A late starter solicitor has said he felt ‘out of his depth’ before committing the misconduct which led to his strike-off.
Christopher Hawkes, 53, qualified as a solicitor in September 2021 but a year later he removed a client’s email from his firm’s document management system to conceal that he had received it.
A day later, he emailed the client and his supervising partner at national firm Clarke Wilmott denying he had received the email.
Hawkes agreed with the Solicitors Regulation Authority that he should be struck off. In non-agreed mitigation, he said he was working from home at the time of the incident in an isolated environment. He reported feeling ‘out of his depth and unable to ask for support from his supervisors’.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that Hawkes was employed by the firm in its private client and commercial litigation team based in its Southampton office.
He was dismissed in September 2022 for gross misconduct following a disciplinary hearing in which confirmed he had removed an email to cover up that he had not dealt with it at the time.
The client in a debt recovery matter had emailed him a question in May 2022 which had received no response. When that client followed up with Hawkes’ supervisor asking what had happened, Hawkes removed the original email from the system.
His supervisor spotted it had been removed on the system activity log and Hawkes accepted he had acted to prevent anyone knowing he had made a mistake.
Hawkes admitted dishonesty and did not plead any exceptional circumstances. The tribunal accepted this was a single episode affecting one client matter, but said the misconduct was deliberate and calculated to conceal an error.
Hawkes was struck off and agreed to pay £5,000 costs.
