SDT: Restrictions imposed on any return to practice
A law firm owner who failed to pay a wasted costs order as well as four fines imposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has been suspended for six months.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said that Talha Jamil Ahmad was “wilfully refusing to allow his firm to be regulated”; he also did not engage with the tribunal proceedings.
The 41-year-old qualified in 2014 and was the sole solicitor and owner of A&T Legal Ltd, which traded in East London as Leaside Law. The SRA intervened in the firm last July.
The firm failed to pay a £29,700 wasted costs order made in March 2020, and then from July 2022 failed to co-operate with the SRA’s investigation into the matter, showing a lack of integrity among multiple rule breaches.
The SDT said he “did not respond to correspondence, repeatedly requested extensions and then failed to comply, and ultimately did not provide the information, explanations, and documents requested of him” in five statutory production notices.
The SRA also fined the firm on four separate occasions within an 18-month period for various infractions, including general non-cooperation, breaches of the transparency code and failure to provide workplace diversity data.
The tribunal said Mr Ahmad was “directly responsible for disregarding a court order and wilfully refusing to allow his firm to be regulated”. The length of time of the non-compliance was an aggravating feature.
“The tribunal acknowledged that [he] had an unblemished career. Additionally, during the investigation, [he] informed the SRA of health issues. The tribunal applied little weight to these factors given that [he] had effectively failed to engage with the proceedings since the date of issue.”
It decided that a six-month suspension was the appropriate sanction and that, should Mr Ahmad return to practice, he would be subject to indefinite restrictions that prevent him running a law firm on his own or as a partner, and holding a compliance officer role.
Mr Ahmad was also ordered to pay costs of nearly £25,000.
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