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There is no way, if you read this judgment, at eg paras 34-40 and 64, you can seriously doubt that he was dishonest.

The SDT actually found the facts showing he was dishonest but failed to apply to dishonesty test correctly, hence the High Court re-deciding that one issue.

In essence, the dishonesty was not charging high rates, it was inflating his costs to recover far more than he was entitled to knowing that his clients didn't care (as they didn't pay).

The best examples of this dishonesty, as found by the SDT, were:

-He "set the rate at an artificially high level in the knowledge that the clients would not object, so that he could maximise costs without regard for the need for those costs to be reasonable and proportionate." Note the word "artificially"

-"Members of the public, whilst they viewed solicitors' bills as expensive, would not expect a solicitor to institute a policy that led to charges being levied at almost four times the acceptable rate and to then charge a 100% uplift to what were already grossly excessive charges. Further less would they expect such charging practices to be levied against the NHS"