A sole practitioner who failed to cooperate with the legal ombudsman regarding client complaints for seven years has been reprimanded by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Claire Letitia Parry was the sole practitioner at CLP Care Funding Solicitor at the time of the complaint. The firm ceased trading in 2016 and Parry does not hold a current practising certificate.
The tribunal heard that, between April 2016 and December 2023 Parry failed to cooperate with the legal ombudsman and failed to comply with their directions. Between July 2023 and January 2024 she failed to cooperate with the Solicitors Regulation Authority investigation into the matter. The SDT judgment said Parry, admitted in 2003, did not engage and the tribunal proceeded in her absence.
The allegations brought against Parry centered from a 2015 complaint to the legal ombudsman alleging poor service. The ombudsman directed Parry to refund a former client £500 and pay £200 compensation for frustration and inconvenience. She did not pay and the client was eventually referred to the Compensation Fund.
The judgment said: ‘There was little doubt that the respondent’s conduct would have eroded public trust and confidence in the solicitors’ profession and in legal services provided by authorised persons, however, standing back and viewing the conduct contextually, the facts did not substantiate that [Parry] had lacked integrity.
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‘There was a disproportionality between what [Parry] had done and the weight of the allegations which had been pleaded. The tribunal found there to be hints and clues within the [SRA]’s material pointing towards the respondent having experienced a difficult and possibly traumatic episode in her life at the relevant time of the allegations and which may have caused her to make poor choices.’
It added: ‘This was also a case where there had been a significant delay in resolving matters such that by the time of the second allegation, the failure to engage with the regulator, [Parry] had not had a practising certificate for almost six years and the initial issue in question had occurred seven years previously.'
The three-person panel found the allegations of misconduct proved. It did not find a lack of integrity ‘noting potential personal difficulties experienced by [Parry] and significant delays in the matter’.
Issuing a reprimand to Parry as the ‘fairest and most proportionate sanction’, the SDT said ‘she had direct control over [her] actions and as an experienced solicitor she should not have conducted herself in the way that she did’. She was also ordered to pay £2,500 in costs.
