SDT: Solicitors need to retain professional objectivity
The case of a solicitor who wrongly thought charges on a property had been removed is “a warning that even experienced professionals could make serious errors in judgment under extreme stress”.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said Maame Adjoa Doku Djan-Krofa’s actions also showed that “personal issues could impair decision-making and risk perception and that well intentioned actions could still breach professional standards”.
It went on: “Solicitors as legal professionals should ensure that they retained professional objectivity and seek help where there was a danger that such objectivity was challenged or capable of being compromised.”
Ms Djan-Krofa was given a 12-month suspension, suspended for two years, fined £20,000 and ordered to employ a finance director to whom she was not related.
She runs Greater London law firm Pishon Gold, having qualified in 2006, and was acting on the sale of a property from probate. There were three charges to redeem on completion in September 2022 and Ms Djan-Krofa admitted breaching her undertaking to do so.
Once she became aware that her firm’s system had not procured their discharge, she said it did everything it could to redeem them.
The central question was whether the solicitor provided inaccurate information to her client, the buyer’s solicitors and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
The SDT said it found Ms Djan-Krofa a “credible witness” who had acted in the best interests of her client in relation to one of the charges, because she was unsure whether it related to the estate and protected its funds until she was certain.
She assumed the other charges were paid on completion, as was the usual practice of the firm.
The SDT also accepted that she assumed the owner of the charges would apply for their discharge, in the absence of evidence that contradicted her position.
She mis-stated the position in correspondence with the buyer’s solicitors in April 2023 because she did not check the client’s ledger before writing.
“Proper professional practice would have been to check the ledger so that she was informed if the charges had been redeemed.” Ms Djan-Krofa accepted this.
In doing so, she had lacked integrity but was not dishonest, the SDT held. She “genuinely believed that the automatic process of the firm would have resulted in the discharge of the charges”.
The evidence also “revealed a practitioner who was professionally vulnerable as a result of the bereavement of a close colleague and the depletion of staff in a small firm leading to increased pressure on her as the sole director, partner, and owner of the firm”.
The tribunal also placed “significant weight” on her persistence in making enquiries relating to the charge she was unsure about.
Ms Djan-Krofa had “no motivation for being dishonest and self-serving”; her misconduct was “one of omission”.
Client monies were not at risk and there was no evidence of intent to deceive for personal gain. “Ms Djan-Krofa’s bereavement and established professional reputation of 20 years pointed to error in judgment and lapses in case management rather than deliberate deception constituting actual dishonesty.”
The SDT did not find proved the allegation that she misled her client or the SRA, but she admitted not fully co-operating with the regulator, which had to serve statutory production notices on her to obtain the file. She blamed IT problems for this.
The SDT concluded that the sanction “allowed for rehabilitation, permitting Ms Djan-Krofa to continue practicing while taking steps to recalibrate her professional objectivity and observance of the rules, codes and principles which govern modern practice”.
It went on: “The suspended suspension reflected a conclusion that Ms Djan-Krofa’s conduct while objectively wrong and professionally inadequate, represented an error in judgment under difficult circumstances rather than a failing deserving of the most severe sanctions available to the tribunal.
“The tribunal determined that it was not minded to prevent her from continuing to practise which would have penalised her existing clients unnecessarily and thereby caused them potential harm.”
It also ordered her to pay costs of £27,260.