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Paralegal who raised workload concerns barred from legal profession for fabricating attendance notes

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By Legal Cheek on

8

‘Showed a lack of integrity’, says SRA

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A paralegal who raised concerns about her workload has been barred from working in the legal profession after it was discovered that she had falsified attendance notes.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) said that Lydia Cleary’s actions created the “misleading impression” that she had worked on the files, which allowed her to transfer them from her inactive list.

The SRA issued Cleary, a former paralegal at Bristol-based DAS Law, a section 43 notice, which prevents her from working in legal practice without prior approval from the regulator.

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In mitigation the SRA noted that no client had suffered any loss due to her actions, and that she had raised concerns about her workload with her immediate supervisor at the time.

Cleary’s conduct was serious because it was “dishonest and showed a lack of integrity”, the SRA said.

The former paralegal was also ordered to pay £600 in costs.

8 Comments

Is this the best way?

Is this not just like punishing drug addicts for using drugs instead of punishing drug dealers? The lower down the greasy pole you are the less control you have and arguably more pressure there is to fudge things like this paralegal has. Regulators should punish firms and, if necessary, provide training to those at fault.

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(107)(2)

QAnon

Agreed.

In many firms the ‘heavy lifting’ has a way of falling on those most junior, with all the risks contained therein.

Given that workload pressures were raised by the paralegal, there surely should then be greater onus on ‘higher-ups’ to manage and mitigate risks arising from this.

Point being: SRA have effectively prevented a paralegal from working in the profession without pointing at possible unhealthy work practices which may have led to this outcome. This speaks to balances of power within organisations and, the lower down you are, the less power you have.

Is there any sanction on the firm? Were any preventative measures taken? If these questions are not answered, and we simply issue s. 43 notices on the paralegal/junior staff, we likely miss the wider context and then fail to arrive at reasonable conclusions.

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(78)(1)

Defund the SRA

We need a vote of no confident in the SRA ASAP

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(71)(3)

Anonymous

This organisation is so far removed from understanding the reality of all legal practice that it should be defunded and disbanded.

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(27)(0)

Sol

This is disgraceful. No clients were harmed and the paralegal was just trying to deal with an untenable situation.Why isn’t the supervisor named and penalised?

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(65)(2)

WTF

What a dreadful case and shame on the SRA for taking such unnecessary and punitive action. They had plenty of other sanctions available to them. I suspect that they felt empowered to impose such a punishment knowing that she would not be able to afford a appeal.

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(22)(0)

Anonymous

Are the SRA trying to create a civil law in the legal community? Something must be done with these tyrants.

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(7)(1)

Ern

How dare a legal regulator think it can bring disciplinary processes against someone who acted dishonestly and falsified professional documents.

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(4)(6)

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