Laptop: Solicitor tried to blame technology
A solicitor has been struck off for creating letters to mislead both his opposite number and his own firm in a bid to cover up his failure to acknowledge service.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said Syed Suhail Abbas Sibtain initially denied backdating the letter and told his law firm’s HR director that it had been caused by “issues with his laptop”.
Mr Sibtain, who qualified in 2016, was working for former West Midlands law firm Thursfields at the time of the misconduct. Thursfields was bought by listed law firm Knights in 2024. More recently, he worked as a consultant at Setfords.
A statement of agreed facts and outcome, approved by the SDT, said MFG Solicitors was acting for the claimant in a matter where Mr Sibtain represented the first defendant.
Following a phone call with him on 3 October, MFG told a partner at Thursfields that Mr Sibtain “may have falsely claimed to have sent an acknowledgment of service in court proceedings”.
He sent them an email “which purported to contain a copy of an original acknowledgment of service letter dated 24 July 2023”.
MFG said the document properties showed it had in fact been created immediately after the call.
The HR director of Thursfields launched an investigation. Mr Sibtain initially suggested that the “discrepancy” could have been caused by issues he had been having with his laptop.
But the firm’s IT director said the metadata showed the document was indeed created on 3 October and he could find no trace of an email on 24 July.
Mr Sibtain then stated that he created the document on 24 July and saved it on his desktop only, and not the firm database due to the laptop issue; he said he opened it on 3 October to check the document, which was how he believed the metadata could have shown that as the creating date.
He later changed his account, saying he could not locate an electronic copy of the 24 July letter and so sent a “recreated version of what he believed he had sent them, which was purely for their records”.
Mr Sibtain also emailed the HR director what he claimed was the original letter, saying he had initially deleted it and tried to restore it.
The firm’s IT director discovered that in fact Mr Sibtain had that day overwritten an unrelated document created on 25 July to match the one sent to MFG.
In a meeting later that day with the HR director, he maintained that the letter had been created in July.
Mr Sibtain later told the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) that he created the second letter and misled his employer “because he was afraid he would lose his job”.
He was dismissed for gross misconduct and reported to the SRA. He admitted acting dishonestly in creating both letters.
In mitigation that was not endorsed by the SRA, he said he was a father to three young children at the time of the misconduct and his wife was “heavily pregnant”.
“Multiple factors” led to his mental health deteriorating, including struggling to meet his billing targets, a growing caseload, and having to switch from hybrid working to working full-time at a location 80 miles from his home.
He said he was “extremely remorseful” for, and ashamed of, his actions.
The SDT said he had admitted serious dishonesty “involving the deliberate and repeated creation and backdating of documents in order to mislead others”, and that striking him off was “the appropriate and proportionate sanction”.
Mr Sibtain was also ordered to pay £5,000 in costs.
The detail worth pausing on here is that the metadata told the whole story — the document properties showed the letter was created minutes after the phone call, not on the date typed at the top. Everything we do in a case management system leaves a trail, and that’s bad news for the dishonest few but quietly reassuring for everyone else: the same audit trail is what lets a firm prove exactly what happened when a transaction is challenged. Worth asking yourself — if a client disputed a date on one of your files tomorrow, how quickly could you evidence it?