Supervising partner fined last month

A senior paralegal has received a written rebuke after he requested that at least £1.85 million be released to a property development client before it was properly due, causing a breach of contract.

This finding comes after the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) fined Mark Shepherd, the client partner on the matter, £14,000 for authorising these payments, failing to personally check whether the terms of the contracts had been met and whether the payments were properly due to the client.

Shaun Sloyan was a senior paralegal who had been working in the plot sales team at DWF’s Manchester office for six years when he took on day to day responsibility for the construction and sale of a number new-build residential properties.

Solicitors for the buyers of these properties paid deposits and instalments towards the purchase prices to DWF. The firm were responsible for holding these funds until deposit warranty insurance was in place and supervisors certificates had been issued to confirm that construction of the properties was progressing.

Between 17 December 2019 and 30 November 2020, £1,852,853.56 was wrongly paid from the firm’s client account to the developer, despite no supervisor’s certificate having been issued. These payments were requested by Sloyan and authorised by Shepherd.

Two firms of solicitors representing plot buyers raised queries with Sloyan, asking about the supervisor’s certificate and requesting a copy of it. In his email response to one firm, Sloyan said that the supervisor’s certificate would follow “nearer to practical completion” and “should not hold up exchange”, against the terms of the contract.

Following these exchanges, Mr Sloyan continued to make payment requests related to this plot development.

The SRA said that Sloyan had simply followed the process which applied to other developments rather than checking the specific contract position in relation to this matter, resulting in a contract breach.

Sloyan told the SRA that he believed that Shepherd’s authorisation of the payments was confirmation that the payments were properly due and he was not aware that Shepherd was not in fact checking the payments.

Nearly £2.6 million was “paid erroneously” by DWF to the property developer in instalments. £1.85 million was released without supervisor’s certificates and £747,000 without deposit warranty insurance.

Sloyan brought the error to Shepherd’s attention after he discovered that development works on the plots had not begun, and the site was still bare land. Shepherd immediately raised the matter with the correct internal escalation procedures.

When DWF attempted to recover these sums from their client, they discovered that the client had gone into administration, leaving the firm to repay buyers by claiming on its professional indemnity insurance. The firm self-reported to the SRA in March 2021.

Following an internal investigation by DWF, the firm accepted that there was no formal or documented process which required either client partners to supervise matters referred to the plot sale team, or for the plot sale team to escalate queries to client partners or other partners. The firm no longer conducts plot sale work.

The SRA found that Sloyan’s conduct was of “moderate seriousness”. He failed to protect client money and, in doing so, caused “much angst, concern and worry” to over 40 buyers, risking undermining public confidence in the profession. However, the SRA took into account Sloyan’s previously clean regulatory record and the fact that he believed his payment requests were being checked.

In addition to the written rebuke, Sloyan was ordered to pay £600 in costs to the SRA.

69%

A&O Shearman has announced a summer trainee retention score of 69% as it continues to adjust to life post mega-merger.

The transatlantic powerhouse confirmed 37 trainees have accepted offers to remain at the firm as newly qualified lawyers. All will be given permanent positions.

The firm, formed from the merger of Magic Circle player Allen & Overy and US outfit Shearman & Sterling last May, has a summer qualifying cohort of 54 trainees, comprising rookies from both legacy firms.

This unusually large cohort of trainees seems to have sparked tough competition for NQ roles this summer. Of the 54 trainees, 50 applied for qualification, with 40 offers made.

James Partridge, early careers partner and training principal in London, said:

“We’re pleased to see another strong group of our trainees continuing their journey with A&O Shearman. We are excited to see them grow as they take on the next stage of their careers.”

The numbers remain consistent with the last year’s summer retention at A&O Shearman which saw 40 offers handed out to the first post-merger cohort of 56 trainees, 37 of which were accepted.

Summer trainee retention rates: the story so far…

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Pleaded guilty to assault

The bar disciplinary tribunal has reprimanded an unregistered barrister following a late-night altercation at a Nottingham cocktail bar that led to an assault conviction.

Benedicte Mabika, 25, was at the Wax Bar in Nottingham at 2:45am on 23 December 2023 when she threw a bottle at a woman “who was known to her from school”, hitting her above the eye and “causing a cut which bled”, according to the tribunal’s decision.

Mabika told police she had intended to throw the contents of a drink at the other woman — whom she claimed was threatening her sister — but the bottle slipped from her hand, striking the victim instead. She admitted her actions were reckless.

At Nottingham Magistrates’ Court in July 2024, Mabika pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm. She was fined £858, ordered to pay £100 in compensation, and faced a £343 victim surcharge and £85 in costs.

Mabika had been called to the bar just a month earlier, in November 2023, and is listed as an unregistered barrister. This means she has passed the bar course but has yet to complete her pupillage.

The Bar Standards Board (BSB) Handbook states that, “unregistered barristers remain members of the profession and are expected to conduct themselves in an appropriate manner. In this context, they remain subject to certain Core Duties and Conduct Rules at all times.”

After Mabika self-reported her conviction to the BSB, a three-person disciplinary panel found she had breached Core Duty 5 and Rule C8 of the BSB Handbook, which require barristers to maintain the trust and confidence of the public and uphold professional integrity.

Despite the seriousness of the incident, the tribunal decided it was a “one-off” and said her culpability was “low to moderate”. There were no previous disciplinary findings, and Mabika had self-reported the conviction and shown “complete remorse and regret”. The only aggravating factor was the criminal conviction itself.

“It was a very foolish and potentially dangerous thing to do,” the tribunal said. “However, we are as confident as we can be that this is a one-off incident and very much out of character.”

They acknowledged the long-term impact the case could have on her ambitions to practise law, adding: “We are confident there is little or no ongoing risk to the public.”

While Ms Mabika avoided a professional fine, she was ordered to pay £500 towards the BSB’s costs and received a formal reprimand.

Your criminal law module could soon be out of date

The right to a trial by jury — long seen as a central part of justice in England and Wales — could be curtailed under bold new plans to save the criminal justice system from collapse.

Former senior judge Sir Brian Leveson was asked by the Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood for recommendations to tackle the significant backlog of cases in the criminal courts, which currently stands at nearly 77,000. His 378-page report, published today, declares that “the system is too broken” and that “radical” and “fundamental” reforms must be made to address “the risk of total system collapse”.

Leveson’s key proposals include:

• A new division of the crown court in which a judge and two magistrates hear “either way” offences (offences which currently can heard by a magistrate or by a jury in the crown court), including certain theft, burglary and fraud offences.
• Reclassification of some “either way” offences to summary offences so they can only be heard in the magistrates court.
• More focus on out-of-court resolutions for low-level crime, such as police cautions and conditional cautions.
• Criminal damage offences of up to £10,000 being dealt with as summary only offences (the current threshold is £5,000).
• Allowing sentence reduction of up to 40% for defendants who plead guilty at the first opportunity.
• Judge-only trials for the most complex fraud cases.
• Removing the right to be tried by jury in the crown court for offences with a maximum sentence of two years or less.
• Allowing crown court defendants to choose to be tried by a judge alone.

If these proposals are implemented it will mean a significant shake-up in the criminal justice system — universities around England and Wales may need to give their criminal law modules a refresh.

Leveson has commented on the “radical” nature of his proposed changes, arguing that they are driven by necessity. “I don’t rejoice in these recommendations but I do believe they’re absolutely essential,” he told the press. “Do I want to curtail jury trial? Would I like to? No … But I would ask that the report be judged not on what I am undoing, but on what I am trying to protect.”

Speaking on BBC Breakfast this morning, the retired judge added, “Victims, witnesses and indeed defendants are kept waiting for years and years and can’t move on with their lives … If we don’t do something very dramatic, these cases will get longer and longer delayed.” He described his proposals as “not small tweaks but fundamental changes that will seek to make the system fit for the 21st century.”

The recommendations have received a lukewarm response from some areas of the profession.

Barbara Mills KC, chair of the Bar Council, said: “Changing the fundamental structure of delivering criminal justice is not a principled response to a crisis which was not caused by that structure in the first place… it is the failure to invest properly in the justice system over decades that has led to the crisis we see in the criminal courts today.”

Also calling for investment over structural change was Richard Atkinson, the president of the Law Society, who said: “The proposed new division of the crown court on its own will not solve the crown court backlog … only investment in the whole system has any chance of success.”

However others have reacted with more enthusiasm. “Magistrates are ready and willing to support these and other initiatives aimed at reducing the pressure on Crown Courts,” said Mark Beattie, national chair of the Magistrates’ Association. “We urge the government to implement Leveson’s recommendations as soon as possible.” This was echoed by Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley who said, “I welcome this report and look forward to working with partners across government to deliver the bold reforms that are now a necessity, not an option.”

Shabana Mahmood commented on the report, as well as the calls for further investment in the justice system, in a statement which read” “I have already lifted courts funding to record levels, funding 4,000 more court sitting days than under my predecessors. But swifter justice requires bold reform, and that is what I asked Sir Brian Leveson to propose.”

3.5% rise sees firm join summer salary scramble

International law firm HFW has announced an increase in salaries for its newly qualified (NQ) solicitors, effective immediately.

The shipping specialists confirmed rates for its most junior lawyers will move from £100,000 to £103,500, a nice little bump of 3.5%. The Legal Cheek Firms Most List shows that HFW recruits 18 trainees across its UK offices each year.

The boost comes after City firm Bird & Bird moved its NQ rates from £98,000 to £102,000 on Monday and puts HFW’s pay figures back ahead of TwoBirds (just!).

HFW NQs will now also be out-earning their peers at other firms in the £100k club such as Dentons and Stephenson Harwood, falling just short of their counterparts at Pinsent Masons and BCLP (both on £105,000).

This is the latest of a whole host of summer salary hikes for NQs at HSF Kramer (up to £145k), Eversheds Sutherland (up to £110k), Ashurst (up to £140k), DLA Piper (up to £130k) and more — HFW’s latest move making it clear that the junior lawyer pay war is still very much on.

CILEX president Yanthé Richardson discusses her varied career, diversity in the law and the introduction of chartered paralegals

“I left school at 17, needed to get a job and just happened to get a job as a secretary at a local law firm,” says Yanthé Richardson, CILEX president and partner at national law firm Foot Anstey. While working at this firm, Richardson, still under 18, was entitled to a free year of higher education towards a professional qualification with ILEX — now CILEX, the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives.

Having passed this first year, Richardson’s employer agreed to sponsor her to complete the ILEX course, allowing her to become a legal executive. Although she originally qualified into family law, Richardson re-specialised in property, an area she had always been interested in, in 2014. It was then that she joined national outfit Foot Anstey as a chartered legal executive.

Ten years later, Richardson has just joined the firm’s equity partnership and has nearly completed her term as CILEX president. “I worked my way up through the career framework from the lowest level into the equity partnership,” she tells me.

I ask Richardson what motivated her to become involved with CILEX and ultimately serve a presidential year. “I’m incredibly passionate about improving economic and social diversity in the legal profession,” is her response. “I come from an underprivileged background myself. I grew up in a household on and off benefits, had free school meals and didn’t go to university.” She emphasises the transformational role that her own CILEX qualification has played in her career. “Without ILEX, now CILEX, I would certainly not be living the life I lead now. I want to give back and encourage others to see what is possible through a vocational qualification.”

As well as being motivated by her personal experience, Richardson sees a more diverse legal profession as a public good. “The legal profession should look like the general public and understand what the public need,” she says. Mentioning judicial diversity as a particular interest, Richardson emphasises the importance of judges being representative of the country as a whole. “This is an area where we can really make a difference,” she says. “CILEX is part of the judicial diversity forum, and as president I sit on that.”

A significant milestone of Richardson’s time as president has been the introduction of ‘chartered paralegals’, the first formal recognition of the role. I am curious to know why CILEX were keen to create this new status. “The paralegal sector has grown a lot over the last few years,” Richardson tells me. “There are now around 250,000 paralegals working in our jurisdiction.” As the number of paralegals has increased in recent years, the role has evolved. “An increasing number see working as a paralegal as their career, they don’t necessarily want to go on to become a lawyer,” Richardson explains. She goes on to say that, while a majority of paralegals still do intend to become lawyers, “there are lots of reasons why that might not happen or they might change their minds and there has been no recognition for them at the paralegal stage.”

Richardson sees the introduction of CILEX chartered paralegal status as a way for the profession to distinguish among this increasingly broad group of legal professionals. “The title ‘paralegal’ could apply to someone fresh out of university and in their very first job, meanwhile it could also be someone with years of experience,” she explains, “We’ve got very experienced paralegals in the CILEX community that run their own departments, maybe even their own businesses. We felt that, despite the growth of that sector, there had been no formal way to differentiate between paralegals with experience and those who are just starting out.”

Chartered paralegal status is available to those who have been working in legal roles for at least five years and can demonstrate extensive legal knowledge and competence across a number of key duties and behaviours. CILEX sees chartered paralegal status as something that will benefit employers and clients as well as paralegals themselves.

For experienced paralegals, “It provides them with a formal status that recognises their achievements,” Richardson tells me. “Not all of our members want to become fully qualified lawyers but still want some form of recognition,” she continues. The new status has been designed with input from employers and, against the expanding number of paralegals in the UK, will help them to “discern the difference between new paralegals and those who have more experience.”

The status is also in the public interest. “Bringing those with chartered paralegal status under the regulatory umbrella is very important. Especially those who are running their own departments or businesses — it’s very important that clients have a route to redress if they need it.” To this end, Richardson tells me how the qualification is supported by a public facing register — “the public can see who holds this status and who doesn’t to promote public confidence in the delivery of legal services.”

So, what would be Richardson’s advice to those considering pursuing CILEX chartered paralegal status? “Don’t be intimidated by the requirements,” she replies. “We’re all about providing opportunities without barriers. We want it to be a respected and stringent process but it’s important that people don’t shy away from it” Her concluding advice is simply, “Please have a go!”

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Programme and student lead (LPC and SQE) at The University of Law, Laura Duffy, discusses the challenges facing lawyers-to-be and the opportunities in the North

Laura Duffy, Programme and Student Lead (LPC and SQE) at The University of Law, has over twelve years’ experience in practice. These days, she supervises the LPC and SQE programmes for ULaw students at the Leeds campus and at the ULaw satellite campuses at the Newcastle University, the University of Sheffield and the University of Hull. “It’s my responsibility to make sure those programmes are rolled out correctly at these campuses and to ensure that students have a good experience,” she tells me.

Duffy sees her experience in practice as vital to her role as an educator. “One of ULaw’s key selling points is that all of our lecturers teaching on our post-graduate law programmes come from a practice background,” she says. “We’re not just here to teach the course content, but to share our skills and experiences with students as well.”

I am keen to know what Duffy’s time as a lawyer has taught her about the skills students need to succeed in this profession. “A determination to succeed,” is her immediate answer. “It’s not easy getting there, it’s tough,” she goes on, “You have to get through your degree, through the SQE qualifications, and most likely multiple job applications.”

This is something Duffy learned during her own path to qualification. “It was quite a journey for me,” she says wryly. Having completed a law degree and LPC at the University of Sheffield, Duffy secured a training contract while working on a legal helpline. Unfortunately, this training contract was cancelled, “a month or two before it was due to start”, following the 2008 financial crisis and recession. Back to square one, Duffy managed to land a paralegal role at a mid-sized firm in Manchester and, after five years as a paralegal, ultimately secured a training contract at the same firm where she qualified as a solicitor.

Duffy also emphasises the importance of public speaking skills. “I think a lot of students come into their career as a solicitor not expecting to have to talk out loud,” she comments. “It’s a really important skill to have as a solicitor but it’s unfortunately not one that many students gain much experience of at school or at undergraduate level.”

I am curious about Duffy’s insights into legal careers in the North, having practised in Manchester and now supporting students studying in Leeds, Newcastle and Sheffield. “London was never an option for me when I started my career,” she says. “I was keen to stay close to family and friends, and tales of exceedingly long hours were not an attraction.” She continues, “Regional firms can offer a better work life balance, but with similar opportunities that you might find elsewhere — there are lots of great opportunities in the North which I feel may be overlooked by some students setting their sights on London!”

Since taking on the role of Programme and Student Lead, Duffy has taken a step away from teaching. However, when she can be found in the classroom, she steers future lawyers through dispute resolution, personal injury and clinical negligence, areas she practised in during her time as a solicitor. I’m curious to know which of these subjects she finds throws up problems for students. “I do think some students can find dispute resolution tricky. It is very structured and it can be hard to follow that structure without having gone through the process in practice, so I am very practical when I’m teaching and try to break it down stage by stage.” She adds, “I hope that my students enjoy it by the end!”

And, with the benefit of Duffy’s role overseeing the SQE Masters and preparation courses at ULaw, what are the most challenging aspects of this new format of exam? “I feel that there is still a fear of the unknown with the SQE assessments,” she says. “It is still a very new assessment and, one which unfortunately hasn’t had a great pass rate so far nationally, so students feel they don’t know what they’re going into.” The format of the SQE1 assessment in particular is a challenge in itself. “Students are required to answer 360 single best answer questions over two days, covering a range of professional practice and academic law subjects,” Duffy explains. “I prefer to be honest with students. It is very likely going to be the hardest and longest assessment you are ever going to sit!”

I ask Duffy how ULaw supports its students, academically and pastorally, as they approach these undeniably tough exams. “We have loads of support for our students,” she assures me. “Right from day one students are allocated an academic coach who will support them throughout the programme – this is their go-to if they have any questions about the programme or need support with how to approach their studies.” I hear that ULaw students are also provided with a student journey advisor for non-academic queries as well as a wellbeing team, a “fantastic” employability team and library team. In particular Duffy shouts out the university’s study skills team – who are “great for supporting students one to one, and who can assist with creating revision plans and advice on time management.” Duffy emphasises that this support network is made as easily available as possible to students, “Our MyULaw app is available to all students and offers an easy way of accessing all of these support services.”

From Duffy’s perspective, ULaw’s approach yields results. “Our figures are showing that many of our students taking ULaw’s SQE programmes are seeing great results in the SQE assessments and I couldn’t prouder of them,” she tells me. “Yes, there is no denying that they have to work hard,” she admits, “but, if they engage in our programme of study, follow our advice, seeking support where needed and get in lots of practice of single best answer questions via ULaw’s SQE Revision App, there is no reason why they can’t do well.”

Laura Duffy will be speaking at ‘Secrets to Success Leeds — with Eversheds Sutherland, Pinsent Masons and ULaw’, an in-person student event taking place TOMORROW (Thursday 3 July). Apply now to attend.

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£3k

A barrister has been fined £3,000 by the Bar Tribunals & Adjudication Service after he was reported to be drinking alcohol in his car during a break in a criminal trial.

Dominic Charles D’Souza was representing a client at Snaresbrook Crown Court in North East London when, during a break in proceedings, he consumed alcohol in his car which was parked in the court’s carpark. The tribunal does not disclosed what exactly he drank.

D’Souza withdrew from the case as result of other allegations which were not pursued by the regulator and which the tribunal accepted were false. The jury was discharged and a new trial date was fixed.

D’Souza, a tenant of London’s Goldsmith Chambers, admitted all three charges against him, conceding that he had behaved in a way likely to diminish public trust in his profession, as well as wasting the time of the court and foreseeably interfering with the administration of justice.

The barrister was fined £3,000, £1,000 on each charge, and ordered to pay £2,670 in costs, although the findings and sanction remain open to appeal.

UPDATE: 11 July, 16:23pm: An earlier version of this article stated that Mr D’Souza’s drinking led to his withdrawal from a trial. In fact, his withdrawal followed more serious allegations made against him, which were later found to be false. We are happy to clarify this.

£10k hike

International law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer has announced that it has increased the salaries of its newly qualified associates in London to £145,000 — up from £135,000.

The boost, effective from today (1 July), comes after City giant Herbert Smith Freehills and US law firm Kramer Levin merged to create HSF Kramer last month.

The £145k rate takes the newly-formed firm ahead of fellow City outfits Ashurst and Hogan Lovells — both of which raised NQ pay to £140k this summer — and approaches the £150k figure doled out to Magic Circle NQs.

The Legal Cheek Firms Most List shows that HSF Kramer takes on around 60 trainees each year.

Commenting on the firm’s salaries, Jeremy Walden, executive partner, UK & EMEA, at HSF Kramer, said:

“We invest in our people at every stage of their careers through a balanced and competitive reward structure. As one of the leading global law firms in today’s fast-moving market, this is important for us to be able to strengthen the experience we deliver to our clients, to maintain our firm’s culture and to ensure the firm’s continued success and growth.”

This is the latest in a slew of NQ pay rises over the last few weeks, with firms like DLA Piper (£110,000 to £130,000) and CMS (£110,000 to £120,000) as well as Bird & Bird (£98,000 to £102,000), Eversheds Sutherland (£100,000 to £110,000) and Pinsent Masons (£97,000 to £105,000) all announcing summer boosts to their most junior lawyers’ salaries.

Alex Goodman, future trainee and ULaw student ambassador, discusses his SQE experience, from revision strategies to social life

Alex Goodman, a student ambassador at The University of Law, began his legal journey with an LLB at the University of Exeter. After spending three years as a paralegal in the planning department of a large national law firm, he has returned to his former student city to pursue the LLM Legal Practice (SQE1&2) at ULaw’s Exeter campus.

Having sailed through SQE1 back in January, Goodman is now eagerly awaiting the results of his SQE2 assessments before he’s off to start his training contract at southwest law firm, Ashfords. I start by asking Goodman about his experience sitting SQE1. “It’s a long day!” he laughs. “You’ve got to make sure you get a good night’s sleep beforehand because you’ve got two five-hour exams to sit. There’s 360 questions in total – once I got to question 360, my brain was pretty frazzled.”

For Goodman, the major challenge of SQE1 was the volume of content. “There are some tricky subjects, but the hardest thing about it is the sheer amount you have to memorise,” he explains. This breadth of content can be particularly challenging for students, such as Goodman, who have taken time out of legal education between their undergraduate degree and SQE preparation. “Topics like constitutional law, the legal system of England and Wales or contract law, I hadn’t properly studied since 2018 – I was coming back to it five, or even six years, later,” Goodman tells me.

As this appears to be a common challenge SQE candidates face, I am curious to know how he went about refreshing this knowledge. “I got out all my old notes and looked over them,” Goodman replies, “but what really helped was the manuals The University of Law provides on each subject covered in SQE1. I read those manuals from start to finish and pretty much knew them inside out by the time I sat the exam.”

With SQE1 placing heavy emphasis on factual recall, how did Goodman go about committing all this information to memory? “I made a folder of a complete set of condensed notes,” he tells me. “After taking notes in seminars and from textbooks and ULaw’s online tasks during the week, I spent my weekends condensing those notes, printing them off and adding them to the folder.” Goodman then asked friends to test him on these notes and read them through as often as he could. “I know lots of people who went for the flashcard approach, but ended up with over a thousand flashcards or something crazy so I didn’t want to go for that,” he comments.

As the exams drew nearer, it was practice questions that Goodman found the most useful. “ULaw provided practice questions and set us all a target of doing 5,000 or 6,000 questions before the exam – I managed 4,500 and it did really help,” says Goodman. As well as familiarising candidates with the style of SQE1’s multiple choice questions (MCQs), mock exams can also give them a bit of a confidence boost. “Once I was consistently scoring over 80% on the mock exams, I knew I was on track and ready for the exam,” Goodman tells me.

I ask Goodman about how he has balanced this thorough preparation with life outside his studies. “I do feel like my time has been quite constrained this year,” he admits. “It’s been a lot of studying, but it is still important to make time for your social life otherwise you’ll go a bit crazy.” Careful planning is key to achieving this balance, he explains, “I’ve tried to keep my Friday and Saturday evenings free to see friends and relax. Because it was so important to me to pass the SQE, I certainly haven’t had the social life I had in the first years of undergrad!” he jokes.

ULaw’s Exeter campus is ensconced in the city’s historic university where Goodman began his legal studies. So, what’s it been like returning to Exeter as a postgrad student? “It’s been really nice and such a privilege,” says Goodman. “Exeter is great because it’s a smaller city you can easily walk around. It’s been so nice using the university buildings and ULaw have a great teaching space here.” Goodman is also full of praise for ULaw’s Exeter campus team. “Back in December, I went to my campus manager for some advice. I had an appointment with her on campus and felt much better afterwards. I found it super helpful.” ULaw provides all its students with a dedicated academic support tutor and Goodman has found all members of staff approachable. “Although I have a dedicated tutor, I can email any of them for support. They’ve all been really helpful.”

Looking to the future, I am keen to know what Goodman’s favourite topic on the SQE has been and which areas of law he’d like to explore during his training contract. “Private wealth really interests me,” is his response. “Studying wills, inheritance and estates, I enjoyed seeing how lawyers can be very technical with their language to get different results. You can have lots of interesting debates about definitions and interpretation, so I’m quite drawn to that area.” He continues, “There’s also the opportunity in private wealth to get to know your clients quite well on a personal level and I think that makes it more interesting.”

I ask Goodman what advice he would give students still searching for a coveted training contract offer. “The first thing to do is to make sure that you understand the type of firm you’re applying for and the type of work that you want to do,” is his advice. “Ask yourself what kind of person you are: do you love the big city? Would you rather stay local? Do you want to work with big-name clients?” Once you’ve got that figured out, researching the firm itself is crucial. “You should understand the kind of work the firm does and how they market themselves,” Goodman says. “‘If you understand yourself and the firm, you can properly explain to the firm ‘Why you?’.”

Alex Goodman will be speaking alongside law firm and ULaw representatives at ‘The SQE: students and law firms share their stories — with ULaw’, an virtual student event taking place THIS WEEK on Thursday 26 June. Apply now to attend.

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Faked invoices and correspondence

A personal injury solicitor who diverted a portion of his client’s settlement payment into a rehabilitation company connected with his wife, creating false documentation in order to do so, has been struck off.

Fasar Mahmood, a consultant at West Yorkshire firm Tyler Hoffman, told his client that she had been awarded £3,800 in damages following a personal injury claim. When she expressed her disappointment with this figure, Mahmood told her it was a good offer and persuaded her to accept it, according to the tribunal’s ruling. However, the claim had in fact settled for more than twice that amount — £8,500 plus costs of £3,915.

The tribunal heard how Mahmood then falsified documents, including an expert report, invoices and correspondence, to suggest that the client had requested physiotherapy treatment and that she was happy for a portion of her settlement payment to go towards this.

An investigation found that £2,555 of the settlement money due to the client was used to pay a company called “Core Rehab” for physiotherapy and a psychologist’s assessment — services the client maintains she neither requested nor received. These services were not included in the schedule of costs sent to the insurer, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) concluded that all documents relating to the payments to Core Rehab had been falsified.

Investigative officers for the SRA established that Mahmood was financially linked to Core Rehab, his wife being the sole signatory on the company bank account which received the £2,555. The same day, funds were withdrawn from this account to the personal bank account of Mahmood’s wife.

Between 2018 and 2022, Tyler Hoffman had instructed Core Rehab in numerous personal injury matters. Over this four-year period, £266,000 was paid by the firm into four different Core Rehab bank accounts. According to the firm, Mahmood was the only fee earner to use the company.

The SRA uncovered payments totalling £61,745 from Core Rehab bank accounts to Mahmood himself. Mahmood’s personal company, Legalwise Assist Ltd, received £8,500 from bank accounts associated with Core Rehab.

Following a one-day Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) hearing which he did not attend, Mahmood was found to have embarked on a “course of calculated and outright dishonest behaviour”.

The tribunal noted that Mahmood admitted to the allegations and ordered his removal from the roll, along with a costs order of £25,000.

Human input remains crucial

A new report has shed light on senior judges’ views on AI, highlighting both the areas of their work that could benefit from the technology and their concerns about its use.

The study used focus‑group discussions with 12 judges from across the UK judicial hierarchy, including five members of the Supreme Court, to dig into a range of attitudes towards AI.

A certain amount of enthusiasm for the technology was shown. One judge summarised AI’s benefits as “increasing productivity, reducing cost and reducing some of the drain on resources that we all have” while another commented that, “Anything that can improve efficiency and productivity whilst ensuring we don’t lose the essence of what justice is, is exciting and to be welcomed.”

The discussion on productivity seems to have centred on “boring” bulk administrative tasks such as disclosure exercises, bundling and summarising cases. There were also suggestions that AI could handle “small claims” as well as a possibility that AI could be used to create versions of judgments that could be easily understood by a child or by the general public.

Despite these benefits, there were many areas of judicial work that judges felt required a necessary human element. In cases which involve prison sentences or removing children from their parents, this human element was thought to be especially important. “People take comfort from having a human face, a human decision maker,” one participant commented. There was additional concern about the decisions AI might make in these sensitive cases, “Law is not a matter of pure logic,” was the view of one judge, “you need a practical, humane result to a problem if it’s humanly possible.”

Furthermore, a sense emerges from the report that these judges like being judges and are reluctant to share the most interesting parts of their workload with AI. “There’s a lot of people here [in the judiciary] who rather like hanging around law libraries,” one commented, reflecting on the “satisfaction of problem solving” and “following the footnotes.”

To the suggestion that AI could be used to produce judgments, another participant objected on the grounds that, “each of us, I think, enjoys writing, possibly in our own style.” Another comment reads, “When we come out of a case, we all meet together and discuss what we think about it and why. We can’t have a room of robots doing that.”

Intellectual labour at risk of replacement says Geoffrey Hinton

The computer scientist dubbed ‘the Godfather of AI’ has identified legal assistants and paralegals as among the roles most at risk of replacement by AI.

Geoffrey Hinton, famous for his work on artificial neural networks and winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to machine learning, appeared on the popular Diary of a CEO podcast for an interview heavily focused on the dangers of AI technology.

Amid a range of threats, spanning from an increase in cyber attacks to the development of autonomous lethal weapons, Hinton discussed the possibility that unemployment levels will increase as AI outperforms humans at what he terms “mundane intellectual labour”. He likens the development of this technology to the industrial revolution of the 19th century, which saw many manual labour jobs go extinct.

Hinton agreed with the now much-repeated phrase, “AI won’t take your job, a human using AI will take your job”, however stressed that as AI tools increase productivity, fewer human employees will be needed in many workplaces. “The combination of a person and an AI assistant can do the work that 10 people could do previously,” he explained.

When asked which roles specifically face the highest threat of AI replacement, Hinton replied, “Someone like a legal assistant or paralegal — they’re not going to be needed for very long.” He went on to mention call centre workers as another group at risk.

On the roles less likely to be replaced, skilled trades come out on top. “It’s going to be a long time until [AI] is as good at physical manipulation as us, so a good bet would be to be a plumber,” Hinton suggested.

Throughout the interview Hinton emphasises the difficulty of making confident predictions about the future of this technology. “Anybody who tells you they know just what’s going to happen and how to deal with it is talking nonsense,” he told listeners.

The extent of the effect that AI will have on the legal industry, including roles like paralegals and legal assistants, has been much debated. Back in March, Simmons & Simmons senior partner Julian Taylor told journalists that his clients “don’t completely trust” AI and would rather have real people handling the complex and high-stakes work they send to the firm. As a service industry heavily influenced by the wishes of its clients, this could suggest that the profession will be slower to replace staff with technology than Hinton suggests.

Worked unqualified for three weeks

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has barred a law graduate from working in legal practice without its prior approval, after she spent several weeks working as a solicitor despite not being admitted to the roll.

Kashine Taylor was a law graduate who had completed her training when she secured employment as a solicitor with Derbyshire County Council. She told the council that she was still waiting for the SRA to email her practising certificate to her, according to the public decision.

The law grad later claimed that she had not been aware that she needed to apply for a practising certificate, despite the fact that she had previously made two applications to be admitted to the roll. She worked as a solicitor from 4 March 2024 to 27 March when she knew she was unqualified to do so, the SRA said.

Separately, in September 2023, Taylor told law firm Eliot Mather that the reason her admission to the roll and the issuance of her practising certificate was delayed was the fault of the SRA, despite the fact that she had not yet made an application to be admitted to the roll.

The SRA served Taylor with a section 43 order, barring her from working for any law firm in England and Wales without the SRA’s permission. She was also ordered to pay the SRA’s costs of £1,350.

Hannah Uglow, SQE & LPC programme and student lead at The University of Law, discusses the best and worst things about the exams and shares her top tips on how to tackle them

Hannah Uglow started her legal career in criminal defence. While practising, she taught at the University of Kent and joined their law clinic, working with students on live cases. Uglow then moved to The University of Law as a lecturer and is now the SQE programme lead.

I ask Uglow what motivated her to start teaching law as well as practising. “In my view, the law should be accessible,” she responds. She stresses that, although law is often made out to be obscure or complex, it’s very possible for all law students to understand it. “Once I’d been in practice, I saw how the law operates: you have the facts of a situation and you have the rules — it’s simply a matter of applying one to the other.” She continues, “I really liked helping students get to that moment when the penny drops. Suddenly, rather than just getting through it, they start really understanding and enjoying the law — in every cohort I have taught I have seen students have that shift in understanding.” Additionally, Uglow sees teaching as a mutually beneficial exercise, “If you want to be a good practitioner, then teaching is the best way to stay on top of things and keep your knowledge fresh,” she explains.

Having taught academic and vocational law, Uglow is now SQE course lead at The University of Law. “I thought the SQE was a mind-blowing challenge, so I got involved at course lead level,” she tells me. Before we get into these challenges, I am keen to discuss some of the positives that the new SQE exams are bringing aspiring lawyers. “The big positive is qualifying work experience,” says Uglow. “I come from a community law and legal aid background,” she continues, “the challenges of qualifying into that area were much greater in the old system because training contracts don’t exist in the same way in that world — as in a lot of the private client world. With the SQE, people are qualifying into community and legal aid sooner than they would have done – and I think that’s a great thing.

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The SQE has also moved criminal law and practice into its core practice areas. “The SQE has lifted the profile of criminal law, and from my perspective as a criminal practitioner that’s good,” Uglow remarks. She comments on the benefits of a wider core syllabus more generally, “The breadth of the syllabus is a very good foundation for anyone going into law. There’s a real value in having an awareness of areas that you don’t intend to specialise in, because they complement your knowledge and ability as a lawyer.” However she is quick to note, “that enormous syllabus is a bit of a double-edged sword though, because it puts off a lot of potentially good lawyers from starting a course.”

I am curious to know what Uglow considers the biggest challenge the SQE poses for students. “The toughest part of all is a transition to a completely different way of learning,” she replies immediately. “Students have learnt to write essays they have learnt to evaluate and question things but the SQE is not interested in that. What SQE 1 is interested in is factual recall and application.” Her top tip for this style of exam is “let go of control” and get comfortable with not memorising the syllabus perfectly: “If you are familiar with every point in that syllabus, then you’re putting yourself in the strongest position to be able to identify the best answers. If you are trying to memorise everything then you’re crippling yourself and you will struggle.”

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Uglow also emphasises the importance of practice to adjust to this new style of assessment. She likens it to training for a marathon: “You don’t run 26 miles right away. You build up to it. You have to go over and over the methods and keep practising. It never gets easier, but you do get better.” Students at The University of Law will have “a fantastic range of single best answer practice questions” to help them practise. “You’re being provided with the best content you can get from experienced practitioners and so if you are dedicated, consistent, methodical, and you practise you will overcome those challenges,” says Uglow.

Before we finish our conversation, I ask Uglow what advice she would give to someone starting their SQE prep course this September. For those students really keen to get started, she recommends looking over academic law topics. “Some students won’t have looked criminal law and the other core subjects since the first year of their LLB — at least three or four years ago. So dust off those books and remind yourself of your academic law,” she says. However, what she really recommends is to relax over your summer holiday. “Enjoy the break now, because it’s going to be tough,” she says. “Genuinely, enjoy your summer and take time out to relax and get yourself mentally and physically prepared. If you’re starting in September for a January sit, that’s going to be three months of hard work so make sure you’ve had a break before going into it.”

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Student ambassador at BPP University Law School Sarina Yamahata reflects on the SQE study strategy that helped her secure a successful result

When Sarina Yamahata completed her LLB in 2022, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to qualify as a lawyer. However, after spending two years in Geneva studying international law and then working as a legal intern for the United Nations, she decided to return to the UK to take her SQE and get qualified.

She began the LLM SQE 1 & 2 at BPP University Law School in September 2024, passed her SQE 1 first time in January and is currently waiting for the results of her SQE 2. In the meantime, she has been delving into medical negligence, employment and family law as part of BPP’s Essentials for Practice Master’s term, for which students choose to focus their further learning on one of three practice steams: General Practice (which Sarina opted for), Commercial or Corporate.

“What really motivated me to study law in the first place was human rights,” Yamahata tells me. “I was born and raised in Japan, but my parents are both from Myanmar. I heard and read a lot about the human rights abuses in the country growing up, which made me really passionate about going into the field of human rights.”

Yamahata studied law at King’s College London, during which she considered a career in commercial law. “While I was doing my degree, I did try out the commercial law path,” she says. “It’s what everyone around me was doing and there were all these events on campus focusing on recruiting students, so I tried it – but I quickly realised it wasn’t for me.”

Returning to her interest in human rights law, Yamahata studied an LLM in international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and stayed in Geneva to work as a legal intern at the United Nations and several NGOs. It was this experience that motivated her to return to the UK to qualify as a lawyer. “When I was working at the UN, I realised that my colleagues who had roles that I aspired to have in the future – roles like legal officers or legal analysts – were all qualified lawyers and they all had years of experience in their domestic jurisdiction behind them,” she explains. “This was a path that I hadn’t fully explored yet so I decided to go back to the UK and get qualified.”

So, why the LLM SQE 1 & 2 at BPP? “I found the LLM part of BPP’s SQE prep course to be really interesting,” Yamahata replies. “Topics like family law, employment law and medical negligence are areas I never really got to study in undergrad but ones I’ve always been interested in,” she continues. “The LLM course is only a few months longer than the diploma and I thought I would get something really interesting out of it, so I thought – why not?” says Yamahata.

Yamahata won scholarships to study her LLM SQE 1 & 2 with BPP. She tells me how much she values this financial support. “Scholarships are really important to me as a self-funded student: prep courses can be expensive and the SQE exams themselves are expensive too so funding was my main concern and I really appreciate the assistance.”

Now that Yamahata is successfully through SQE1, I am keen to hear about her revision strategies and top tips for the exam. “Leading up to SQE 1, I focused a lot on practising multiple choice questions (MCQs),” she reveals. “BPP provided loads of resources to practice MCQs, which were really great. They separated the practice questions by topic as well which was really helpful because I could see which sections I was weaker in.” Practising MCQs also helped to hone Yamahata’s exam technique, and she was able to improve her timing as well as understanding the sometimes-tricky wording of this style of question.

“BBP also made these great refresh videos for all of the areas of law that we were being assessed on, including the underlying law that we didn’t have classes on, like contract, criminal and public law,” Yamahata recalls. “These videos gave a really good, big picture, like overview of the entire subject area,” she says.

This resource was particularly valuable for Yamahata, who had spent two years focusing on different interests since graduating from her LLB. “Criminal, contract and public law were subjects I studied in the first year of my undergrad – that’s five years ago now!” she says. “I had a lot of classmates who had just graduated from their bachelor’s in law, or they just finished their conversion and they were all coming in fresh having just studied all these things, so I was very, very worried,” she says.

However, to those in a similar position, Yamahata would stress that many of her worries were unfounded. “Once I started revising the underlying law for the SQE1, it did come back naturally. In that sense, it wasn’t as big a challenge as I thought it would be – no matter how long ago it was, no matter the gap, you will recognise familiar terms and familiar concepts. You’re just reminding yourself of what you already know,” she says.

As we wrap up our discussion, I ask Yamahata for the advice she would give to students who are about to approach their SQE. “Be organised and stay on track as much as you can,” is her response. “When you fall behind, it can be hard to catch up.” She adds, “I’m saying this as someone who did fall behind at some points. I would get ill, and miss a few classes – It just can’t be helped. But it’s so important to work hard to catch yourself up.” She also stresses the importance of a healthy work-life balance. “It’s easy to get bogged down and let your whole life become the SQE – but then what happens is that for the next stage of the course, you’re severely burnt out. You’re too drained and exhausted to study and focus properly. You have to think about the big picture and prioritise balance,” she concludes.

Join us TOMORROW for our virtual student event: SQE: How well can you tackle MCQs? — with BPP for more insider knowledge on the SQE!