SDT: No evidence of instructions
A non-practising solicitor who sent a misleading email “designed to influence and alarm” the two sons of a mentally ill woman has been struck off.
Separately, Adrian Robert Berkeley had also been convicted of stalking and given a suspended prison sentence.
Mr Berkeley, who qualified in 1993, runs LawFriend, a not-for-profit community interest company in the North-West. It is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and its website says it is funded by personal donations and the charity Distress Support Foundation, of which Mr Berkeley is the trustee.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) heard that he had been non-practising since 2015. He told Legal Futures that August that he had become a McKenzie Friend, partly because of the high cost of high street practice.
He remained on the roll and was not allowed to remove himself from it without the SRA investigating why.
‘Mr G’ gave evidence to the SDT that in December 2023 he and his brother received an email from Mr Berkeley about their mother, ‘Ms G’, who was detailed in hospital having been sectioned. She had bipolar disorder.
He used a LawFriend email address, referred to himself as a ‘Solicitor (non-practising)’ and listed his SRA number.
Mr Berkeley told them that he had been instructed by their mother to replace them as her next of kin and said it would be “inappropriate” for them “to have any further contact with her or involvement in her health care”.
He went on: “If it turns out you had any involvement in [her] sectioning, I am instructed to bring a claim against you for false imprisonment and assault.”
Mr Berkeley said his charging rate for mental health law services was £500 per hour “in 6-minute units” and Ms G “intends to transfer her property to me as she understands my fee notes will be substantial”.
He added that he was “unable to give any estimate of costs” and the sons should “seek urgent independent legal advice”.
Mr G contacted the hospital and learned that its concerns about Mr Berkeley’s involvement with his mother were such that it made a report to Action Fraud and made a referral to the council safeguarding team.
This referral said he was “providing questionable advice in the capacity as a non-practising solicitor, to a vulnerable patient with the intent of charging extortionate sums of money for his service”.
Mr G told the SRA that his mother was “an extremely vulnerable woman” and understood that the solicitor met his mother “at a speed dating group”.
He said reading Mr Berkeley’s email made him feel “physically sick” and resulted in “periods of illness” when he found it “extremely hard to cope”.
Ten days after the email, Mr Berkeley sent a further message confirming that all costs to date had been discharged by the Distress Support Foundation and that he had no instructions at the time that would be chargeable to Ms G personally.
Mr G complained to the SRA, leading to an investigation which revealed that Mr Berkeley had “formed a personal connection with Ms G and had thereafter involved himself in her affairs”.
Mr Berkeley described the email as a “shot across the bow” and an attempt to “shake the tree”, which “had the desired effect”.
The SDT disagreed. It said the email was “intended to provoke a reaction from the recipients and influence their conduct by means of misleading assertions, thereby amounting to an attempt to take unfair advantage”.
He did so whilst presenting himself as a solicitor and quoting his SRA number.
There was no “satisfactory evidence” that Ms G had instructed Mr Berkeley in the way he had indicated.
“The statement that the respondent charged £500 per hour for mental health law services was misleading,” it went on.
“The respondent was not a practising solicitor, did not and never had practised mental health law, and subsequently informed the SRA that he had selected that figure by reference to rates charged by other practitioners.”
The messages Mr Berkeley sent Ms G showed that he had been convicted in June 2024 of stalking another woman.
He was charged with “pursuing a course of conduct, namely sending texts, WhatsApp’s, emails, letters and gifts, flowers, greeting cards, making third-party contact and attending the home of the complainant, which amounted to stalking”. The conduct, which caused the victim “serious distress”, lasted five months.
The solicitor pleaded not guilty but was sentenced to 26 weeks’ imprisonment, suspended for 18 months.
Mr Berkeley was found by the SDT to have acted dishonestly in sending the email and pursuing a course of conduct resulting in his conviction for stalking.
The SDT said he did not engage in the proceedings, which took place in his absence. There was an “absence of any evidence of insight, remorse or remediation”.
He was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £22,600.
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