A prominent disability rights campaigner is facing prosecution before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal over the way he managed his former firm.

Chris Fry, who ran Fry Law Ltd in Sheffield, is charged with causing or allowing inaccurate and/or misleading information to be provided in a professional indemnity insurance proposal form.

He is also alleged to have held sums received for professional disbursements in the firm’s office account and used them for the running of the firm. The charges further include an allegation that he failed to rectify a minimum cash shortage in the client account and failed to run the firm with effective systems and controls to ensure compliance with SRA regulations.

The allegations are all subject to a hearing before the SDT and are as yet unproven. Fry is understood to be contesting the allegations. 

Fry Law Ltd went into administration in October 2021 after a deal to acquire the business fell through at the last minute. The firm was eventually acquired by Recovery First which arranged for all live cases to be transferred to its panel firms.

An administrator’s report stated that Fry Law had work in progress valued at more than £3m and 20 salaried staff. The business was supported by a funding facility of £350,000 from Spectra Legal Finance which enabled it to draw down 30% of the value of WIP on a rolling basis.

After Spectra withdrew from the market in 2018, the firm took out a facility with Doorway Capital Limited to release funds to pay the Spectra finance debt and in addition sold most of its personal injury workload. The firm generated significant volumes of disability rights cases and substantially improved its profile during the pandemic, but the business suffered from the closure of courts, meaning cases could not be completed.

Fry, a former president of Sheffield Law Society, has built a reputation for representing clients in disability discrimination cases, most famously in 2017 when the Supreme Court ruled that wheelchair user Doug Paulley should have priority on public transport. He has also created free online resources on disabled rights and in 2020 co-founded the Disability Passport app, giving people with disabilities a way to identify themselves and their needs to shops and venues.

According to the SRA notice, he is now practising with virtual firm Scott-Moncrieff and Associates Limited.

Topics