Associate who billed 23 hours in a day struck off

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On the clock: No harm to clients but colleagues were affected by conduct

A senior associate at national firm Irwin Mitchell who recorded 23 hours of chargeable time in one day has been struck off for submitting dishonest timesheets.

Natasha Janet Dionne Fairs limited her excessive claims to files where her extra time would be written off because either the final costs bill had already been agreed or it was a fixed-fee case.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said that, although clients suffered no direct harm as a result, “her inaccurate, misleading, and inflated time recording had a significant impact on both her colleagues and the firm”.

It explained: “Those working on the same cases as the respondent received a smaller share of fees than they were entitled to, as costs were allocated among fee-earners based on recorded time.” This ultimately affected salaries, bonuses and promotions – positively for Ms Fairs and negatively for her colleagues.

“Additionally, the firm relied on time recording to assess staffing needs, track work in progress, and forecast future fee income, all of which were adversely affected by the respondent’s misconduct.”

Ms Fairs, 47, qualified in 2003 and joined Irwin Mitchell’s serious injury team in London four years later. She was promoted to associate in 2012 and senior associate in 2022.

Though not the only metric considered, the SDT heard that promotion was difficult to achieve without meeting billing targets.

According to a statement of agreed facts and outcome presented by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and approved by the SDT, she left the firm in May 2023, after two colleagues raised concerns about her billing to supervising partner Richard Geraghty.

His review of her billing over the previous four years found time recorded well in excess of the 6.3 chargeable hours per day Irwin Mitchell generally expected.

For example, on 28 April 2020 she recorded 20 hours and 24 minutes, 19 April 2022 22.9 hours and 14 April 2023 18.1 hours.

She put large amounts of time on complex, high-value cases where the final bill had already been raised and the costs had been agreed, and on low-value cases where the costs were fixed or agreed.

Mr Geraghty found Ms Fairs would record, say, five (six-minute) units on the file, but five hours on the time-recording system.

The SRA said: “This could be perceived as a genuine error or that the respondent had accidentally confused her hours with her units.

“However, the pattern and frequency of this apparent error led the firm to conclude that it was a calculated practice by the respondent which she could claim was an error if she were questioned about it.”

Irwin Mitchell also identified that her excessive time recording increased towards the end of its financial year and in the lead-up to her mid-year performance review.

Both in her disciplinary hearing at the firm and before the SDT, Ms Fairs accepted full responsibility for what she had done, did not seek to justify or excuse her behaviour, and apologised for her conduct.

However, she provided context for her actions, explaining that she was managing “significant personal and professional pressures”, including the serious illness and then death of her mother, the demands of homeschooling during the pandemic, and a “high-volume and low-value” caseload.

In ‘non-agreed’ mitigation, she said her supervisor was aware of many of these difficulties but no formal adjustments were offered. “This led [her] to believe that support was either unavailable or not typically provided in such circumstances.”

Ms Fairs said exceeding time targets was “a strong focus within the firm… with limited attention given to how those targets were achieved”.

She said she found it increasingly difficult to meet the chargeable time target while also fulfilling business development, media and charitable responsibilities, as well as leadership roles in locan and national groups within Irwin Mitchell focused on abuse, rehabilitation and amputation.

She accepted that she did not manage all of this “appropriately” and did not seek to argue that she should not be struck off.

Ms Fairs was also ordered to pay the SRA costs of £5,200.