Brand's barrister Ian Winter KC reports himself to watchdog after courtroom clash with Sunday Times reporter

The exchange took place outside a courtroom door at Southwark crown court on Thursday afternoon, with a group of journalists looking on. Ian Winter KC, the barrister who had just lost the case of his client Russell Brand, approached Rosamund Urwin of the Sunday Times and told her: "I hope you are pleased with yourself." Urwin's reporting had led Brand's victims to come forward.

Urwin answered that she was pleased justice had been done. Winter replied, "Well, it wasn't. You fucked it." He then added: "Congratulations." It came moments after a jury found Brand guilty of rape and three counts of sexual assault at the end of a four-week trial. He was cleared of two further charges of rape and one of attempted indecent assault.

On Friday lunchtime Winter issued a statement saying he had referred himself to the Bar Standards Board, his professional regulator. Having seen how the matter had been characterised in the day's press, he said, his professional duty required him to self-report so it could be properly scrutinised. "I have made such a report," he said. The regulator said it would not comment on whether it had received any information about potential misconduct by a barrister, however that information reached it. It is understood that several complaints have been submitted. A spokesperson said complaints are usually handled confidentially unless they end in a disciplinary tribunal hearing.

Urwin described her side on a Times podcast. Her name had come up repeatedly during the trial, she said, so after the verdict she went to introduce herself. "I thought he's talked about me a lot, I'll go and introduce myself and that is a legitimate thing to do," she said, adding that she was surprised to be confronted and spoken to in that way. The comedian Katherine Ryan called the behaviour "so unprofessional, so inappropriate, so aggressive" on her podcast. Ben Taylor, editor of the Sunday Times, defended Urwin, his chief news correspondent. He said he had never seen or heard of a barrister behaving this way, and noted that it was not Urwin who found Brand guilty but a jury of eight men and four women who had heard the evidence and the defence. By impugning her integrity, he argued, Winter was impugning the jury, the judge and the entire case, and should be called to account.

The clash echoed a line of argument the defence ran throughout. Winter had said coverage by the Times, the Sunday Times and a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary had "poisoned the well", making a fair trial impossible. In pre-trial argument, Brand, through Winter, called the journalists who first exposed him "criminals" and suggested they might have perverted the course of justice. Mr Justice Bennathan rejected the bid to halt the trial, ruling that Brand could be tried by people who had not seen the earlier reporting. Brand, 51, denied every charge and said he was the victim of a media conspiracy.

The verdict has also reopened a debate about how rape trials are conducted. In his closing speech, Winter said none of the complainants had "resisted or screamed or even tried to leave" during their encounters with Brand. Claire Waxman, the victims' commissioner for England and Wales, is seeking a change in the law so juries are warned against "rape myths", and criticised outdated assumptions that victims must have screamed or fought back. Deniz Ugur of the End Violence Against Women coalition said it was appalling to see defence lawyers lean into tired tropes about rape.

Sir Mark Rowley, head of Scotland Yard, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he backed Waxman, saying what he had heard reported was "getting very close to victim-blaming". Some people fight, some freeze, some tell someone at once and some stay silent for years, he said; there is no single way to react. A No 10 source said the prime minister, Andy Burnham, believes her proposals should be examined. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said judges can already direct juries to counter rape myths, and that the government is changing the law to stop irrelevant sexual history and previous allegations being weaponised against victims.

Brand was convicted of raping a 21-year-old fan in 2009 and of sexually assaulting three women in separate incidents between 2004 and 2009. He is in custody and will be sentenced on Monday.