Isolated incident
A paralegal has been barred from working in the legal profession after attempting to cover up missed email reminders.
Phoebe Bird, who worked at the Exeter office of national firm Ashfords, was employed in the firm’s commercial team between February 2021 and November 2023. Her role involved sending regular reminders to clients about trademark renewals.
In October 2023 she was asked to check whether a client had responded to renewal reminders and save the relevant correspondence to the client’s file. Bird had, however, not sent any reminders to the client.
Rather than owning up to the error she amended a draft email to make it appear that it, and two other emails, had been sent to the client in December 2022, January 2023 and March 2023. She sent this email chain to herself and added it to the client’s file, before replying to her supervisor telling her that she had not received any response from the client.
She was caught out after a review of the client file, during which the firm became concerned about the chain of emails and launched an internal investigation. The firm’s IT department then revealed that the emails had never been sent. Less than a week later she was no longer working at the firm.
In a decision made by way of agreed outcome, Bird acknowledged that her conduct was dishonest and intended to “mislead” both her supervisor, and anyone reading the client file.
For her actions, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) issued Bird with a section 43 order, which prevents her from working in legal practice without prior approval from the regulator.
The SRA took into account that Bird, who was a registered paralegal member of the Chartered Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys at the time, expressed remorse and that her actions were an isolated incident. The regulator acknowledged that her conduct caused no actual harm to the client but stated that her dishonesty undermined public trust in the legal profession, and made it “undesirable for her to be involved in legal practice”.
She was also ordered to pay £300 in costs.
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