Letters: Solicitor left them piling up
A solicitor who “abandoned” his law firm, leaving his office “in a chaotic state” with piles of letters thrown away as a fire hazard by neighbouring tenant and clients “reduced to tears”, has been struck off.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) said the impact of Toslim Uddin Ahmed’s actions in leaving client files and documents likely to contain confidential and privileged information in an office that was due to be re-let, was “considerable”.
Having been in practice for over 20 years, Mr Ahmed should have known the rules and what was required of him in closing his firm, it went on.
His conduct “demonstrated a lack of care for anyone affected by the closure, principally his clients who were seemingly ‘left high and dry’”.
The landlord of Universal Solicitors contacted the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) in March 2022 to say that Mr Ahmed had not been seen on the premises “for months on end” – he had not paid his rent for a year and owed £22,400.
The landlord subsequently issued county court proceedings and obtained judgment for part of the arrears.
His telephone had been cut off, he had not answered emails and he had left confidential files behind. Clients were said to have been “crying” to a neighbouring tenant that they had paid Mr Ahmed and seen nothing in return.
Meanwhile, the neighbour, for almost six months before the SRA shut down the firm in May 2022, had been throwing away the solicitor’s letters because they were “piling up” in the corridor and creating a fire hazard.
Following the intervention, the SRA removed 1,374 files from the office, some of which contained complaints by clients, complaints from the Legal Ombudsman, “delayed invoicing to clients several years after work was completed”, and invoices without any evidence that the work had been completed.
The files had been “lying unsecured in an unoccupied office for a period of at least five months”.
The SDT heard that Mr Ahmed, admitted in 1998, had been the sole owner, solicitor and compliance officer at Universal Solicitors from March 2005.
The firm’s main practice area was immigration. Its turnover fell from £72,500 in 2020-21 to £31,500 2021-22.
The sole practitioner did not engage with the proceedings, and the SDT found “a clear breach of a position of trust” given the vulnerable profile of his clients.
The only contact the SRA had with him was a single phone call he returned in January 2023, in which he “stated that he had not been well for the past 10 to 15 years and that he should have closed his practice down sooner”.
The SDT found that he “had abandoned his sole practice” from November 2021, failing to progress matters, protect client confidentiality or tell the SRA about the firm’s closure. He also failed to co-operate with the SRA’s investigation.
He was struck off and ordered to pay costs of £21,000.
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