‘Inflated’ timesheets leads to strike off
A former senior associate at Irwin Mitchell has been struck off after submitting “inaccurate, misleading, and inflated” timesheets — including one day where she recorded nearly 23 hours of chargeable work.
Natasha Janet Dionne Fairs, who joined the national firm in 2007 and became a senior associate in 2022, admitted to dishonest billing over several years, according to a ruling by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT).
The tribunal heard that Fairs often allocated extra time to complex cases where bills had already been finalised, or to fixed-fee files where additional hours would be written off. Although clients were not directly harmed, the SDT said her actions had “a significant impact on both her colleagues and the firm”.
“Those working on the same cases as the respondent received a smaller share of fees than they were entitled to, as costs were allocated among fee-earners based on recorded time,” the ruling explained. “Additionally, the firm relied on time recording to assess staffing needs, track work in progress, and forecast future fee income, all of which were adversely affected by the respondent’s misconduct.”
Concerns raised by two colleagues in May 2023 prompted a review of Fairs’ billing. The investigation uncovered several instances of extreme over-recording, including 20 hours and 24 minutes logged on a single day in April 2020, 22.9 hours on a day in April 2022, and 18.1 hours on a day in April 2023.
The review found examples where Fairs logged just five, six-minute units on the case file, but entered five hours of work against the same matter in the time-recording system
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) noted:
“This could be perceived as a genuine error or that the Respondent had accidentally confused her hours with her units. However, the pattern and frequency of this apparent error led the Firm to conclude that it was a calculated practice by the Respondent which she could claim was an error if she were questioned about it.”
Fairs, who qualified in 2003, apologised and accepted full responsibility for her actions both at the firm and before the SDT. She said she had been dealing with “significant personal and professional pressures”, including the serious illness and death of her mother, homeschooling during the pandemic, and a “high-volume and low-value” caseload.
In mitigation — which the SRA did not agree with — Fairs claimed her supervisor had been aware of her difficulties but was led to believe that “support was either unavailable or not typically provided in such circumstances”. She also said that meeting time targets was “a strong focus within the firm” and claimed “limited attention given to how those targets were achieved”.
The tribunal struck Fairs off the roll and ordered her to pay £5,200 in costs.
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