A solicitor issued with a final warning by their employer created and sent a misleading letter after missing a deadline, a tribunal has found.
Joseph Dawson, admitted in 2010, claimed that while in practice as a senior associate with national firm Leigh Day, the falsely dated letter had been sent previously. He misled his line manager by confirming this, in order to show compliance with a directions order and to meet a court deadline.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard that Dawson was subject to a performance improvement plan and had been issued with a final written warning to put him on notice that further perceived failings would result in dismissal.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority, prosecuting, said this had placed Dawson under pressure. The tribunal concluded that his behaviour was motivated by the likelihood he was going to lose his job. It added: ‘Whilst his actions were spontaneous in the first instance, he then sustained them by continuing to insist that he had validly conducted disclosure… and in so doing misled his supervisor and subsequently the regulator. He had direct control of the situation and was an experienced lawyer.’
As part of a personal injury claim where quantum was disputed, Dawson was required to disclose several documents by 29 May 2023. But the defendant firm emailed three weeks after this deadline while Dawson was on annual leave to say that the documents had not been received. With Dawson absent, his line manager looked at the file and found a letter created on 22 May which was marked ‘sent by email’ but otherwise left blank.
The firm’s IT system found the letter was modified on 20 June, with no record of it having been printed earlier as would have been necessary. The tribunal found that Dawson accessed the file from home and began work on filling in the blank letter.
Dawson denied wrongdoing, insisting that he had filled in the letter when it was created and saying he could not explain why it then showed as blank weeks later. He had filled in the letter on a later date in good faith to try to replicate the letter already sent. The fact the defendant firm had not received the documents, he submitted, did not mean that they were not sent.
The tribunal found Dawson not to be a credible witness. Even if he had believed the letter had been sent on time, an honest solicitor would not have sought to pass off the later version as a copy.
The tribunal said: ‘Mr Dawson had attempted to conceal his wrongdoing and entrenched his position through his own actions. His behaviour was only mitigated to the extent that this was an episode of brief duration in a career otherwise unblemished by disciplinary offences.’
He was struck off and ordered to pay £36,255 costs.
