Emails: No cogent evidence to support findings against solicitor
A paralegal who lied to solicitors in one email and to a client’s relative in another has been banned – but the solicitor who supervised her exonerated.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) made Ria Lakhani subject to an order under section 43 of the Solicitors Act 1974, meaning she cannot work for a law firm without the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s (SRA) approval.
She and solicitor Joanne Elizabeth Tappin – who qualified in 2012 – worked together in the property department of London firm Mackrell at the time.
The prosecution concerned two conveyancing matters where they acted for the sellers.
The first was a probate sale which wrongly completed before the grant of probate had been received. Around three weeks later, the buyer’s solicitor emailed the pair, threatening to report Mackrell to the SRA if the signed transfer form was not received soon after.
Just under an hour later, Ms Lakhani responded to say that the signed contract and transfer had been mistakenly sent to another firm and lost in the post, and there had been IT issues within the firm. This was not true.
The deed was eventually sent a few weeks later, after the grant of probate was made.
In her defence, the paralegal accused Ms Tappin of drafting the email – but Ms Tappin’s evidence was that, after being shown the email, she had told Ms Lakhani not to send it and wait for instructions from the head of department.
The SDT said it found Ms Tappin to be a “broadly credible witness”. It explained: “She accepted a significant failing in relation to supervision and document checking and her concessions were made without any apparent evasion.”
Ms Lakhani had withdrawn from the hearing on the third day, saying she felt overwhelmed and distressed, and so did not give oral evidence.
The SDT described WhatsApp messages and emails that passed between the two in the aftermath of the email as “unattractive and capable of alternative explanations” – namely, that Ms Lakhani had carried out Ms Tappin’s instructions.
But it concluded that “they were not in the tribunal’s judgment capable of establishing the [SRA’s] case to the requisite standard”.
It found “uncertainty” as to what occurred between the opposing solicitors’ email being received and Ms Lakhani’s response.
“Given that the contemporaneous evidence was circumstantial and equivocal, and in light of the weight attached to [Ms Tappin’s] tested evidence, the tribunal was not satisfied to the required standard that she caused or allowed the misleading email to be sent,” it concluded.
Mackrell dismissed Ms Lakhani for gross misconduct over the email and Ms Tappin issued with a final written warning as the firm accepted it had been sent against her instructions.
The email on the second matter emerged as part of the investigation. It related to a request for the signed copy of the transfer, more than four months after the sale had completed.
Ms Lakhani emailed the client’s son, who was dealing with the matter on behalf of his mother, and told him the buyer’s solicitors had misplaced the signed transfer deed. She attached a fresh one for signature.
In fact, the SRA said, there was no evidence to show that a transfer deed had been executed by the client before this.
But beyond Ms Tappin’s “well done” endorsement of the email after it had been sent, and a message that said “you wait till we send out 2 King Georges!” – which related to the first property – “there was no cogent evidence that established she had caused or allowed” this email to be sent either.
In deciding that the section 43 order was required to protect the public interest, the SDT stressed that “all those involved in the administration and delivery of legal services – including unadmitted persons – must act with complete probity, honesty, and integrity”.
The SRA sought costs of £54,150; costs do not follow the event in the SDT so as not to have a chilling effect on the regulator.
Given both Ms Lakhani and Ms Tappin’s limited means, the tribunal ordered the paralegal to pay £4,500 and the solicitor £10,000.