The Solicitors Regulation Authority has been ordered to pay £27,000 towards the costs of a non solicitor who was wrongly barred from the legal profession.
Isobel Standing was prevented from working for any law firm by an SRA adjudicator’s decision in March this year. The adjudicator found that Standing had submitted multiple misleading time recording entries and inaccurate overtime claims. It further found her conduct to be dishonest.
That decision was challenged as unfair and contrary to authority, with Standing's representative Gregory Treverton-Jones KC arguing that she should have had the chance to plead her case before an oral hearing. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal agreed there had been a serious procedural error and overturned the barring order.
The parties having effectively agreed on the outcome, the SRA then tried to argue that it should not be liable for Standing’s costs. The regulator said the adjudicator’s decision was that of an ‘independent tribunal’ and separate from the SRA.
Treverton-Jones said this point was ‘hopeless’ given that adjudicators were SRA employees, inducted and trained by the SRA, and the SRA was liable for any torts committed by its adjudicators during their employment. Once this ‘fallacious’ assertion of independence was removed, he submitted, it was obvious that costs should follow.
The SRA further told the tribunal its conduct had been ‘faultless’ and that it had conceded the application to quash the decision at the earliest opportunity.
The tribunal did not support the contention that adjudication decisions were not the decisions of the SRA, and said at the very least that adjudicators were making decisions on behalf of the regulator.
It was found that the serious procedural irregularity in the case was good reason to depart from the principle established in Baxendale-Walker that the SRA should not generally respondents’ costs.
Standing, whose position in the legal profession and firm were not disclosed in the SDT ruling, applied for £54,255 costs. The tribunal reduced these on the basis that some time claimed by her solicitors for preparing and attending the case was excessive. The SRA was ordered to pay £27,000.
