Signature: Solicitor thought her action was permissible
A solicitor who signed a deed as a witness to a signature when she had not actually been present has escaped being struck off.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) described Victoria Mary Burdett’s dishonesty as “spontaneous and momentary”, and said there were “exceptional circumstances” present which meant she should be suspended for six months, rather than struck off, which is the usual sanction in cases of dishonesty.
Ms Burdett denied dishonesty but the tribunal found that ordinary people would regard it as dishonest “for a solicitor to sign an important legal document attesting to her presence” at the time of a signature “when she knew she had not in fact been there”.
She maintained under cross-examination that she had not been aware of the statutory requirement that a witness must be physically present when a deed was executed.
The SDT said it was “difficult to accept” that “a solicitor with over 20 years of private client experience would have been unaware of the legal formalities required for the valid execution of a deed”.
Had she “paused to reflect on those formalities, she may well have concluded they had not been complied with”. But the tribunal found she had not taken that time on the day in question.
It found that Ms Burdett “had not in her own mind appreciated on the day in question, let alone intended, that, by adding her signature to the deed, she was causing a problem with its validity”.
As a result, the SDT rejected an allegation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority that Ms Burdett acted with a lack of integrity by sending the deed to other parties “purporting” that it was properly and validly executed.
The tribunal also rejected a further allegation that the solicitor acted dishonesty by failing to tell her employer for two weeks what she had done.
At the time of the misconduct, Ms Burdett, who qualified in 2001, was working her notice period as a solicitor in the private client department at Kent firm Robinson Allfree.
One matter she was handling involved replacing partners at the firm who were trustees of a trust with members of a testator’s family.
“A deed executed by both the outgoing and incoming trustees was required to effect this change. By mid-July 2023 there was some urgency to complete the matter, as a property transaction was pending and the end client had grown frustrated at the delay.”
One of the partners at Robinson Allfree signed the deed while working from home and the secretary who brought it to him did not add her witness details at the time. He instructed her to complete them at the office.
Once she had seen the unwitnessed signature, Ms Burdett emailed to ask if she should witness it; the partner replied to say that only the secretary should do so.
But Ms Burdett had actually already done it, telling the SDT that she believed “she was correcting an oversight in a permissible way”, given that she knew the partner had signed it.
The partner was not aware that the deed was invalid for two weeks, when Ms Burdett “volunteered what had happened in a meeting with him”.
The law firm “took immediate steps to have a replacement deed validly executed, which was accomplished within a few days”.
The client and the firm “were put to some inconvenience but did not suffer any other significant harm”.
The solicitor argued that she had made a mistake but had not set out to mislead anyone or cause harm.
The tribunal found that she had been dishonest but it was “spontaneous and momentary” and “had not been premeditated, had not been undertaken for personal or financial gain, and had not formed part of a continuing course of conduct”.
The misconduct “represented a serious misjudgement made under pressure rather than behaviour reflective of the respondent’s usual character”.
It was “confined to a single act involving one document, on one occasion, for one client”, rectified within a relatively short period, and never repeated.
The SDT acknowledged that she had been facing “numerous pressing personal difficulties during that period, was serving her notice, and had felt under pressure from both her supervisor and the end client”.
It also placed “significant weight” on Ms Burkett’s “unblemished career, her genuine insight and remorse, her full cooperation” and character references, including from her current employer.
“Taking all of these matters together, the tribunal concluded that although the dishonesty was serious, it did not fall within the ordinary category requiring strike-off.”
Ms Burkett was suspended for six months and ordered to pay costs of £25,000.