‘Panicked’ solicitor struck off after she hid complaint and sent false email
A “panicked” solicitor has been struck off the register and told to pay £11,400 after she hid a complaint from her company’s compliance officer and then emailed the client pretending to be her firm’s compliance officer.
Elizabeth Nedin, a solicitor at Welsh law firm Philip Avery & Co, intercepted emails complaining about her conduct, and responded to them, pretending to be her company’s compliance officer, according to a ruling by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
In explaining her conduct, Nedin said: “When I first saw the complaint, I panicked… I then could not bring myself to read it as I knew that I had been unjustifiably slow in dealing with the file and the complaint was likely going to be a summing-up of how poor the quality of my work was.”
The solicitor said she repeatedly put off informing her firm about the complaint, as she instead tried to “block it out” of her memory, as she failed to muster up “the strength or courage” to deal with the situation.
Nedin later sent the client an email, pretending to be her firm’s compliance officer, claiming the client’s complaint was being reviewed.
The lawyer asked the tribunal to view her decision to send the email as an “isolated incident” as she said her actions should be seen within the context of her “deteriorated mental health.”
In ruling against the solicitor, the SRA tribunal said Nedin “was motivated by self-preservation.”
The tribunal said that while her initial acknowledgment of the complaint – which was sent within 45 minutes of the complaint first being sent to her work’s email inbox – “may well have been spontaneous and a panicked reaction,” Nedin’s subsequent emails demonstrate she is “highly culpable for her misconduct.”
“Her subsequent misconduct in perpetuating the concealment represented a series of repeated dishonest steps planned over a period of 23 days which served to hide the true position,” the tribunal said.