Barrister who held and dipped into client money suspended

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Ritchie: Barrister misled Legal Ombudsman

A direct access barrister who impermissibly held a divorce client’s money and then did not pay all of it back has been suspended for 18 months by a disciplinary tribunal.

The detail of the case against Wayne Lewis has only come into the public domain after the High Court this week rejected his appeal against the findings and sanction.

The tribunal said he did mainly direct professional access work out of Access Lawyers Chambers.

He ran a company called Wayne Lewis Ltd, trading as Access Lawyers, but resigned as a director in January 2018, stayed on as company secretary and his former wife was a director.

In December 2017, he began acting for ‘KW’ in her ancillary relief proceedings under a damages-based agreement, under which he was to be paid 15% of the sums which KW recovered – which turned out to be £322,989 after the matrimonial home was sold.

In July 2019, this was paid into a Barclays Bank account of Wayne Lewis Ltd and his fee of £52,950 deducted. The balance was held pending a planned house purchase but, in early October 2019, Mr Lewis withdrew £38,000.

KW asked for the money soon after; Mr Lewis first transferred £250,000 to his personal bank account and a few days later made a payment to KW that left £17,539 outstanding.

Mr Justice Ritchie explained how the barrister than “drip paid and gave a huge range of excuses over the course of three years and 10 months, both to KW and the Legal Services Ombudsman (sic), before finally paying the last tranche back in August 2023”.

In a witness statement, Mr Lewis had explained that, despite knowing that he was not qualified to do conveyancing work and that he was not allowed to hold client money, he was worried that he would not get paid for the work he had done for KW in the ancillary relief proceedings.

He decided that he would not be protected “unless I could direct how the proceeds of sale, when paid over, were disbursed. Without the availability of BarCo, I only ever intended to hold enough by way of proceeds of sale to satisfy KW’s indebtedness to me as to fees, and the ensure that the rest was promptly paid over to her. KW agreed this approach”.

The tribunal found the five charges against Mr Lewis proven: that he did not provide a client-care letter for the conveyancing work, handled client money, made unauthorised payments, failed to repay the money, and misled the ombudsman by saying he would repay the client £14,000 when he knew he was unable or unwilling to do so.

Ritchie J noted that, while the tribunal found KW a credible witness, “they considered that [Mr Lewis] was not credible, was evasive, blamed others and had a poor grasp of his duties”.

In deciding to suspend him, the tribunal took into account that Mr Lewis had 40 years of experience and that the charge only related to one client.

But it found that the risk that this could recur with other clients could “not be disregarded” and that no measures had been put in place to avoid repetition despite him having an extensive direct access practice.

The tribunal also ordered that Mr Lewis be prohibited from direct access work until he completed the requisite course upon return to practice.

The core of the barrister’s appeal was that the charge around the client-care letter was unfair because it was too vague, while other charges did not specify dates. He argued also that it was Wayne Lewis Ltd that was responsible for receiving and dealing with the money, not Mr Lewis himself.

Ritchie J dismissed both. Mr Lewis’s witness statement did not show any misunderstanding of the detail of the charge or the dates, while “there was ample evidence to justify the tribunal’s decisions and findings that the appellant handled and controlled KW’s money, not Wayne Lewis Ltd”.

The judge went on to find no faults in the tribunal’s reasoning on sanction. “The appellant’s misconduct was in relation to a huge sum of money, owned by a vulnerable individual, at a delicate time in her life.

“This misconduct was added to by the appellant accepting money when he knew he was not allowed to by the BSB Handbook. It was aggravated by the appellant mixing the money with his failing company’s money and then taking £38,000 for his own purposes on 3.10.2019 and never explaining to the tribunal, KW or the court what he did with that.

“In my judgment the tribunal was entitled to infer he used it himself based on his own evidence in some communications in which he said he mis-spent it.”

The tribunal did not overlook the mitigating factors of Mr Lewis’s age, experience or good record, and “rightly noted” that, as most of his work was direct access, “no protection was afforded by other trained and regulated lawyers” and so there was an ongoing risk.

“Overall I do not consider that the sanction of 18 months suspension was wrong or reached in a procedurally incorrect manner.”