A DEFENCE lawyer and former stipendiary magistrate has been expelled as a partner from his law firm after he was secretly filmed apparently helping a “client” to fabricate his defence in court.
David Lancaster, 54, who was a partner with Warner Goodman & Streat, a Portsmouth law firm, also gave advice to an undercover researcher who posed as a cocaine dealer on how to persuade a main witness not to give evidence against him.
Mr Lancaster’s former firm has reported him to the Law Society. The advice, it says, was in clear breach of his duties as a solicitor and officer of the court. Mr Lancaster has placed the partnership dispute in the hands of his own solicitors.
The presenter of Inside Out, the BBC One programme on which the allegations were broadcast last night, said that they had used an undercover researcher posing as a social worker helping vulnerable teenagers.
Mr Lancaster said: “The undercover reporter was giving me mixed messages and for that reason I explored every possible option with him.”