City University BPTC grad who stole cash from colleagues’ bags BARRED from legal profession

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By Thomas Connelly on

Mahnoor Choudhury was working as a paralegal at the time

A City, University of London Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) graduate who stole cash from her employer and colleagues has been told she will not be able to practise as a barrister.

Mahnoor Choudhury, a conveyancing paralegal at Surrey-based outfit Howell-Jones Solicitors at the time, stole around £400 from the firm’s petty cash and the bags of her work colleagues last summer. She was dismissed from the firm on 22 June 2016.

According to the disciplinary finding published earlier this week, Choudhury — who completed her LLB at Kingston University in 2012 before going on to study the BPTC at City, University of London a year later — “failed to act with honesty and integrity.”

Commenting on the tribunal’s decision to disbar Choudhury, a spokesperson for the Bar Standards Board (BSB) said:

Acting dishonestly by stealing money is incompatible with membership of the bar.

Called to the bar in March 2014, Choudhury, who never practised as a barrister, can appeal the decision.

But this isn’t the first time that she has been hauled before a regulator. Last November, in relation to the same thefts, the Solicitors Regulation Authority banned Choudhury from the solicitors’ profession and ordered her to pay £300 in costs.

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