An in-house solicitor who lied to the regulator about the reason for her delayed responses – and then doctored emails to her boss to cover her tracks – has been struck off the roll by the tribunal.
Louisa Clapton, admitted in 2012, had told the Solicitors Regulation Authority she had not replied to requests for information because she was away from work attending to her father after a heart attack. In reality, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard, the heart attack had been two months earlier and Clapton had since regularly been in the office during the time the SRA was asking for the information.
The solicitor then compounded this after the SRA said she would be investigated. Clapton forwarded emails to her manager that purported to be the emails she had sent to the regulator.
But these emails had been amended to take out Clapton’s incorrect reference to her being away from work and to remove a further line about her having been unwell with an infection.
The tribunal heard that Clapton, 40, had been required to correspond with the SRA about renewing her practising certificate following her conviction in 2023 for driving with excess alcohol and driving without insurance.
An SRA investigator was assigned to oversee Clapton’s PC renewal but did not receive a response to two requests for information. After a third request, Clapton initially replied saying she had been unwell with an infection and would reply the next day.
She replied almost two weeks later, explaining: ‘After I had emailed you, my father suffered a serious heart attack and I have had to take time away to be with him while he has recovered. I am returning to work to the office tomorrow, and will send through all the materials requested in the morning.’ She added that the materials requested were at the office and she had been unable to access them while she stayed with her father.
Records from her employer, Pemberton Capital Advisers LLP, showed that she had been in the office several times during those two weeks. She later accepted she had given an inaccurate account and had attempted to mislead her employer by amending the emails purportedly sent to the SRA. She was suspended and later resigned in July 2024.
Clapton said in mitigation that she had notified the SRA on the day of her conviction and had an unblemished record. She agreed with the SRA to be struck off and to pay £7,548.
The SDT rubber-stamped this outcome, noting she had known that the information she had provided to the SRA explaining the delay was untrue. She also knew that the emails provided to Pemberton were misleading as she had altered those emails in order to conceal the account given to the SRA.
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