Let’s talk about confidentiality: - NDA use in sexual harassment settlements since the

In this way, this reports sheds important light on how the legal profession has responded – or failed to respond – to the broader public and policy discussions on workplace sexual harassment and the extent to which NDAs obscure the scale of the problem – and highlights how much further we need to go. [...] 7 The Respect@Work NDA guidelines In the Roadmap for Respect: Preventing and Addressing Sexual harassment in Australian Workplaces, the Government responded to the Respect@Work Report and, among other actions, asked the Respect@Work Council to implement Recommendation 38.20 On 12 December 2022, the Respect@Work Council published the NDA Guidelines.21 The NDA Guidelines are intended to be ‘best pra. [...] The Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner may accept complaints about lawyers seeking unethical or unenforceable clauses in settlement agreements of sexual harassment matters, however, unlike the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the regulatory arm of the Law Society of England and Wales, we are not able to identify the number of complaints from local published data.26 Except for published. [...] 52 For the 2022/23 period, the AHRC provided data showing that of the 95 successfully resolved complaints relating to sexual harassment in the workplace, 87 of these matters were ‘highly likely” to have included financial compensation.53 The AHRC estimates in 2022/2023: 70 of the 87 matters that resolved 68 of the 87 that resolved with with financial compensation “are financial compensation “are l. [...] Emeritus Professor Julie Macfarlane explains that the status of an institution is built around the reputation of its most important members, and therefore if a complaint of sexual harassment is made against an individual whose reputation is ‘entangled’ with that of the business, the institution may prioritise the preservation of the accused’s reputation to shield the organisation as a whole.62 For.