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A solicitor has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal after dishonestly misleading a client that her firm had not received an expected £10,000 from a third party. She later repaid the amount from another client’s account without permission, and falsely claimed she had issued and conducted court proceedings on his behalf when she had not.

An “old-fashioned solicitor” whose firm “became a mess and spiralled downwards” has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. “Even if the respondent’s actions were not pre-mediated when he made the first transfer, by the one hundred and forty seventh transfer they must have been,” it said.

A solicitor who pretended to be carrying out litigation, providing email updates on a case which did not exist, has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. The tribunal said Stephanie Berry argued that her cognitive abilities had been impaired, but provided no evidence.

Findings of dishonesty, especially against solicitors, should not be made without “the most careful consideration” of what they say in their defence, appeal judges have warned in a case in which they overturned a High Court decision that two solicitors were guilty of “dishonest assistance in a breach of trust”.

A decision by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) to suspend a solicitor for two years has been reduced to one by the High Court, which described the penalty as “clearly excessive and inappropriate”.