Sam Butler : Name And Shame, Unless It’s Sam

Sam Butler of Horsfield Menzies has written a little guide to why naming organisations can make them behave. Reputation, it turns out, can persuade people to do things they should have done already. An excellent discovery. Unfortunately, Sam works at the firm I asked to investigate Sam. The town crier has reached his own front door, and suddenly the bell is a bloody nuisance.

His article is called Mind the Gap. It appeared on 14 August 2024, with his byline attached. The gap now worth examining sits between public accountability as professional advice and scrutiny of the professionals giving it. Pull up a chair, Sam. This is your own fucking lesson plan.

Sam Butler Explains The Value Of Embarrassment

Butler’s subject is the Equality and Human Rights Commission naming employers that failed to report their gender pay gaps. He connects greater compliance with reputational pressure. In particular, he suggests organisations may be taking their obligations more seriously, “possibly driven by the fear of reputational damage”. Wow, agreed! Later, he describes how “public exposure remains a powerful deterrent”. Those are his words, sitting beneath his name. Did I fix him?

So the principle is already understood. An organisation can worry about what people will think when its conduct becomes visible. That worry may encourage it to act. Nobody needs to explain the existence of reputational pressure to Sam Butler. He has explained it to prospective clients. The embarrassing part is watching that insight become relevant to the firm whose website hosts the lecture.

Meanwhile, the whole thing comes dressed as sensible professional guidance. Of course it does. Naming other organisations has a reassuring public-interest glow. Their embarrassment becomes an incentive, their reputation becomes part of the remedy, and their discomfort helps the lesson land. Sam has discovered that accountability occasionally makes people feel like shit. Better still, in his example, all the uncomfortable people work somewhere else.

The Warning Came Before The Names

The EHRC’s underlying announcement adds a useful detail. In April and May 2024, it sent warnings and reminders to more than 600 organisations that had missed their reporting deadlines. Almost all subsequently reported. On 1 August, it named six that still had not. Those names followed an opportunity to put things right. The regulator also explained the formal enforcement powers available to it.

That sequence matters because public scrutiny often has a history. A concern arrives. Someone has an opportunity to respond. What happens next affects whether the issue remains private or becomes something other people can read. If you discuss only the embarrassment at the end, you conveniently remove the decisions that came before it. The publicity begins to look like an unexplained attack from outer space.

The legal roles here are different. The EHRC enforces statutory reporting duties; TCAP publishes allegations, documents and opinion. Butler’s article grants nobody immunity from defamation, harassment or findings about litigation conduct. However, his explanation of why reputations matter remains available for comparison. That is precisely why this particular sermon is such a generous little bastard.

Before The Headline, There Was A Complaint

On 23 March 2025, I sent a private complaint about Sam Butler to Angus Menzies, Simon Horsfield and Daniel Rubin. It alleged misuse of disability-related medical information, contact involving my medical centre, misleading statements, aggressive costs pressure and obstructive correspondence. I asked the firm to investigate. I then followed up seeking confirmation and an outcome. The firm communicated no investigation outcome to me. Only a promise from Uncle Fester after too many mince pies they he wouldn’t engage.

That chronology is already set out in Category Fucking Zero. It matters here because the complaint gave the firm a private opportunity to explain its conduct. The partners could reject allegations with reasons, identify a review or explain what action they considered appropriate. Instead, I remained without communicated findings. The allegation did not acquire an answer merely because it had acquired a recipient.

Therefore, my criticism of Butler starts somewhere more concrete than disliking an opposing solicitor. It starts with what I say happened, the correspondence and the unresolved questions I put to his firm. The insults are my opinion of that record. The record is the reason for the article. A complaint about professional conduct does not become less deserving of an answer because its author eventually stops writing like a hotel receptionist.

Your Name Works Perfectly Well On The Website

A professional byline is useful. It attaches a person’s name to expertise, judgment and advice. Readers are invited to associate the author with the standards being explained. As a result, the name does commercial work: it helps someone decide whom to trust. Sam Butler’s name is doing exactly that above his article on public accountability.

However, authorship also makes an argument available to put back to its author. A solicitor who explains the benefits of public scrutiny can reasonably expect scrutiny of his own professional conduct. The firm can dispute the facts or challenge the criticism. But the name on the byline cannot become irrelevant just because the comparison is deeply fucking inconvenient.

That is what makes the posture so ripe for ridicule. Professional reputation is carefully cultivated through profiles, articles and advice. Then comes the less comfortable possibility: someone may read those articles alongside an experience of the firm. Suddenly the audience has brought its own paperwork. What a terrible breach of brochure etiquette. The sanctimonious prick delivering the lecture has acquired a follow-up question.

The Reading Was Extremely Thorough In One Direction

The Cepac judgment records 150 entries covering communications and blog material, plus 181 entries from X. Daniel Rubin took the Tribunal through examples while advancing Cepac’s strike-out case. Cepac therefore relied on my publications in seeking to end my claim. The firm’s complaint handling had produced no investigation outcome communicated to me; its examination of my output produced a substantial collection.

Those facts leave a comparison worth making. There was ample capacity to read, select and present what I had written. Yet I was still asking what had happened to the allegations about Butler. The papers give me a detailed account of what the firm objected to. They still give me no communicated investigation outcome on what I objected to. What a magnificently selective fucking appetite for scrutiny.

We examined the handling of context in Clickbait For Thee, Case Law For Me. This article puts a different piece of Butler’s advice beside that history. He knows public scrutiny can place pressure on an organisation. Consequently, the existence of that pressure cannot explain away the substance of the criticism. The allegations still need examining on their merits. Being embarrassed is a condition, Sam. It is not a fucking rebuttal.

The Tribunal’s Findings Stay In The Record

Following the hearing on 24 April 2026, the Tribunal struck out my claims and ordered me to pay Cepac £20,000 in costs. It found my conduct unreasonable, scandalous and vexatious, and said my comments about the respondents’ solicitors lacked a reasonable foundation. Aye fuck off you predictable old melt. The latest fucking Newcastle parrot. It also made defamatory suggestings of harassment, particularly odd given it isn’t the stupid old cunt’s jurisdiction. Those were serious findings about the conduct it examined, extending well beyond the act of naming someone. Calling someone’s GP though? Lacks reasonable foundation. I put to you Andy, old boy, that it is in fact you that lacks foundations, capacity or a shred of integrity. Time for the arm chair, old boy. Or an electric one if I had the option. Another scumbag. One fair order through the entire proceedings came from fucking Leeds. Do you think I’m too stupid to see what you pack of fucking old coffee breath stinking cunts are pulling off?

I continue to dispute how the evidence and competing conduct allegations were handled. My position remains that the Tribunal did not properly address attempts to obtain scrutiny of the respondent’s conduct. The stupid old cunt in the judgment says the Tribunal considered my written material; I do not accept that this means my concerns received a fair examination. That disagreement belongs in the record alongside the decision itself. Basically, I’m calling fucking bullshit.

Nevertheless, the distinction central to this article remains straightforward. A judgment condemning my conduct does not tell me who investigated my complaint about Butler, what they examined or what conclusion they reached. Nor does it turn his published views on reputational accountability into something nobody may question. The firm won its application. I still received no communicated investigation outcome. Both facts fit on the same page.

Accountability With A Reserved Parking Space

What I find contemptible is the comfortable distance between the sermon and the demand for an answer. Public accountability sounds splendid while it concerns a list of other organisations. Bring a specific complaint back to the author’s workplace and the discussion becomes much less abstract. There is a named colleague, a disputed file and a firm with its own reputation to protect.

That is when the principle becomes interesting. Anyone can explain why somebody else should face scrutiny. The harder task is answering a properly particularised criticism of your own work. If the allegations fail, show why they fail. If a complaint was examined, explain the outcome. Otherwise, all the polished talk about accountability starts to resemble a public car park with spaces permanently reserved for the people who designed it.

And what a sanctimonious arrangement that would be. Everybody else can experience the bracing benefits of reputational consequences while the professionals remain indoors explaining the weather. I have no patience for that smug institutional bollocks. A firm selling judgment can expect people to judge its response when its own conduct becomes the subject of a complaint.

Name And Shame, Unless It’s Sam

Sam Butler chose to publish his explanation of reputational pressure. TCAP has chosen to read it beside the history involving his firm. That comparison asks something specific: what substantive answer did the complaint about his conduct receive, and how does the firm reconcile that response with the standards its authors promote? Another adjective about the complainant will not supply the missing chronology.

Horsfield Menzies can provide an account of any investigation, its findings and what was communicated. Butler can identify factual errors in this article. TCAP will publish a substantive response and correct anything the evidence requires. That offer has a practical purpose: an answer should improve the record. A professional reputation is better served by explaining the facts than by expecting the questions to become unfashionable.

Until then, Sam, your article remains a particularly useful contribution. You explained why public exposure can make organisations pay attention. The principle has now arrived at your own firm, carrying a complaint and reading your byline. Give the sanctimony a fucking day off and help produce an answer.

As for James, bless him not knowing the rule. I’m now the proud, legal owner of judgeandrewjames.com. All above board and legal. Just as I like it. Don’t be tempted to fucking harass me for buying an available domain.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Horsfield Menzies – Blog vs Behaviour : Sam Butler – NAME AND SHAME, UNLESS IT’S SAM