"Head in the sand" solicitor could face contempt ruling
A solicitor is at risk of being found in contempt of the Inner House of the Court of Session due to her failure to hand over files to the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission.
The SLCC has reported comments made by three judges who heard that the unnamed lawyer had "put her head in the sand" over an SLCC investigation into a client complaint.
Lords Malcolm, Pentland and Tyre ordered the solicitor to hand over the files, stating that the court expects early compliance with the requirement to provide a detailed response to the complaint. The court continued the hearing for a month to give the SLCC time to consider the evidence.
The judges indicated they were minded to make a finding of contempt of court. A final decision will be made at the continued hearing, but Lord Malcolm stated that the court wished to make clear that in delaying that decision the court is “in no way diluting the seriousness of this matter”.
The court was told that the solicitor had “put her head in the sand” but accepted that her conduct and failure to comply with a court order was inexcusable. Lord Pentland questioned whether burying one’s head in the sand was any different to wilfully ignoring an order from the court, and said the solicitor’s actions showed a complete lack of respect to both the court and to the SLCC.
He also noted that there are support mechanisms available to solicitors who are struggling, including the Law Society of Scotland’s Professional Practice team and charity LawCare.
The court also asked about the role of the Society in relation to this type of case, and asked to be informed of any communications to or from the Society in connection with this matter.
SLCC chief executive Neil Stevenson commented: "We are grateful to the court for its clear statement on the seriousness of this issue and its comments on the impact of the solicitor’s actions on the client who made the complaint and on the SLCC’s ability to discharge its statutory duty to investigate it.
"As we have repeatedly highlighted, this lack of compliance also has a significant wider impact, affecting public confidence in regulation and in the legal profession, and increasing the cost of regulation. The cost of the staff time, legal costs and court fees is necessarily passed on to the wider profession, and through them to clients. This is the case even when we are awarded costs as they never cover everything we expend in pursuing the files and responses."
He added: "We are currently consulting the profession on the fairest way to fund our work and would welcome feedback on how best to balance contributions from across the profession with a ‘polluter pays’ approach which means those who increase the costs of regulation fund a greater part of those costs."