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"A spokesperson for the SRA said: ‘We prosecute solicitors and their firms where we believe they have breached our standards. We believed that was the case here and the tribunal agreed with us.’"

I think it is important to highlight per previous Gazette report (22/11/18):
"His [Lewis's] representative, Timothy Kendal, said the investigating officers of the SRA had not researched the context of the Twitter messages Lewis was replying to, nor the background of the people who had originally sent him abuse. "

and

"The tribunal heard from an SRA investigator who confirmed she did not have access to the messages that had prompted Lewis’s responses, which had come from accounts which have since been deactivated. No attempt had been made to gain disclosure of these messages from the High Court, and the SRA’s case was presented with no context as to the messages Lewis had received."

So it is clear that the SRA consider that the context is utterly irrelevant, and a Solicitor's actions can be viewed entirely in a vacuum.

However, I am fairly sure that if members of the public were asked for their opinion on this, the vast majority would want to know the contents of the messages that Mark Lewis was replying to before deciding whether his responses were justified or not. It's odd in the extreme that our regulator felt it didn't need to see the whole picture.