Future trainee’s law dream over
A paralegal who forged client signatures and faked an email to cover her tracks has been barred from the solicitors’ profession by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA) and stripped of her training contract — just months before she was due to start.
Nishaat Shamas Saeed, an immigration paralegal at Elaahi & Co, was found to have acted dishonestly and to the serious detriment of the firm’s client, who was making an application for an extension of leave to remain. As a result, the SRA made an order barring her from working in the profession without the SRA’s prior approval.
Saeed had completed her LPC and had worked at the firm as a senior paralegal from 5 September 2023. She was due to start a training contract with the firm in June 2025, but was summarily dismissed on 24 February that year after her actions came to light. The misconduct took place over at least three days in mid-February 2025.
Saeed had failed to send declaration forms to the firm’s client and their sponsor for signing. She admitted to the SRA that she had attempted to conceal this mistake by forging both signatures on four forms before sending them to the Home Office.
She also admitted to falsifying an English language certificate dated 20 January 2025, which she submitted to the Home Office despite the client never completing such a qualification. She said she did this to hide her failure to advise the client that their application required obtaining the certificate.
The firm began an investigation, during which Saeed fabricated an email containing the declaration forms, purporting to have been sent to the client at 6pm on 8 February 2025, and tampered with screenshots of images from her work laptop. The SRA found that she had done this to mislead the firm into believing that the client had been sent the forms.
When presented with the evidence gathered during the investigation, Saeed admitted that she had acted dishonestly.
The SRA barred her from the profession, citing “the serious nature of her conduct which was dishonest and had a serious detrimental impact upon the firm’s client.” It also noted that “[t]he client was unaware of and was not involved in Ms Saeed’s dishonest conduct but despite this it had a significant detrimental impact on the client’s immigration application.”
Saeed was also ordered to pay the SRA’s costs of £600.
Yes this is a serious offence and being barred from the profession is completely warranted.
Anyone who forges signatures and tampers with screenshots to hide a mistake from a client and their firm should not be a lawyer.
I have been very fortunate that when I have made a mistake, my firm has been solution focused. The culture makes ownership of errors much easier. Also do not lose sight of the age and experience of the person in question. I am not advocating that such transgressions should go unpunished, some punishment is probably necessary. However is a ban reasonable in all the circumstances. I will leave that for others to ponder. Could the firm improve it’s culture, or could the firm provide training on what you should do if you make a mistake. Easy to see the world through old eyes when judging young people.
Any self respecting lawyer would never have pulled something like that past the age of like 16. Are you kidding me? Should people get struck off for bloody forgery? YES. The solution when someone commits serious fraud is that they go find a different profession that does not rest upon its members not ever thinking of doing stuff like that. And frankly you should get a warning just for typing this dross.
Why? You make a mistake, just own the mistake. Honestly I dont understand the need to fake, forge and hide the error. In the grand scheme of things its not even that bad, yes you messed up, you admit it, you take the bollocking and then you move on if you get disciplined you learn from it and move on why are you forging signatures? Its human error most firms and companies would understand. Even if you got fired and lost the TC at least you wouldnt be banned from the profession. Instead of fixing it the right way you made the situation a million time’s worse
One more reason why you shouldn’t trust lawyers (even those who are supposedly on your side). Behaviour like this should result in criminal prosecution.
Even general, free AI LLMs are more reliable.
“Even general” maybe you should use an AI LLM for an English lesson you clown
Whaaooow! I’m lost for words, with various thoughts going through my mind. So unfortunate but the punishment certainly fits the crime.
It sounds like she was given too much responsibility and was not properly supervised. A paralegal shouldn’t be responsible for advising a client on the requirements of their application – that’s what lawyers are for. If she had been properly supervised, her mistakes would been caught before the situation reached a point where anyone would be tempted to commit fraud to cover it up.
That said, it doesn’t matter how understandable and forgivable your mistakes are. There is never a justification of committing fraud to cover them up. If she continues a career in law, she’ll inevitably make mistakes again – everybody does – and how can anyone trust her to deal with those mistakes correctly? The ban is unavoidable.
I don’t think lack of supervision mitigates this.
I appreciate this was a paralegal but actively committing fraud is a trait that does not belong in law.
It’s one thing to be so overwhelmed that you become reckless and make mistakes, but falsifying documents and lying is another.
The lack of supervision doesn’t mitigate it. My point was that proper supervision would have prevented it. Leaving your door unlocked doesn’t mitigate an opportunistic theft, but locking your door would have prevented it.
I agree with Tom’s comment. While she was clearly wrong to forge the English language certificate, and that is a very serious matter, I also think there are wider questions about supervision and how responsibilities were allocated within the firm.
In my view, a paralegal should not have been solely responsible for advising clients on the formal visa application requirements, such as which English language certificate was required. That should ultimately sit with the supervising solicitor. At the very least, the firm should have had an approved checklist of documents and requirements for each type of application, reviewed by a solicitor, which the paralegal could then use when communicating with clients.
The Home Office is extremely strict when it comes to deadlines, documentary requirements and verification. Given previous cases involving fraudulent English language certificates, proper training should also have made the seriousness of this issue very clear.
This is why I think that when a young paralegal or junior member of staff is struck off following conduct arising in a workplace, the SRA should also look carefully at the wider circumstances within the firm, including the quality of supervision, training, workload and systems that were in place. That does not remove the individual’s responsibility, particularly where documents have been falsified, but it helps ensure that lessons are learned more broadly.
Many firms still describe paralegal roles as largely administrative when, in reality, paralegals can be carrying substantial responsibility and managing significant parts of cases. Supervising solicitors therefore need to communicate with them regularly, explain the regulatory and professional risks, and make clear exactly when an issue must be escalated.
Immigration work in particular can be extremely demanding. It is difficult to compare it directly with many corporate legal environments. Immigration solicitors and paralegals can sometimes be responsible for more than 100 active matters at the same time, often involving strict Home Office deadlines and significant consequences for the individuals involved. That makes effective supervision, training and appropriate systems even more important.
Litigant
lol silly girl
I know right so embarrassing for her. Where do you get late night pizza at Harvard?
It is very sad to see someones hard work go to waste like this, but serves as a strong reminder that the legal profession is built on principles of honesty and integrity.
It is genuinely not even sad. It’s just a normal proportionate consequence. Frankly it would not be sad to see her 6 months in custody for this. But definitely not sad that she just has to go from paralegal to another job. It’s not like she invested her life in this.
The point is character. How someone acts under pressures shows who they really are. Are they someone that will do the right thing or will their false principles fall down when faced with adversity. That is a test of true character and as far as I’m concerted, it’s not tested and enforced enough in the industry.
Yeah exactly it’s not experience it’s who you are. We will all have terrible (alongside many great) days in the legal profession but nothing can push you to the point you commit fraud. Not lack of sleep not the fear of losing it all not embarrassment not the fact that you will lose a promotion nothing. This is the basic tenet of being a lawyer everything else comes after this. If you can’t respect this profession enough to understand why forging a signature is revolting you should not be here.
It is hardly ever the mistake that will get you struck off, it is covering it up. I completely understand the fear when you are training of explaining to your supervisor of a mistake you made, but they should help you fix it. Everyone makes mistakes, it is par for the course of being human and learning.
I hardly ever agree with the SRA’s decisions in cases involving juniors and trainees’ mistakes. However, being struck off is absolutely the correct approach here, forging signatures and tampering screenshots are wholly incompatible with being a lawyer.