Email: Junior solicitor uncomfortable with instruction
A senior partner who told a newly qualified solicitor to lie in an email to a client has been suspended from practice for nine months.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) decided not to strike off Rajpal Panesar – the usual sanction in cases of dishonesty – in part because the assistant refused and the email was not actually sent.
He told the tribunal that he acted as he did so he would “not be shouted at” by his client, but the SDT found that “being asked to lie at an early stage in her career has clearly shaken [the junior solicitor’s] faith in the profession”.
Mr Panesar, who qualified in 2004, was managing partner in the property department of national firm Taylor Rose and supervised Person A, who had only qualified three weeks before the incident.
On Friday 19 March 2021, Mr Panesar emailed the client to say he would arrange for a report on the property to be sent that day. He instructed Person A to photocopy the documents to accompany the report and then post the report.
According to the SDT, “Person A did not action this request immediately, believing there was no urgency to [it]”.
The following Monday, Mr Panesar told the estate agent involved that the report had been sent, without checking whether it had been.
The day after, Mr Panesar asked Person A and was told that it had not been sent. He rejected her suggestion that the report could be sent by courier because the client would then know he had misled them.
Person A drafted a covering email to the client, explaining that the report had not been sent earlier because there was a skeleton staff in the office due to Covid.
Mr Panesar rewrote it for Person A to send in her name. It said: “The Report was sent to you on Friday and returned to us today. Admin Team do not have a reason why it was returned to us, therefore, I checked with Raj and he confirmed your address as being [address], so I have re-sent the report to you together with all the documentation by first class post today.”
Person A posted the documents but refused to send this email, saying she was uncomfortable with it and preferred to provide an accurate account of what had happened.
The lawyers had a telephone conversation during which, Mr Panesar told the SDT: “Person A persuaded him that he should not put his anxiety before his regulatory responsibilities. He stated that he saw the sense of Person A’s argument and, by the end of the call, he had agreed that Person A was correct, that the misleading email should not be sent.”
However, Person A maintained that, by the end of the call, Mr Panesar remained insistent that she should send the misleading email. She instead sent the unamended email and Mr Panesar later emailed to thank her.
Evidence from a colleague who was with Person A during the call with Mr Panesar said Person A was in tears.
The SDT recounted: “Mr Panesar’s actions in amending the email in the way that he had done so weighed heavily on Person A’s mind. At 23.00 on 25 March 2021, she reported her concerns to the firm’s COLP.” She copied the email to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
The SDT noted that, ultimately, the fact the report was sent four days later had no impact on the client nor on the transaction, which completed successfully.
The SDT had to decide whether Mr Panesar had “instructed” Person A to send the email – his counsel argued that instructions existed “only if there is a settled intention to do something and that the email he sent to her was in draft form and sent as a question”.
The SDT held that Mr Panesar had given an instruction: “He was clear that he intended the amended email to be sent… It was not a matter for discussion.” It stressed, however, that there was no threat of sanction to Person A.
It was, indeed, “more complicated to craft a false narrative to the client than simply explain that which had occurred”.
In acting as he did, Mr Panesar had been dishonest and lacked integrity, it concluded.
Person A said the incident had “heavily” impacted on her mental-health and well-being. “Immediately after this incident, Person A asked to move to a different office within the firm,” the SDT said.
“Person A stated that she required support for her mental health and had considered carefully whether she had a future in the legal profession for fear of a similar incident happening in future. Person A reported finding it hard to trust colleagues and described being ‘extremely cautious at work’ since the incident.”
In deciding not to strike off Mr Panesar, the SDT cited “the fact that the dishonesty was between Mr Panesar and Person A only lasted for a 90-minute period, was not premeditated, was not continued in that the offending email was not in fact sent to [the client], and did not prejudice the underlying transaction”.
In deciding to suspend him for nine months, the SDT “reflected his remorse, admissions and the three years taken to bring this matter to the tribunal during which Mr Panesar was issued with a practising certificate free from conditions”.
He was also ordered to pay costs of £14,000.
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