarding the correspondence.

Then Horsfield Menzies Cast Into TCAP

There is another reason the fishing metaphor is particularly rich. Horsfield Menzies did not merely search medical material. It later went trawling through TCAP itself for material it believed would support Cepac’s strike-out case.

That decision created an irony which I am not convinced the firm ever properly noticed.

Before Horsfield Menzies started presenting TCAP material in the litigation, much of my online criticism had been deliberately compartmentalised. Even the Ce-UnPac’d series did not lazily glue Cepac onto every corporate subject it covered. Where an article concerned another company, product, executive or issue, I often kept it there. The editorial restraint mattered because not every criticism needed a giant neon arrow pointing back towards the litigation.

The criticism could be sharp without constantly saying CEPAC CEPAC CEPAC like some deranged corporate cuckoo clock.

Then Horsfield Menzies selected that material for use in proceedings brought by Cepac.

That was their choice.

They Supplied The Missing Label

By taking articles, posts and commentary that had often been deliberately kept separate from Cepac and placing them inside Cepac’s litigation, Horsfield Menzies helped create an association some of the material itself had avoided making. What TCAP had compartmentalised, the lawyers bundled together.

If the intention was to demonstrate something damaging about my conduct, the exercise carried an obvious collateral effect: the law firm itself attached the client’s name to material that I had often chosen not to attach to the client.

That is poor fucking irony management.

The firm went searching through the site for evidence it thought would hurt me and may not even have appreciated that some of the supposed ammunition demonstrated restraint rather than obsession. The subject of an article remained the subject of the article. Cepac was not shoehorned into every paragraph because that would have been lazy, repetitive and editorially dishonest.

Horsfield Menzies then arrived with the bundle index and supplied the connective tissue themselves.

The employee gets warned about fishing expeditions, yet the respondent’s solicitors trawled TCAP, hauled selected material into Cepac’s case and effectively slapped CEPAC EXHIBIT onto commentary which sometimes had no Cepac connection in the article at all.

They did not merely fish.

They helped label the pond.

The Search Can Change The Thing Being Searched

That is the more interesting evidential problem. Lawyers naturally search for material capable of supporting an application. Nothing remarkable there. But selection is not neutral once the act of selection itself changes the context in which the material will be read.

An article about Company A may have nothing to do with Cepac when published. Put it into Cepac’s strike-out evidence as an example of the claimant’s conduct, however, and suddenly Company A, TCAP, the claimant and Cepac occupy the same litigation narrative. The solicitor has not altered the words, but the evidential frame around them has changed.

That does not make the evidence inadmissible or illegitimate. It simply means lawyers who complain about other people going on fishing expeditions might want to remember that hauling something onto your own deck can alter what everybody thinks the catch belongs to.

Horsfield Menzies went looking for criticism.

It found criticism.

Then it tied some of that criticism more closely to its own client than the author originally had.

Bravo.

The Page DSAR Actually Caught Something

There is another inconvenience for the “do they work?” framing. In the same underlying dispute, my subject access work with Page Outsourcing produced material that mattered to my understanding of what happened after the recruitment complaint.

The disclosure contained internal communications around the discrimination allegation, evidence of Page searching my previous Tribunal history and a considerably richer picture of what happened inside the organisation than I possessed beforehand. Some of it was heavily redacted and the request did not magically hand me every document in the building, nor should it have. Third-party information, exemptions and the legal limits of subject access remained what they were.

Yet the exercise still revealed information about the processing of my data and the organisation’s internal response to a complaint concerning me.

So do fishing expeditions work?

That depends what Rachel means by work.

If she means does a DSAR substitute for litigation disclosure and guarantee an employee every document they would like to see?, obviously not. If she means can exercising the statutory right reveal information about how an organisation dealt with you that you did not previously know?, then my file has already answered the bloody question.

The Employee Is Not Trespassing In Their Own Data

The metaphor also becomes strange once you think about what a subject access request actually concerns.

Fishing suggests intrusion into somebody else’s resource. The angler enters the water hoping to capture something that belongs there rather than to them. A subject access request is conceptually different because the individual is exercising a legal right concerning personal information about themselves which another organisation processes.

That does not mean the employee owns every document containing their name. It does not abolish privilege, exemptions or third-party rights. It does, however, make the fishing imagery slightly arse-about-face.

The requester is not sneaking into a private lake with a torch and a carrier bag.

They are asking what the organisation has already caught, tagged, stored, copied, shared and processed about them.

Less sexy headline, admittedly.

Who Gets To Be Strategic?

The useful question is therefore not whether people use information strategically. Of course they do. Employees make DSARs during disputes because information matters. Employers take legal advice on those requests because information matters. Claimants use disclosure because information matters. Respondents inspect medical evidence because information matters. Solicitors follow documents, test chronologies and make enquiries because information fucking matters.

The rhetorical trick lies in deciding which participant gets described as strategic and which one gets described as fishing.

Professional language has a funny little class system built into it. A worker digs. A solicitor investigates. The claimant trawls. The respondent undertakes a review. An employee hunts for ammunition, while counsel identifies relevant evidential material. Somebody without a letterhead is nosy; somebody billing for the same curiosity is forensic.

Some of those distinctions have genuine legal content.

Others are expensive perfume sprayed over the same human instinct.

Everybody wants to know what happened.

Different Nets, Same Water

The strongest defence of Rigg is also the one her article supplies: DSARs and disclosure are legally different processes.

Correct.

Tribunal disclosure seeks relevant documents according to the rules governing the proceedings, whether or not they contain the claimant’s personal data. A DSAR provides personal data and associated information subject to a separate statutory framework. Privilege, redaction, third-party rights and exemptions operate differently.

None of that answers the title of this piece.

Who gets to call it a fishing expedition?

Because that question is not about pretending Article 15 and Tribunal disclosure are interchangeable. It is about the vocabulary applied to evidence gathering depending on who is doing the gathering.

If an employee hopes the exercise of a legal right helps establish their case, Horsfield Menzies reaches for fishing language. If Horsfield Menzies searches material, tests dates, gathers external information, trawls through blog posts and deploys whatever useful material emerges for its client, the same curiosity receives the clean language of litigation.

Different nets.

Same fucking water.

Evidence Becomes Respectable Once It Has A File Number

That is the broader Blog vs Behaviour problem running underneath Rigg’s article.

Horsfield Menzies writes primarily for employers, so naturally its website adopts the employer’s perspective. That is its market. Nobody expects an employer-side law firm to publish “Ten Exciting Ways Your Disgruntled Employee Can Find The Email That Fucks You.”

Nevertheless, vocabulary reveals posture.

High-volume or pre-claim DSARs become something to manage. Contentious requests become a specialist niche. Employee expectations need controlling. Meanwhile, litigation strategies remain in play behind the response, medical chronology can be tested for utility and online material can be collected at scale when it assists an application.

None of that becomes improper simply because it is employer-side lawyering.

What makes it funny is the contrast with the employee who wants information.

The organisation can have an HR department, a legal team, external solicitors, document-review systems, disclosure exercises and litigation strategy. Nobody describes that vast evidential machine as a fishing expedition because the machine has respectable stationery.

The individual submits a DSAR.

Suddenly Captain fucking Ahab has arrived.

The Medical Evidence Was Supplied Because They Wanted Proof

The medical episode remains the filthiest part of the metaphor because of how the information entered the case.

I did not casually scatter my medical history across Horsfield Menzies’ reception desk. Cepac disputed disability and required evidence. Consequently, I disclosed intimate medical material to establish the condition and its effects.

That dynamic matters from the claimant’s side. The respondent says prove it, so you hand over records you would ordinarily never give these people in a million years. Then entries inside those records may acquire additional litigation value, with an appointment becoming useful to an argument about postponement. Once the chronology fails to deliver the expected result, the information identifies a route towards the healthcare provider itself.

There is a reason that sequence still pisses me off.

The evidential burden created the access.

I supplied the records because I needed to establish disability, not because I fancied opening a fucking bait shop for the respondent’s solicitors.

Rigg’s headline therefore lands in unusually dirty water.

Horsfield Menzies Knows Exactly Why Information Matters

Nobody at Horsfield Menzies actually needs convincing that information can change litigation. Rachel Rigg’s own profile says DSAR handling should support litigation strategies already in play. Her article explains how subject access differs from disclosure precisely because the material available under each regime can affect what parties learn. Butler’s conduct in my case demonstrated intense interest in documentary chronology when an appointment date appeared capable of assisting Cepac. Later, the firm assembled substantial amounts of my communications, articles and X posts when those became relevant to strike-out.

This is not an organisation philosophically opposed to searching for evidence.

It understands evidence perfectly well.

It understands why somebody wants it, how apparently minor fragments can change an argument and how the arrangement of selected material can affect the story eventually placed before a decision-maker.

Which makes “fishing expedition” sound rather less like legal analysis and rather more like deciding who gets mocked for wanting to know what the fuck happened.

The Employer Already Owns The Lake

There is a power asymmetry hiding inside the joke. Large organisations commonly begin disputes already holding most of the contemporaneous workplace data. They own the email systems, HR platforms, recruitment records, interview notes and internal messages. The employee often knows only what happened directly in front of them.

That is one reason access rights matter.

The organisation begins on the bank with the lake behind it. The individual starts outside the fence asking what is in there. Of course they hope the answer might help explain what happened. Sometimes it will. Sometimes the result will be useless. Other times the most interesting material will be privileged, exempt, third-party data or simply outside the scope of the right.

Treating the hope itself as suspect misses the structural point.

The employer already has the bastard fish.

Who Gets To Call It A Fishing Expedition?

Rigg’s substantive legal explanation survives TCAP treatment perfectly well. A DSAR is not litigation disclosure. Employees should not expect every corporate document because they submitted a request. Employers have legitimate duties towards third parties and can rely on applicable exemptions. Litigation disclosure performs a broader evidential function.

All correct.

The headline is where Horsfield Menzies hands us the knife.

Evidence gathering does not become intellectually respectable simply because the person doing it represents the respondent, and an employee’s statutory right does not become grubby because they hope the resulting information might help them understand or prove a dispute.

Once Horsfield Menzies wants to talk about fishing, the firm’s own record is already bobbing around the harbour. I supplied medical evidence because Cepac disputed my disability. Butler extracted appointment chronology from it, initially relied upon the wrong appointment and Horsfield Menzies subsequently contacted my medical centre before returning with further information about alternative clinicians and availability. Later, the firm trawled TCAP for material it believed useful to its client, including criticism I had often deliberately kept separate from Cepac, thereby creating litigation associations the original articles themselves had not made.

Meanwhile, Rachel Rigg asks whether the employee requesting access to their own data is on a fishing expedition while her professional profile proudly explains that she helps employers manage contentious DSARs in ways that support litigation strategies already in play.

There is your answer.

Yes, but I’d sharpen that without claiming she is teaching employers to conceal incriminating evidence. The nastier, supportable point is that the piece reads far more like information-control strategy during litigation than a celebration of transparency.

The rod is apparently suspicious when the employee holds it. Give it to the lawyers, attach a client code, drag somebody’s medical chronology and blog archive across the deck, and the bastard becomes litigation strategy.

Which exposes the more interesting problem with Rigg’s article. For all the language of data rights, this is hardly a hymn to transparency. It reads much more like an employer-side manual for controlling the flow of information once a dispute has started: understand what the employee is entitled to, identify what can lawfully be withheld or redacted, coordinate HR and Legal, and make sure the response sits comfortably alongside whatever litigation strategy is already running in the background.

None of those steps is inherently improper. Privilege exists. Third-party rights matter. Exemptions exist for reasons. But there is something bleakly revealing about presenting the employee’s attempt to discover information as a “fishing expedition” while professionally advising the organisation holding that information on how to manage its release in a way that supports the wider case.

The employee is portrayed as hunting for ammunition.

Horsfield Menzies is selling ammunition control.

That is not quite the same sales pitch as openness, transparency and accountability. It is considerably closer to: know what you have, know what you must hand over, know what you can keep back, and make damn sure Legal is standing beside the filing cabinet when you decide.

So perhaps Rachel has asked the wrong question. The interesting issue is not whether DSAR fishing expeditions work.

It is who gets to call the other side’s search grubby while charging to manage the fucking catch.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

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