A novice solicitor has been cleared by a tribunal of dishonesty after it was found she was working in a ‘chaotic’ environment with inadequate supervision.
Mumba Chakulya became a solicitor in 2019 and almost immediately started working with Colchester firm Goody Burrett in the civil litigation department. But Chakulya had no prior experience of litigation before joining the firm and limited understanding of court processes.
She was charged by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with providing false information to a debt recovery client but cleared of any wrongdoing following a three-day hearing in June.
Ruling in the case, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal said there had been ‘clear confusion’ about the supervision arrangements which affected her work. The tribunal ruling added: ‘The respondent was a newly qualified solicitor working in a less than desirable professional environment with a paucity of supervision. The firm was operating in a chaotic operational and management structure in which the respondent [worked] was not adequately supported as she commenced in practice.’
Chakulya had taken on the debt recovery matter in February 2020 and told the client that court proceedings would start imminently. The client made repeated enquiries about the status of the claim over the subsequent months, with Chakulya asserting that proceedings were issued through Money Claims Online, default judgment requested and enforcement actions undertaken. But contemporaneous file records failed to evidence that any of these steps were taken, an issue which came to light after she had left the firm in June 2021.
Lawyers for Chakulya said she had a genuine and honest belief that the claim had been issued online, while also pointing out the ‘unexplained, inordinate and prejudicial delay’ by the SRA to progress a case that was first reported in August 2021.
The firm, which shut last year, did not have a designated web portal from which to issue claims and as such, Chakulya had issued proceedings using a personal email address. It was submitted that the claim was mistakenly issued incorrectly, while she had not followed the correct procedure for requesting the default judgment.
The tribunal found Chakulya to be a credible and consistent witness.
David Cammack, a consultant solicitor with the firm, was Chakulya’s supervising colleague but described his involvement as ‘keeping an eye on her’, checking in from time to time but making no written record of these discussions.
Chakulya's lawyers said Cammack’s evidence to the tribunal ‘bore the hallmarks of arrogance and flippancy’. The tribunal concluded he was an ‘unsatisfactory witness who adopted a flippant approach to his evidence and who was reluctant to make concessions when presented with obvious inconsistencies between the documentary evidence and his witness statements’.
All allegations against Chakulya were dismissed, with no order for costs.
Following the decision, Chakulya, who was represented by solicitor-advocate Jonathan Goodwin, said: 'As a newly qualified solicitor at the time, I faced very challenging circumstances, and I am grateful that the tribunal recognised this. The proceedings placed immense personal and financial strain on me, underscoring the need for fairer and more proportionate investigations by the SRA.'
