A partner who specialised in immigration and asylum law has been struck off the roll after he admitted misleading his client and an MP about submissions to the Home Office in relation to an asylum claim.
James Martin Taylor, a non-practising solicitor admitted in March 2009, was one of two partners at Collingwood Immigration Services LLP. Taylor, based in the firm’s Gateshead office, admitted sending emails to the client and a case worker for the client's MP, which he knew or ought to have known were misleading about the date of his submissions.
He also admitted misleading the firm's compliance officer for legal practice and the Home Office.
In an agreed outcome judgment, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said it was ‘satisfied on the balance of probabilities’ that Taylor’s admissions were ‘properly made’.
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The SDT said: ‘[Taylor] failed in his duty to inform his client about his failure to make further submissions to the Home Office and maintained this deceit for over a year. He also made untrue representations to his client’s MP, to the Home Office and to the COLP of the firm. He continued to deny the truth when under investigation.
‘The respondent was an experienced solicitor who accepted that he had failed to act with integrity and had acted dishonestly by deliberately misleading his client, other members of the profession, the Home Office and a member of parliament, and thereby causing harm.’
It added that Taylor’s ‘serious misconduct’ was ‘aggravated by being sustained over a period of time’ and striking him off the roll was the ‘only appropriate and proportionate sanction to maintain the reputation of the profession and protect the public’.
Taylor was also ordered to pay £6,000 costs.
