Alice Stephenson criticises liquidators after £666k director’s loan leads to bankruptcy
A legal influencer has revealed that she has been declared bankrupt due to a “mountain of personal debt,” just a day after announcing the sale of her now-liquidated law firm to another legal business.
Alice Stephenson’s firm, Stephenson Law, went into liquidation in November 2023 with debts at the time exceeding £1.5 million — more than half of which was owed to HMRC in unpaid tax — before transferring its assets to a new outfit, Plume.
At the time, Stephenson told her sizeable LinkedIn following (now nearly 68,000 strong) that HMRC had decided to “call the whole debt in,” forcing the firm into liquidation. While she emphasised that no staff, clients, or client funds were affected, there remained the rather significant issue of a director’s loan of over £666,000 made out to “A Stephenson,” the value of which was marked as “uncertain” in a liquidation document.
Fast forward to last week on LinkedIn and Stephenson shared the good news that Plume had been acquired by the “global law company” Elevate, reassuring Plume’s clients that it would be “business as usual” with the “same friendly faces”.
However, in a follow-up post just 24 hours later — and in a noticeably less positive tone — Stephenson addressed the sizeable directors loan, revealing that it had ultimately led to her being declared bankrupt.
She explains how she “fucked up” and found herself facing a “mountain of personal debt” in the form of the director’s loan that she had “no realistic way of repaying in full”. She adds that this was “because the money had long since gone on living costs”.
“I didn’t have a house to sell or savings to fall back on,” she continues. “Everything I owned fit into a few boxes. So, I did what I could: I started paying what I could, stayed transparent, responsive, and hopeful that I would be treated fairly.”
Stephenson goes on to attack the liquidators of her law firm, Forvis Mazars, accusing them of “bullying”, “misleading” and “weaponising their authority against someone who was cooperating in good faith”.
“Even then,” she continues, “I still didn’t believe they’d actually make me bankrupt,” noting that she had no assets from which the money could be recovered and knew that “bankruptcy would devastate my career as a solicitor and destroy my ability to keep Plume going.”
“It wasn’t a rational decision,” she continues. “It felt punitive. Cruel for the sake of being cruel.”
Rounding off her lengthy post, Stephenson — now sales director at Elevate — reflects that while the experience “has broken me open,” it “hasn’t broken me down.”
“I’m still here,” she continues. “And I refuse to feel like a fraud. Because integrity isn’t something others grant you — it’s something you choose to keep, no matter the cost.”
Forvis Mazars was approached for comment.
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