Can we trust the SRA when issuing bigger fines?

Reading through a ruling of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal is not for the faint-hearted.

Chances are the judgment (if based on a contested hearing rather than an agreed outcome) will be convoluted, repetitive and often difficult to understand. It will be riddled with stock legal phrases and invariably go into exhaustive detail about what is alleged to have happened – as well as the defence proffered.

It’s not an easy read but neither should it be – these are important issues not just for the individual or firm being prosecuted but also for the wider profession, which can consider what conduct is deemed unacceptable and whether those boundaries are shifting.

The tribunal’s own response to the SRA’s consultation on increasing its fining powers to £25,000 makes this point, stating that following a hearing open to the press and public a ‘detailed’ written judgment would be produced.

The SRA has yet to fully explain what it would make publicly available for the public when dealing with these extra cases, either during the process or following the decision.

The assumption is that fines of up to £25,000 would appear, out of the blue as they do now, on the SRA’s decisions page – and based on the regulator’s track record, with scant detail or context.

Take this week’s notice posted in relation to Bradford lawyer Mohammed Shokat, which was published with so little detail as to be almost useless. Shokat was a ‘fee earner’ (no further explanation offered) at a firm when he applied for a 'bounce back' loan of £50,000 at the start of the pandemic. The vast majority of the money was then transferred to Shokat’s personal account or to an (unnamed) other firm of which he was the sole director.

That’s it. That’s the sum total of the notice, save for the boilerplated section about it being undesirable for him to remain in the profession. There was no word on whether other authorities were notified, whether the money has been paid back or whether Shokat made any defence. No explanation of how Shokat was able to make such an application, nor any mention that the firm was shut down later that same year. This was a case of public interest relating to a pandemic and involving public funds, yet the SRA shared almost nothing. It didn’t even state whether Shokat had to pay the standard £300 costs for such a regulatory action (he did, as it turned out).

Can we trust the SRA to be transparent about cases where solicitors are being fined up to £25,000? An organisation, let’s not forget, that will not even allow the public or press into the very board meeting where this matter will be discussed. Or will these cases – some of great importance to the profession as a whole – be quietly published with little to no detail or background and leaving more questions than answers?

The SDT rulings might be heavy going, but they serve the sector much better than the SRA likely would.