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This is from the SDT judgment:

“ 5. At all material times the Respondent was employed by the Gloucester Law Centre, Third Floor, Beatrice Webb House, 75-81 Eastgate Street, Gloucester, GL1 1PN (“GLC”), where he specialised in immigration and asylum matters.

6. GLC is a charity and not-for-profit organisation. It does not charge for its services and is not authorised by the SRA. The majority of its cases were funded by legal aid, with a small number of non-legally aided cases being funded by local authority grants.

7. At the start of November 2015, GLC discovered that from November 2012 until October 2015 the Respondent had concealed from GLC the fact that he had been charging clients on a privately paying basis, without GLC’s authority or knowledge, for immigration and asylum work carried out in the name of GLC. The work was undertaken on GLC’s premises and using GLC’s name, materials, including letterhead paper and resources.

8. The clients the Respondent acted for on a privately paying basis were not eligible for Legal Aid. Most of them were existing clients of GLC, although occasionally the Respondent would act for non GLC clients who had heard of his work.

9. The Respondent verbally advised his clients of the fee at the beginning of each matter, but as a matter of course he did not confirm this in writing to them.

10. The Respondent did not pay any of the monies received from these clients into an office account of GLC. Instead he retained all of the payments, which ranged from £50 to £200 per matter, for himself. The Respondent failed to keep any accounting records for the monies he received from these clients.’’

I see nothing heroic, or remotely or potentially heroic, here. He had a job - no doubt poorly paid as is the way these days in his area of practice - and he exploited the connection that it gave him.

He had it coming.