New solicitor who borrowed £630,000 from clients is struck off

A solicitor whose misconduct began within two years of qualifying has been struck off the roll.

Jack Grunhut was found to have backdated an application for stamp duty land tax relief, took out loans from clients and received referral payments for referring clients to a short-term lender.

Grunhut argued that his conduct was down to a lack of supervision and his inexperience. He denied acting dishonestly.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found Grunhut had several opportunities to take a different course but he had not done so. It recognised he had only been admitted in 2019 but said that a solicitor of any experience would know that providing false information to an employer and deliberately creating a false document were ‘entirely unethical and a serious breach of professional obligations’.

It added: ‘This was not a single, isolated moment of poor judgement but a course of actions that included dishonesty in different fields of his working life.

The tribunal heard that Grunhut was employed as a consultant solicitors at Middlesex firm Berlad Graham from 2020 to 2022, after working in an equivalent role post-qualification at Taylor Rose TTKW.

Around June 2020, he drafted and obtained a deed of trust which purported to have been made a year earlier. This was sent to his client, who signed and returned it. Grunhut submitted he had drafted the document to show the client what the deed of trust would have looked like, and believed that the document returned to him had indeed been signed in 2019.

He argued the SRA’s case against him was unfair and unsubstantiated, but the tribunal found his evidence 'implausible' and that he had made no attempt to show the document he created was intended to be a draft.

The tribunal heard that over the course of six months, Grunhut received £630,000 in loans from four clients. In response to a query from his supervisor, he emailed to confirm he had no personal or financial relationships with any clients of the firm.

Grunhut submitted that the email had been a genuine mistake and that he had not realised the question from his supervisor may include loans. The tribunal said this was ‘fanciful’ and that he had knowingly provided false and misleading information.

Grunhut had also received four payments into his personal bank account for referring clients to Fortys Capital, a short-term lender. Again he was found to have misled his firm about the nature of these arrangements.

He submitted in mitigation that he had been ‘consumed with work’ and had ‘acted in haste’, asking for the tribunal to consider his were exceptional circumstances. The SDT opted to strike him off and ordered him to pay around £29,500 costs.

Grunhut has said he intends to appeal the SDT's judgment.