Time to remedy the legal consequences of Jivraj v Hashwani? The personal scope of application of equal treatment legislation – by Nicola Countouris and Colm O’Cinneide

Image by markusspiske from pixabay

1. Introduction

This blogpost revisits the 2011 UK Supreme Court decision in Jivraj v Hashwani [2011] UKSC 40, which adopted a narrow reading of the personal scope of the Equality Act 2010 as it applies to the self-employed. It argues that this decision represented a wrong turn in the law, which should now be reversed by the courts or corrected by the legislature – especially in light of the January 2023 Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) decision in Case C-356/21, TP v JK, and the stated commitment of the newly elected Labour government to ‘ensuring those [equality] provisions that were previously derived from EU law remain enshrined in UK law’.

The post begins by exploring and comparing the CJEU 2023 judgment with the 2011 SC decision, and concludes that the two define a different and mutually incompatible personal scope of application for, respectively, EU and UK equal treatment law. Broadly speaking, TP v JK has confirmed that both workers employed under contracts of employment and the self-employed working under civil contracts are covered by EU equal treatment legislation – whereas Jivraj v Hashwani concluded that self-employed workers do not in general come within the scope of the Equality Act 2010, based in part on a reading of relevant EU law provisions which now is significantly out of kilter with the interpretation given to the same provisions by the CJEU in TP v JK. Taken together, the effect of the two decisions has been to create a significant divergence between EU and UK equal treatment law, with the scope of the latter being limited when compared to the former – and TP v JK having no remedial effect, on account of Brexit.

This divergence could be viewed as a ‘Brexit dividend’, if one favours deregulation and the dilution of employment rights as did many of the architects of the UK’s exit from the EU. However, if one subscribes to the alternative view that Brexit should not result in the erosion of employment and human rights protection – a position adopted by both Theresa May MP’s Conservative government of 2016‐19 and the current Starmer Labour government ‐ then this divergence is to be regretted. Furthermore, due to the constitutional complexities of Brexit, EU equal treatment law continues to apply in Northern Ireland on account of the provisions of Article 2(1) and Annex 1 of the Northern Ireland Protocol (now renamed the Windsor Framework). This means that self-employed workers in Northern Ireland will be protected against discrimination in line with the CJEU’s approach in TP v JK, while their counterparts in Britain will be left without protection on account of the questionable reasoning adopted by the UKSC in Jivraj v Hashwani. In what follows, the case is made for a levelling up of protection across the entire UK, and for UK law to align with EU law on this specific point.

2. Case C-356/21, JK v TP – Clarifying the scope of application of Directive 2000/78

In January 2023, the Second Chamber of the CJEU released its judgment in Case C-356/21, TP v JK, a preliminary reference from the Warsaw District Court. With this judgment, the CJEU interpreted the personal scope of application of Directive 2000/78 (often referred to as the ‘Framework Equality Directive’) as applicable to employees and self-employed alike, while also clarifying that the anti-discrimination protections contained in Articles 3(1)(a) and 3(1)(c) of the Directive apply both to the conclusion and to the termination of contracts with a ‘contractor engaged in an independent economic activity’ (para 51 of the judgment).

The reference arose from a discrimination claim filed in the domestic court by Mr J.K. an independent contractor working between 2010 and 2017 for the Polish national broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TP), on a succession of short-term contracts for the production of edited materials for trailers. In December 2017, J.K. and his partner published on their YouTube channel a Christmas music video aimed at promoting tolerance towards same-sex couples. Two days later, J.K. received an email from Telewizja Polska, effectively terminating his recently renewed contract with immediate effect. According to the referring court, the Polish implementation of Directive 2000/78 excluded from its scope the freedom of choice of contracting parties, so long as that choice was not based on sex, race, ethnic origin or nationality – i.e. with no restrictions laced on choice based on sexual orientation.

The CJEU was in no doubt that this amounted to a breach of Directive 2000/78. There are three crucial passages in its judgment that helpfully clarify the breadth of the Directive’s provisions, and that confirm that i) the Directive applies to the self-employed; ii) it applies both to the conclusion and to the termination of a ‘professional relationship’ between a self-employed person and his or her contractual counterparty; iii) and that freedom of contract cannot justify discriminating against self-employed contractors.

i) Self-employed protected

Firstly, the CJEU decided that Article 3(1)(a) of Directive, providing that its provisions apply ‘to all persons … in relation to conditions for access to employment, to self-employment or to occupation, including selection criteria and recruitment conditions’, is a provision that needs to be understood broadly as embracing ‘a wide range of occupational activities, including those carried out by self-employed workers in order to earn their livelihood’ and only excluding ‘those consisting of the mere provision of goods or services to one or more recipients and which do not fall within that scope’ (para 44). As long as ‘those activities are genuine and are pursued in the context of a legal relationship characterised by a degree of stability’, the Court continued (para 45), they will fall within the scope of the Directive regardless of the ‘classification of that activity as ‘employment’ or ‘self-employment’’ (para 47).

In passing, it is worth noting that the ‘stability’ requirement included here is an important caveat, as it limits to some degree the range of activities coming within the Directive’s scope. However, in TP v JK, it is significant that it was no impediment to the claimant – who had offered his services to his client through a series of short, discontinuous, and intermittent civil law contracts, typically consisting of two ‘one-week shifts’ per month.

ii) Self-employed protected both when their contracts are concluded and when they are terminated

Secondly, the Court also unambiguously interpreted the words ‘access to employment, to self-employment or to occupation’ as to ‘include the conclusion of a contract such as that at issue in the main proceeding’ (para 50). This is important since ‘access to self-employment’ could be misunderstood as exclusively seeking to prevent discrimination in respect of ‘qualifying or setting up as a solicitor, plumber, greengrocer or arbitrator’, as the UK Supreme Court in Jivraj concluded in para 49 of its 2011 judgment. Furthermore, the Court ensured that Article 3(1)(c) of the Directive – which clarifies the instrument’s application ‘in relation to employment and working conditions, including dismissals and pay’ – is to be interpreted as protecting working persons both against a discriminatory ‘dismissal’, understood as the termination of a contract of employment, and against any discriminatory  ‘unilateral termination of any activity referred to in Article 3(1)(a) of that directive’ (para 62), including the termination of a ‘professional relationship’  (para 66) between a ‘self-employed’ person and ‘his or her contractual counterparty’ (para 62). The ‘protection extends to the professional relationship concerned in its entirety’, the Court concluded (para 56).

iii) Freedom of contract not a valid justification to discriminate against the self-employed

As an additional point, it may be worth noting that the attempts by the Polish government to justify the exclusion of sexual orientation by reference to the ‘public policy’ proviso contained in Article 2(5) of Dir. 2000/78 (and in particular by reference to ‘freedom of contract’ – ‘by guaranteeing the freedom to choose a contracting party’ as reported in para 73 of the judgment), proved to be inconclusive since, according to the Court, the ‘freedom to conduct a business’ while protected by A 16 of the Charter, ‘is not absolute, but must be viewed in relation to its social function’ (para 75) and excluding one or more grounds would ‘be tantamount to depriving Article 3(1)(a) of Directive 2000/78 of its practical effect in so far as that provision specifically prohibits any discrimination based on that ground as regards access to self-employment’ (para 77). The Court therefore concluded that the national implementation of Dir. 2000/78 was defective, and precluded by the Directive itself.

In general, this judgment has already been commented upon and analysed by a number of scholars in both journals and blogs. It has been heralded as ‘landmark ruling will likely have a significant impact on EU equality and labour law alike’,  ‘an important contribution to EU anti-discrimination law’, ‘build[ing] on prior attempts to broaden the scope of employment law’. The scope of EU equal treatment law as it relates to sex/gender (with the exception of its equal pay component) had already been extended to cover self-employment, as reaffirmed by the combined effect of Directives 2004/113/EC, 2006/54/EC and 2010/41/EU: JK v TP ensures that the other elements of EU equal treatment law, covering grounds such as age, disability, religion or belief and sexual orientation, have a similar personal scope as they apply to the workplace – subject to the ‘stability’ requirement, and the exclusion of the provision of goods and services from the material scope of Directive 2000/78/EC (as discussed further below).  

3. Jivraj v Hashwani – the narrow scope of UK equal treatment legislation

In contrast, the personal scope of application of UK equal treatment legislation remains entangled in a complex web of legal precedents, which effectively exclude most self-employed workers from its scope of protection – and only cover so-called ‘limb-b’ workers in a manner that arguably falls short of the level of protection now offered by EU directives and CJEU case-law. Jivraj v Hashwani is still authority for the proposition that the protections afforded by the Equality Act 2010 mainly apply to those who work ‘under the direction of another’. This restriction has only been mitigated by obiter comments in a subsequent Supreme Court judgment, Clyde & Co LLP and another v Bates van Winkelhof [2014] UKSC 32, that has (indirectly, as the case was about whistleblower protection) reinstated limb-b workers within the scope of equal treatment legislation. But even this, we argue here, and explore further under ii),  falls short of EU equality law affording such protections to all three categories of employees, workers, and the self-employed.

i) Self-employed out

The 2003 Regulations were replaced by the Equality Act 2010, and in effect the question around the scope of application of the non-discrimination protections contained in the Regulations and the Directive would now refer to what is s. 83(2)(a) of the 2010 Act. This provision applies the relevant protections to ‘employment’ – defined as ‘employment under a contract of employment, a contract of apprenticeship or a contract personally to do work’ (emphasis added). The Supreme Court, having analysed both domestic and EU law sources, concluded that self-employed arbitrators did not come within the scope of this wording. Assuming (incorrectly in our view) that Directive 2000/78 applied to ‘workers’ as defined by the CJEU in its Allonby jurisprudence, the Supreme Court concluded that since there was ‘no basis upon which it could properly be held that the arbitrators agreed to work under the direction of the parties’ (para 45): they did not meet the Allonby test and they were therefore not covered by anti-discrimination law. Furthermore, the Supreme Court also gave a restrictive interpretation to the wording of Article 3(1)(a) of the Directive, concluding that ‘conditions for access to employment, to self-employment or to occupation, including selection criteria and recruitment conditions’ were exclusively concerned with ‘preventing discrimination from qualifying or setting up as a solicitor, plumber, greengrocer or arbitrator. It is not concerned with discrimination by a customer who prefers to contract with one of their competitors once they have set up in business’ (para 49).

The facts in the 2011 UK Supreme Court decision in Jivraj v Hashwani arose out of a commercial dispute between two businessmen who were also members of the Ismaili community. The two had set up a joint venture in 1981, with a term providing that, in the event of a dispute between them which they were unable to resolve, any such dispute should be resolved by arbitration before three arbitrators, each of whom should be a respected member of the Ismaili community. In 2008, when a dispute between the two did arise, Mr Hashwani’s solicitors wrote requesting an arbitrator, but identifying a preferred non-Ismaili arbitrator. Mr Jivraj said this was contrary to their prior agreement, but Mr Hashwani counter claimed that the term requiring that arbitrators be members of the Ismaili community was contrary to what was, at the time, Regulation 6(1) of the EERBR 2003 and Article 3 of Directive 2000/78.

ii) Clyde & Co and ‘limb-b’ workers’ equal treatment rights reinstated

Back in 2012, the first author of this blogpost co-authored with Prof. Mark Freedland a critical assessment of Jivraj v Hashwani, suggesting that the judgment most likely contravened the protections contained in and afforded by Directive 2000/78. By equating the scope of its provisions, and of UK implementing legislation, to the EU concept of ‘worker’, which – for all its nuances – remains anchored to the idea of subordination, the Supreme Court arguably played down the innovative character of Directive 2000/78 (and of the equally phrased provisions contained in Directives 2000/43 and 2006/54) that was construed specifically to offer protection against discrimination beyond and across the binary divide between employment and self-employment. By restricting such rights only to those working ‘under the directions’ of another, the Supreme Court judgment, in effect, risked collapsing the anti-discrimination into the wrong side of the binary divide – which in the UK could have meant exclusively reducing it to protecting subordinate workers.

Lady Hale, in her obiter dicta in Clyde & Co LLP v Bates van Winkelhof [2014] UKSC 32 was clearly alert to the fact that Jivraj had applied a ‘subordination’ judicial gloss that was not apparent from the wording of s. 83(2) of the Equality Act 2010. In paragraph 32 of that judgment, she noted how in Allonby the CJEU had deployed the concept of subordination to distinguish between ‘workers’ and ‘people who were dealing with clients or customers on their own account’. She then noted that the concept was ‘used for the same purpose in the discrimination case of Jivraj v Hashwani’ even though UK ‘discrimination law…while it includes a contract “personally to do work” within its definition of employment (see, now, Equality Act 2010, s. 83(2)) does not include an express exception for those in business on their account who work for their clients or customers’ (para, 31 of Clyde & Co LLP v Bates van Winkelhof [2014] UKSC 32). That judicial gloss still applies to this day.

But Lady Hale must also be credited with mitigating some of the exclusionary effects of Jivraj, by effectively expunging ‘limb-b workers’ from the broader category of self-employed persons that the Supreme Court had previously left outside the protective scope of s 83(2) of the 2010 Act. At paragraph 24 of her judgment, she posited that ‘[our] law draws a clear distinction between those who are … employed and those who are self-employed but enter into contracts to perform work or services for others’. And in the following paragraph, she went on to clarify that

[25] …within the latter class [i.e. the ‘self-employed’], the law now draws a distinction between two different kinds of self-employed people. One kind are people who carry on a profession or a business undertaking on their own account and enter into contracts with clients or customers to provide work or services for them. The arbitrators in Hashwani v Jivraj (London Court of International Arbitration intervening) [2011] UKSC 40, [2011] 1 WLR 1872 were people of that kind. The other kind are self-employed people who provide their services as part of a profession or business undertaking carried on by some-one else. The general medical practitioner in Hospital Medical Group Ltd v Westwood [2012] EWCA Civ 1005; [2013] ICR 415, who also provided his services as a hair restoration surgeon to a company offering hair restoration services to the public, was a person of that kind and thus a “worker” within the meaning of section 230(3)(b) of the 1996 Act.’

iii) UK equal treatment law still falling short

While this was an important development, which ensured that some self-employed workers (as limb-b workers undoubtedly are) could enjoy the benefits offered by EU equal treatment legislation, we would argue that it still falls short of the EU requirements contained in, for instance, Directive 2000/78. That Directive, as interpreted by the CJEU in JK, expressly applies to the self-employed. While some UK limb-b workers are self-employed and can enjoy these protections, the latter also ought to apply to other self-employed persons that are not limb-b workers. Take for example the Deliveroo parcel delivery couriers, deemed by the Supreme Court to be genuinely self-employed in IWGB v The Central Arbitration Committee [2023] UKSC 43 on account of the broad, and apparently genuine, substitution clause contained in their contracts. These couriers are not, according to the UK courts, ‘limb-b workers’. And, if the (admittedly very nuanced) Supreme Court’s understanding of the CJEU judgment in C-692/19, B v Yodel Delivery Network Ltd, [2020] IRLR 550 is correct, they are not EU ‘workers’ either. They are genuine self-employed contractors and thus, under Jivraj, they fall outside the scope of the Equality Act 2010, s. 83(2). However, in our view, they are exactly the type of self-employed persons that JK v TP has deemed to be covered by Directive 2000/78, because they meet the requirements set out by the CJEU in paragraph 45 of its judgment that their ‘activities are genuine and are pursued in the context of a legal relationship characterised by a degree of stability’.

4. The enduring inadequacy of the personal scope of UK equal treatment legislation

Here lies the problem with UK equal treatment legislation. Because of Jivraj it does not apply to the ‘self-employed’, unless (as clarified by Clyde & Co) they are self-employed ‘limb-b’ workers. However, the self-employed that are excluded from the ‘limb-b worker’ definition are far from being a homogenous group of workers, and many of them would be protected by EU equal treatment law – for good reason.

As noted by Advocate General Capeta in her Opinion in Case C-356/21, ‘‘self-employment is often used as a residual category, ‘a sort of conceptual dumping ground where all those work relations that do not fit the (often tight) mould of subordinate employment are discarded’’. The Advocate General was clearly inclined to be as inclusive as possible, and confer equal treatment rights to all those workers (self-employed or otherwise) that provide ‘personal work’, regardless of whether this is done in an employment context or in the context of the provision of ‘goods and services’. (See, in particular, para 38 of her Opinion).

The Court was less generous than the Advocate General, in respect of the personal scope of Dir. 2000/78. At paragraph 44 of the judgment it said that ‘Although Directive 2000/78 is thus intended to cover a wide range of occupational activities, including those carried out by self-employed workers in order to earn their livelihood, it is nevertheless necessary to distinguish activities falling within the scope of that directive from those consisting of the mere provision of goods or services to one or more recipients and which do not fall within that scope’ (emphasis added). It went on to say that ‘in order for occupational activities to fall within the scope of Directive 2000/78, that those activities are genuine and are pursued in the context of a legal relationship characterised by a degree of stability’ (emphasis added).

We venture to suggest that, in the future, several judgments of the CJEU will be needed to clarify further these three requirement (genuine economic activity; legal relationship; stability), especially considering that some of them (e.g. genuine economic activity) play a rather minor role in e.g. defining the concept of ‘worker’ for the purpose of free movement or even EU labour law (see for instance Case C‑316/13, Fenoll), and will need to be interpreted (at least just) as liberally in the context of self-employment.

In the meantime, what is clear is that, while the Court in JK has drawn a personal scope of application that is narrower than the one envisaged by the AG, this scope is significantly broader than the one envisaged by UK law, even taking into account the adjustment made in Clyde & Co. Case in point, the Deliveroo riders visibly pursue a genuine economic activity, do so in a legal relationship, and one that is visibly characterised by a degree of stability. Their activities are most evidently not ‘consisting of the mere provision of goods or services to one or more recipients’. But they would be excluded from s. 83(2) of the Equality Act 2010. And while one could see that professionals such as arbitrators, doctors, journalists, musicians, but also interpreters and translators, are typically asked to provide their services to ‘one or more recipients’, it is difficult to deny that they often do so in the context of legal relationships that can be both sufficiently stable (no more or no less than the one of J.K. in the CJEU reference) and sufficiently genuine to fall under Directive 2000/78. As arguably were the translators in Secretary of State for Justice v Windle & Arada [2016] EWCA Civ 459, the beauty consultant in Halawi v WDFG UK Ltd (trading as World Duty Free) [2014] EWCA Civ 1387 and the dancer in Stringfellow Restaurants Ltd v Quashie [2012] EWCA Civ 1735 , all of which failed (or, we suggest in the case of Ms Quashie, would have failed) to establish coverage under UK equal treatment legislation.

To make matters more complicated (but also more interesting), while Directive 2000/78 does not apply to ‘goods and services’, Directive 2000/43 (often referred to as the ‘Race Equality Directive’) expressly does (Article 3(1)(h)). Therefore, given the broader material scope of this Directive whose provisions were intended to be implemented in full by the Equality Act 2010, both EU and UK race discrimination law ought arguably to be shaped by reference to a personal scope of application that is even broader than the one outlined by the CJEU in JK v TP – which would in all likelihood be similar (if not identical) to the one envisaged, with reference to the idea of ‘personal work’, by AG Capeta at paragraph 38 (and following) of her Opinion. Therefore, even if we were to concede that the particular arbitrator in Jivraj was tasked with offering ‘goods and services’, this should be no impediment to an anti-discrimination claim founded on race/ethnicity.

Even stronger arguments can be made to this effect in relation to the scope of EU and UK equal treatment law as it relates to sex/gender, given that (as previously noted) self-employment is expressly covered by the former by virtue of the provisions of Directive 2010/41/EU (the ‘Equal Treatment in Self-Employment Directive’) in particular – with this again being settled law when the Equality Act 2010 was enacted. The decision in Jivraj obscures this point, and arguably fails to give effect to the clear intent of Parliament in passing the 2010 Act to ensure UK law conformed to the then existing requirements of EU law.  

Thus, to sum up, EU and UK law in this area have deviated from each other, despite being based on a shared legislative footing. This deviation is the product of judicial interpretation of statutory wording, with the CJEU’s approach in JK being in our view being more consistent, coherent and principled than that adopted by the UKSC in Jivraj – not least because it is better aligned with the ‘purposive’ approach adopted more generally in both EU and UK law when interpreting equal treatment law, which aims to maximise the effectiveness of such law by giving a broad reading to its scope of application absent clear legislative intention to the contrary. The ‘wrong turn’ taken in Jivraj continues to limit the personal scope of UK equal treatment law, in ways shown up by the clarity and consistency of the contrasting approach adopted by the CJEU in JK.

5. Conclusion – If Jivraj (and Clyde & Co) falls short of EU law, does it matter after Brexit?

Prior to Brexit, UK courts would have been obliged to align their interpretation of the personal scope of the Equality Act 2010 with the CJEU’s judgment in JK – and Jivraj would have been sidelined. But now, under s. 6 of the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018 as amended, British courts are not bound to follow CJEU case‐law. At best, they may take CJEU decisions into account if ‘relevant to any matter’ before them as regulated by s. 6(2) of the 2018 Act. This means that the Jivraj judgment (as clarified by Clyde & Co) will remain the controlling precedent, unless and until the UKSC chooses to reconsider its approach.

It is possible that the CJEU’s analysis in JK may provoke second thoughts, in a suitable case. And JK is certainly ‘relevant’ to interpretation of the Equality Act 2010, as the purpose of this legislation was to maintain conformity with existing EU equal treatment law while reforming specific aspects of UK law. The very specific fact scenario at issue in Jivraj may provide a basis for distinguishing that judgment in the future, if the purposive approach of the CJEU proves appealing enough to the UKSC to warrant a shift from existing precedent. However, until this scenario materialises, we are left with the current status quo – unless the UK Parliament takes the initiative, and amends the 2010 Act so as to correct the unfortunate legacy of Jivraj.

There may be a temptation to let sleeping dogs lie, and leave Jivraj in place. Some might view the restricted interpretation it gives to the personal scope of UK equal treatment law as just another unfortunate consequence of Brexit, to be endured along with all the other legal and policy costs of this political project. Others, as mentioned in the Introduction, might even welcome this example of post‐Brexit erosion of workers’ rights. But, in our view, failing to remedy the unfortunate legacy of Jivraj would be an error.

In this respect it is worth noting, as again mentioned in the Introduction, that Northern Ireland is still subject to EU equal treatment legislation by virtue of the provisions of Article 2(1) and Annex 1 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, aka the Windsor Framework (WF). Article 2 of the NI Protocol/WF states that, as a result of Brexit, there should be ‘no diminution of rights, safeguards or equality of opportunity, as set out in that part of the 1998 [Good Friday] Agreement […] including in the area of protection against discrimination, as enshrined in the provisions of Union law listed in Annex 1 to this Protocol’. Annex 1 goes on to list six EU anti-discrimination laws of which there shall be no diminution, which expressly includes Directives 2000/78, 2000/43 and 2004/113.

These provisions must be read in conjunction with Article 4 of the Withdrawal Agreement, that since coming into force in 2020, has set out the general and framework arrangements for the UK leaving the EU. Article 4(1) provides that:

“The provisions of this Agreement and the provisions of Union law made applicable by this Agreement shall produce in respect of and in the United Kingdom the same legal effects as those which they produce within the Union and its Member States.

Accordingly, legal or natural persons shall in particular be able to rely directly on the provisions contained or referred to in this Agreement which meet the conditions for direct effect under Union law”.

As clarified and confirmed in the important May 2024 judgment of Humphreys J in the Northern Ireland High Court in The Matter of Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, JR295 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 [2024] NIKB 35, the effect of these provisions is that existing EU law will be given direct effect in Northern Irish law. In turn, this means that the various pieces of legislation that make up Northern Irish equal treatment law will be interpreted and applied in line with the CJEU’s approach in JK, i.e. their personal scope will extend to cover most categories of self‐employed workers. And, given that Northern Irish law is required by virtue of Art. 13(3) WF read together with Article 2(1) and Annex 1 WF to maintain ‘dynamic alignment’ with EU equal treatment law as it develops, this means that the UK government may be required to recognise this enlarged personal scope of application in ‘improving’ Northern Irish law in line with the requirements of new amending’ EU legislation such as Directive 2023/970 (‘the Pay Transparency Directive’).

All this is widely to widen existing inconsistencies between British and Northern Irish equal treatment law, complicating the position of employers, employees and self-employed alike. Given this comes on top of the already unsatisfactory legal position in Britain resulting from the legacy of Jivraj, we suggest that reform is needed sooner rather than later.

About the authors:

Suggested citation: Nicola Countouris and Colm O’Cinneide, ‘Time to remedy the legal consequences of Jivraj v Hashwani? The personal scope of application of equal treatment legislation’, UK Labour Law Blog, 25 September 2024, available at https://uklabourlawblog.com)