Altered time entry
A paralegal has had restrictions placed on her work in the legal profession after she claimed to have sent an early-morning email on time when she had not, and amended a time entry to match.
Brooke Middleton, who was employed as a paralegal at London firm Eversage Associates Limited, must now obtain the SRA’s prior approval before working at a regulated firm.
Middleton, who joined the firm in June 2024, was among the colleagues responsible on a rotation for sending a 7am email to a Home Office Priority Service (HOPS) to secure a priority slot for client matters.
On 18 August 2025, she failed to send the HOPS email at 7am, later owning up to the slip with her colleagues. The following day, rostered once more, she again forgot, realising at around 8.30am that she had not sent it. She sent the email at 8.45am, aware it was now unlikely to do the job.
When two colleagues messaged her on Microsoft Teams to ask whether the email had gone out at 7am, Middleton told both that it had. She then uploaded the 8.45am email to the firm’s case management system, but manually amended the time entry to read 07.00.
Her colleagues went on to discover later that day that the email had not been sent at 7am, and Middleton was summarily dismissed for gross misconduct on 20 August 2025. The firm reported her to the SRA a week later.
The regulator found that Middleton had acted dishonestly, both in telling colleagues she had sent the email at 7am and in altering the time entry to match.
Given the serious nature of dishonest conduct, it concluded it was undesirable for her to be involved in legal practice without prior approval, and made an order under section 43(2) of the Solicitors Act 1974.
Middleton was also ordered to pay the SRA’s costs of £600.
When will people learn, its not the crime, its the cover up which results in sanctions. You turn a simple mistake into a dishonesty offence.