A High Court judge has dismissed high-profile solicitor Soophia Khan’s bid to overturn the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s intervention into her Leicester practice on suspicions of dishonesty.
Khan, who was sent to prison in January after being found liable for contempt for breaching two High Court orders requiring her to deliver up client files, sought an order requiring the SRA to withdraw its intervention from last August into herself and her Leicester practice Sophie Khan & Co over suspicions of dishonesty and alleged rule breaches.
In a two-day hearing at the end of January, Khan’s barrister told Sir Gerald Barling why the regulator’s decision to intervene was fundamentally flawed and disproportionate. Counsel for the SRA accused Khan of misappropriating money.
In a judgment handed down yesterday, Barling ruled that the SRA’s intervention was justified.
He said: ‘I am sorry to say that, on the evidence before me, [Khan] appears to be unsuitable to carry on practice as a solicitor in any capacity. The grounds for intervention were clearly established on the material before the panel as at the date of the decision in August 2021.
‘The arguments and explanations given by SK, whether through the medium of counsel, or in her witness statements in these proceedings, have not undermined in any way the SRA’s reasons for suspecting dishonesty on her part. Nor do I consider that they provide good grounds for challenging the findings that SK and the firm were in breach of the rules in the several respects relied upon by the SRA.
‘Moreover, through counsel SK has conceded certain serious breaches of those rules, not least failures to comply with orders of the court.’
Barling said he agreed with the regulator’s submission ‘that SK’s attitude is one of open defiance of and hostility towards the SRA as her professional regulator, and a lack of respect for the authority of the courts’.
He added: ‘I have no confidence that SK would conduct any solicitors’ practice appropriately in the future. In the circumstances, whilst reminding myself of the caution to be exercised in relation to the draconian remedy of intervention, I have no hesitation in concluding that intervention here was and remains necessary and proportionate for the protection of clients and the public interest.’
