Lack of experience not mitigating factor
A newly qualified solicitor (NQ) has been struck off after fabricating time recordings on multiple occasions.
Matthew Nester, then a junior lawyer at the national law firm Hugh James Solicitors, was admitted to the roll in July 2021. However, just six months later, he was dismissed from the firm after filing “inaccurate” and “misleading” time recordings in January 2022.
Suspicions arose at the firm when Nester recorded several hours working on quarterly file reviews on 4 January, a task not within his job remit.
When questioned by a partner on the matter on 10 January, Nester said that he had carried out the work following a firm-wide email reminding staff to carry out reviews. On further inspection, however, the partner found that the email had only been sent the following day, on 5 January, and the document provided by Nester to evidence his work had only been created on 10 January.
A disciplinary tribunal heard that Nester had claimed four and a half hours for nine quarterly file reviews on 4 January and a further three hours of file reviews on 5 January. In total, he registered seven and a half hours of work that had never been completed.
It also emerged that Nester recorded an hour of time on 6 January, when in fact he had only spent 30-36 minutes on the work, and another incorrect hour on 7 January.
Following an internal investigation, the firm terminated Nester’s employment on 12 January 2022. It then reported his conduct to the SRA and Nester self-reported the following month.
The tribunal acknowledged that the work in question, which was administrative in nature, was not billed to any client.
It further found that “ordinary and reasonable people would consider that a solicitor who fabricated time on a file, in order to make his employer believe that he had done more work than he actually had, was dishonest”.
Addressing the inaccuracies on the 6 and 7 January, Nester said that “he had posted his time on those days, in a hurry to complete his time recording at the end of the week”. He also mentioned that he felt “distracted from his work” throughout that week because he was working from home, and his children were also at home since their schools hadn’t reopened due to a lockdown in Wales.
In considering the appropriate sanction, the tribunal were unpersuaded by Nester’s junior role, finding:
“His actions were planned. He repeated the false time recording across a number of files, in the knowledge that he had not worked the time that he had recorded. He had breached the trust placed in him by the firm to accurately record the work that he was doing. Mr Nester was solely and wholly in control and responsible for his conduct. Whilst he was a newly qualified solicitor at the time of his misconduct, the Tribunal considered that his lack of experience was not a mitigating factor in his conduct. All solicitors, irrespective of their experience, knew that it was improper to record time for work that had not been performed.”
Furthermore, the tribunal did not consider that Nester’s circumstances were sufficiently exceptional, nor that they related to his dishonest conduct.
Bearing in mind the seriousness of the conduct, “the only appropriate and proportionate sanction” was to strike Nester of the roll, the tribunal said.
There was no order as to costs.