Wayne Barnes sets his focus on the law after he blows the whistle on refereeing
For the best part of two decades, this time of year would see Wayne Barnes working out his travel plans ahead of rugby’s Six Nations tournament.
The rugby union referee, who hung up his whistle after refereeing last year’s World Cup Final in Paris and took charge of his first match in the European showcase back in 2007, has now traded in the boots for the books full-time, as a partner at law firm Squire Patton Boggs.
He joined the law firm in January 2022 but as we speak is now three weeks into being a full-time partner at the firm’s government investigations and white collar and sports group practices.
As he finds his feet, lessons from his refereeing days are already playing a part in his day to day. One of his aims this year is to get the law firm offering online safety tools.
It’s no secret that there is a rise of online abuse which seems to becoming the norm, especially when directed to sportspeople. Barnes has received his fair share over the years, not least after that final.
Speaking to Morning Wire, Barnes said: “I think I can now make a difference as a lawyer to what happens to sports men and women across every sport.”
He stated that “people have opinions, which is what social media is good for.…but when it becomes abuse, I’m not sure if I’ve got my own social media account, that I should have to see all of that.”
He explained that there are “good and interesting AI firms” who can hide some of that abuse, which he noted the law firm is looking at ways of partnering with those firms.
He also added that those AI firms can also identify individuals that are sending hateful comments on these social media platforms.
Law firms, he reckon, have got the tools to do something with that information: everything from injunctions to cease and desist letters, and private prosecutions.
“If you can do that, first you protect the athletes and then you can identify the abuser and hold that abuser to account,” he pointed out.
‘Know your subject, listen, and don’t bullshit’
Throughout his refereeing career, Barnes has used his legal skills while also taking skills he learned on the pitch to help him out in the courtroom.
He noted the three things that quickly became apparent during his early stage as a lawyer were to know “your subject”, “listen” and “don’t bullshit”. On the rugby field, it was the same three things.
He explained: “The first time I ever met Richie McCaw, a famous New Zealand player was when he was captain of the All Blacks, in the changing room before New Zealand played Australia.
“I’ve never met him before and he was a bit of an icon of the game. I realised quickly when you go and you meet these individuals, you’ve got to know what they’re talking about inside out.
“They want you to listen, they don’t want you to talk because they’ve been thinking about what they have wanted to say all week.”
“The third thing is you can’t bullshit them, you’ve actually got to be quite honest and open. It might be a difficult conversation but at least they don’t then get a big surprise,” he added.
Barnes, a barrister, qualified not long before he was offered a professional contract which saw him become the youngest referee in the sport. An unusual side gig for a young criminal barrister, he had to quickly adapt his legal career to run alongside the refereeing.
“As I moved through my career, it quickly became apparent that if I was disappearing overseas for an international tournament… I had to finish a case by a certain day,” he explained.
“If you’re getting on a flight to go and referee an international match and if you hadn’t finished a case, you couldn’t say to the judge ‘can you just wait for two weeks while I disappear and I’ll be back’.. it just couldn’t work,” he added.
He had to get smart with his diary, he tackled this by keeping his instructions to smaller cases.
Despite that, his legal career didn’t come to a stall, far from it. In 2010, he was along with a group of barristers 3 Temple Gardens were instructed by Macmillan Publishing as it was the first company investigated and prosecuted around the Bribery Act. The company was investigated by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and the World Bank.
“We presented to the World Bank around our findings, and then there was a settlement agreement between the World Bank and with the SFO,” he explained.
“My passion was always sport”
During this investigation, he along with those other barristers went on to found Fulcrum Chambers. The team went on to be instructed by Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) on what would become one of the SFO’s most infamous investigations.
After 11 years at Fulcrum, Barnes along with some other barristers left the company. He and the team were offered partnership at City headquartered Fieldfisher to spearhead its commercial crime team.
However, he decided against this and opted for Squire. It became clear to him that he wanted to merge his passions together, so he joined the firm to help build out its sports practice.
“In my last couple of years at Fulcrum I’d started to branch into sport investigations because though I love learning about infrastructure projects in Delhi or around nuclear power plants in Budapest, my passion was always sport,” he explained.
Barnes stated that he is trying to build a pipeline of work for his team but also wants to help Squires build across all the practice groups, but introducing his contacts to the right lawyers.