Police station: Solicitor attended interview on day off
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has reprimanded a duty solicitor for backdating documents – but ordered the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to pay him costs after he was cleared of dishonesty.
The tribunal found that “the most serious allegations” against Mohamed Alias Yousef, including dishonesty and lack of integrity, were not proved and “should have been reviewed” by the SRA as more evidence emerged during its investigation.
“This evidence challenged the testimony of a witness whose account could not be safely relied upon.”
Mr Yousef, 55, qualified in 2019 and at the time was a duty solicitor at East Midlands firm Bhatia Best. He acted for ‘Person A’, who was to attend a voluntary police interview.
The date was set for 9 April 2021 in East London. Mr Yousef was on leave that day and he said he attended the interview as he was in London to visit his brother. He told the SDT he often worked on days off.
Person A said she paid him £250 in cash afterwards in the police station car park. He denied this.
Mr Yousef accepted as an “oversight” that no file was opened for Person A, no client entry relating to the interview made on the firm’s systems and no legal aid claim made.
He blamed being a busy duty solicitor, while evidence from the firm was that it often opened files after the interview, when they knew if they would be taking on the client
Person A requested a receipt from the solicitor for the £250 in July 2021 and when she did not get it, contacted the firm. Bhatia Best investigated the matter and dismissed the solicitor.
The SDT said Person A was unable to give “a rational or logical reason” for seeking a receipt three months after the event, and admitted that she had lied to Mr Yousef in saying her accountant needed it.
She had also been dishonest in the police interview and in her evidence, it said.
“The tribunal concluded that it was unfortunate that the evidence of Person A had been accepted at face value and without question, which had resulted in five years of investigation and the subsequent prosecution of Mr Yousef.
“By contrast, the tribunal found that Mr Yousef was an honest and credible witness. He accepted when he had made mistakes and… his administrative paperwork was laggard, chaotic and haphazard.
“The tribunal also found, however, that this was due to the nature of his work as an overwhelmed criminal duty solicitor engaged with legal aid work, worsened by the impact of the pandemic. It noted Mr Yousef’s diagnosis of dyslexia.”
It found his explanations for what happened “believable and backed up by the contemporaneous documentary evidence”.
It accepted his evidence that the £250 mentioned in telephone calls and texts was the price of hardwood flooring that he wished to sell, and which was subsequently sold to someone else on 8 April.
It was a “coincidence” that this was the same sum as would be due on legal aid rates and the SDT did not find it proved that any money changed hands after the police interview.
Mr Yousef also did not mislead Bhatia Best about acting for Person A – he had been using the firm’s email address to liaise with the police over her case.
It was possible that the firm would have taken on a client in London given the use of remote interviews at the time because of lockdown.
Mr Yousef was, however, reprimanded for creating and backdating entries in July 2021 on the firm’s case management system for the work done in April.
The SDT found that he had not been dishonest or lacked integrity, but had behaved in a way that failed to uphold public confidence in the profession.
The tribunal reduced the SRA’s claimed costs of £76,800 to £10,000, saying that “costs could have been held to a lower level had there been an earlier and full analysis of the actual harm” caused by Mr Yousef’s proven misconduct “and the matter kept in-house”.
The SRA “had investigated the matter of the backdated client care letter but failed to analyse all the circumstances.
“It had sought to make the evidence fit an assumption of Mr Yousef’s dishonesty, without reviewing the common practices of the firm more generally, and whether late file opening was a frequent occurrence resulting from the pressures of a duty solicitor’s workload.”
The SDT went on to reduce Mr Yousef’s costs claim from £37,500 to £27,000, resulting in a net costs owed by the SRA to the solicitor of £17,000.