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  "description": "“So hostile to basic elements of practice and freedom of speech.”",
  "path": "/not-all-idiots-lawyer-vents-after-standards-committee-overturns-puberty-blocker-letter-censure/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-11T01:15:26.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Centrist",
    "Read more over at The NZ Herald",
    "Receive our free newsletter here"
  ],
  "textContent": "Summarised by Centrist\n\n**Wellington lawyer Stephen Franks has won a review overturning a Law Society disciplinary finding over a letter his firm sent criticising the use of puberty blockers for gender-dysphoric adolescents.**\n\nFranks and his firm, Franks Ogilvie, were investigated after sending a three-page letter on behalf of client Inflection Point New Zealand to about 20 healthcare practitioners.\n\nSix complaints were made to the Law Society, although none came from the doctors who received the letter.\n\nThe Standards Committee dismissed most allegations but found Franks had failed to use legal processes for a proper purpose. It ruled the letter was intended to pressure clinicians to reconsider providing gender-affirming care and criticised the use of law firm letterhead to lend weight to an implied threat of litigation.\n\nThe committee censured Franks and imposed a fine.\n\nBut Legal Complaints Review Officer Fraser Goldsmith overturned the ruling.\n\n“The very purpose of a lawyer or firm sending a letter on behalf of a client is, in many if not most instances, to endeavour to lend weight to whatever concern, position or purpose the client seeks to express or advance,” Goldsmith wrote. “That is what lawyers do.”\n\nHe added: “This cannot conceivably be improper in principle.”\n\nGoldsmith also defended the right to pressure medical providers through lawful advocacy, “provided the means of doing so are lawful.”\n\nFranks responded by calling the original ruling “stupid” and describing some involved in the disciplinary process as “dimwits”.\n\nFranks said he was glad the committee decision had not been unanimous because it showed “they were not all ‘idiots’”.\n\nHe also accused the profession of showing itself “so hostile to basic elements of practice and freedom of speech”.\n\nRead more over at The NZ Herald\n\nReceive our free newsletter here",
  "title": "‘Not all idiots’: Lawyer vents after Standards Committee overturns puberty blocker letter censure",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-11T03:22:51.393Z"
}