Divorce: Solicitor under huge pressure
A senior family lawyer has been cleared of dishonesty and lack of integrity over an application for a decree nisi that was not made and remained outstanding for a year.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said that Daniel Jones – who was head of family at Berrymans Lace Mawer (now part of Clyde & Co) – “ought to have known” about the oversight but this reflected “a failure of diligence rather than a failure of character or honesty”.
The tribunal took into account the context that Mr Jones’ role involved “substantial strategic responsibilities, including overseeing a rapidly growing department and managing a heavy workload across multiple offices.
“Tasks such as filing the decree nisi were delegated orally to junior staff, a common and accepted practice in law firms.
“The breaches identified related to a lack of adequate supervision rather than deliberate or reckless misconduct.”
Mr Jones, who qualified in 2011, was partner and head of family at the time. He resigned in March 2021 after the firm began an investigation into this conduct and left the following month.
‘Person A’ instructed him in February 2019 for what the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) described as a “straightforward” divorce with no children and an agreed financial settlement.
The regulator accused him of misleading Person A into believing he had lodged a decree nisi application in autumn 2019 when he knew or ought to have known that it was not true. It said he provided the client with “false assurances” until the application was finally filed in November 2020.
The tribunal said it was “not contested” that there had been an “unacceptable delay” in lodging the application. The question was whether Mr Jones knew the true position.
The use by Mr Jones of “I” in correspondence “reflected the firm’s commitment rather than a literal assertion that he personally executed each task”, the SDT said.
A senior solicitor “often used such expressions as shorthand for instructions carried out by their team, particularly in a high-volume, multi-jurisdictional practice”.
The tribunal noted the “extraordinary personal and professional pressures” on Mr Jones, including the pandemic, remote working arrangements and his wife’s pregnancy.
These factors “more likely than not contributed to a genuine, albeit mistaken, belief that the application had been submitted”.
The tribunal concluded that, although the belief was “ultimately incorrect, it had been honestly held”.
Similarly, Mr Jones’ misconduct, “while reflecting shortcomings in oversight and supervision, did not objectively fall below the threshold of integrity expected of a solicitor”.
Mr Jones also did not act recklessly: “He relied on his trusted team to perform routine filings, checked on the status of the application when alerted, and maintained the belief that procedural delays were attributable to the court’s backlog.”
However, he ought to have known that the application had not been lodged.
“Despite being a low-level administrative task, as head of the family law department he had ultimate responsibility for oversight. Even a simple inquiry asking the right questions or verification would have revealed the true position.
“This lack of meaningful oversight meant that he did not act in a manner that fully upheld public trust and confidence and did not act in the client’s best interests, even though there was no conscious intention to mislead.”
The tribunal “emphasised that the breaches found arose from what he ought to have known rather than what he actually knew and therefore reflected a failure of diligence rather than a failure of character or honesty”.
The SDT recognised that the harm to Person A “went beyond mere inconvenience”, and she was caused “real anxiety and distress, to the extent that her health was affected”.
She was left “worried that progress was not being made, and she had to make repeated efforts to chase her solicitor for updates”.
Fining Mr Jones £1,500, the tribunal said “a higher level of fine or suspension would be wholly disproportionate in the absence of dishonesty, lack of integrity or significant harm to the wider public”.
Costs of £39,000 claimed by the SRA were reduced to £15,000, to take into account that “the most serious aspects of the case” were not proved.