Signatures: Paralegal failed to send forms to client and sponsor
A prospective trainee solicitor who forged a client’s signature on a document sent to the Home Office and faked an email to mislead her firm has been barred from the profession.
Nishaat Shamas Saeed said she acted as she did to prevent her employer, East London law firm Elaahi & Co, from finding out about mistakes she had made.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has made her subject to an order under section 43 of the Solicitors Act 1974, meaning she cannot work for a law firm in future without its permission.
An SRA notice last week recorded that Ms Saeed worked as a senior paralegal in Elaahi & Co’s immigration department from September 2023 until she was summarily dismissed in February 2025.
She had successfully completed the academic stage of qualification and was due to start a training contract with the firm in June 2025.
Ms Saeed worked on a client’s application for an extension of leave to remain in the UK. Her actions covered three days in February 2025.
She forged the client’s and their sponsor’s signatures on declaration forms she submitted to the Home Office, having failed to send the forms to both to sign before the immigration application was processed by the Home Office.
Ms Saeed also falsified a language test certificate in the client’s name which she submitted to the Home Office on the client’s behalf. This was because she had failed to advise the client that he had to obtain the certificate.
Then, during the course of the firm’s investigation into her work, Ms Saeed fabricated an email in an attempt to mislead it into believing that she had sent the declaration forms to the client and sponsor for their signature before she submitted the application.
As part of this, she tampered with screenshots of images from her work laptop screen to make it look like she had sent the email to the client.
However, Elaahi & Co obtained evidence of what she had done and Ms Saeed then admitted it.
“The client was unaware of and was not involved in Ms Saeed’s dishonest conduct but despite this it had a significant detrimental impact on the client’s immigration application,” the SRA noted.
The SRA said it imposed the section 43 order “because of the serious nature of her conduct which was dishonest and had a serious detrimental impact upon the firm’s client”.
Ms Saeed was also ordered to pay the SRA’s costs of £600.
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