A Lincolnshire firm has been praised by a judge for the ‘exemplary’ way it investigated a series of thefts by a solicitor, who was jailed last week.

Jacquelina Laverick, who was head of the wills and probate department at the 200-year-old firm, stole cash from estates she was administering and from the accounts of vulnerable clients for whom she was acting as a deputy appointed by the Court of Protection.

Jailing Laverick for three years after she admitted stealing more than £200,000, the judge said she had been motivated by ‘pure greed’.

Laverick, who practised under her maiden name of Jacqui Johns, even deceived her own grandmother, who was due to benefit by more than £50,000 from a legacy left to her in 2007, but received just £342.

Laverick stole from 11 client accounts over a three-year period and shredded paper files in a bid to cover her tracks. She admitted 10 charges of theft involving a total of £214,870, and two charges of converting criminal property. The offences took place between December 2005 and June 2009.

Judge Michael Heath said: ‘It was done out of pure greed… The solicitors’ profession is an honourable profession. The vast majority of solicitors up and down the country practise diligently and honestly. Among them are Chattertons, which is a long-established and highly regarded Lincolnshire firm.

‘As a result of what you did, a great deal of investigation work had to be carried out by the company. Chattertons has dealt with this in an exemplary fashion. It must have been a nightmare for them to discover that a trusted employee had behaved as you did.’

Patrick Cordingley, a senior partner at Chattertons, said after the case that the stolen money has been refunded by insurers. ‘We have ensured that no client has suffered any financial loss through this woman's dishonesty, but the effect of what she has done has been devastating for our employees,’ he said.

Meanwhile, Leeds solicitor Simon Morgan, 50, who was senior partner at Milners in Leeds, was convicted of six counts of theft, amounting to a total of £1.4m, at Leeds Crown Court last week. The Solicitors Regulation Authority said proceedings against Morgan have been lodged with the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal, and a hearing is inevitable in relation to Laverick.