Admitted dishonesty
A former Irwin Mitchell lawyer has been struck off the roll after telling a newly qualified legal executive to lie to the other side.
Kirsten Tomlinson qualified in 2010 and had worked as a senior associate at Irwin Mitchell since 2020. In 2022, the firm was instructed in a family law matter for which she was the named fee-earner. The day-to-day conduct of the case, however, was handled by a paralegal who qualified as a chartered legal executive in June 2023.
The client was seeking to resolve financial arrangements with her former partner by way of a consent order. The former partner was unrepresented and corresponded directly with the firm.
According to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), Tomlinson was dishonest on two occasions: first, when she emailed the client’s ex-partner stating that an application to court had already been issued, when it had not; and secondly when she told the legal exec to continue misleading the ex-partner about the existence of court proceedings.
The email to Watson included the line: “[H]e doesn’t know we haven’t issued… we just led him to believe that we did” and was signed off with a smiling face emoji.
The legal exec did not send the email but instead reported the incident to a partner at Irwin Mitchell’s Manchester office. In her witness statement, she said she was surprised by the email and felt uncomfortable about the exchange.
The tribunal found that Tomlinson had knowingly misled an unrepresented party and attempted to involve a junior colleague in her misconduct. Particular attention was paid to the fact that the client’s former partner was acting as a litigant in person, which created a significant power imbalance.
Tomlinson admitted both allegations of dishonesty. However, the tribunal rejected her explanation that she was acting on client instructions or out of frustration with delays in the case, finding that neither justified dishonesty.
It concluded that the misconduct was deliberate and repeated, and that striking off was the only appropriate sanction.
Tomlinson was struck off the roll of solicitors and ordered to pay £1,000 in costs.
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